Angela Williams, president and CEO of United Way Worldwide
It’s both a brand refresh and renewal strategy for United Way Worldwide. The organization unveiled a refreshed brand, and this weekend hosts a nationally televised event, United Way Benefit for Hurricane Relief, for communities devastated by Hurricanes Helene and Milton.
In its rebrand campaign, United is the Way,™ UWW will invite all people and communities to take action and make a bigger impact. “Because while it takes just one person to spark a world-changing idea, it takes many to change the world. The campaign will feature a series of activations demonstrating the power of unity to build thriving communities,” said Angela F. Williams, president and CEO of UWW.
“The global brand refresh represents a significant milestone in our organization’s history and signifies our commitment to innovate and transform to meet the escalating needs of global communities,” Williams told The NonProfit Times. She called the refresh “out of the box” and that is literally the case. The logo had included a rectangle box, which is now gone, and the colors are more of a rainbow, she said.
UWW’s refreshed brand was developed during a two-year process of qualitative and quantitative research among donors in 16 countries to understand perceptions of the organization and its work, said Williams. A few affiliates are already updating their website and communications with a full rollout in January, she said. “We wanted to see how our brand resonates in different languages, cultures, etc.,” she said.
The brand refresh is a “recommitment” to four impact areas: healthy community, youth opportunity, financial security and community resiliency, Williams said.
The hour-long television will be broadcast at 8 p.m. (EST/PST) Saturday on the CBS Television Network and CMT and streamed on Paramount+ with SHOWTIME.” The event includes appearances by Blake Shelton, Zac Brown Band, the Backstreet Boys, Kelsea Ballerini, Stephen Colbert, Nate Burleson, Carly Pearce and more, plus performances by Brittney Spencer, Chris Janson, Clay Aiken, Jonathan McReynolds and Tyler Hubbard.
Williams explained the event came about after a discussion between UWW Chief Revenue Officer Byron V. Garrett and UWW board of trustees member Melissa C. Potter, who is executive director, Content for Change, at Paramount Global. They then floated it with a few people from Nashville and Potter took it to Paramount and CBS execs who were open to the idea.
The approval came quickly, Williams said, and the project was put together in a couple of weeks. Segments were taped in Nashville with some of the artists recording segments from where they were on the road.
Viewers will be able to donate and while a financial goal has not been set, she said, the program is designed to bring hope. “When the cameras go away after a storm, communities are left and are still struggling. We want to turn the cameras back on,” said Williams. “We want to bring hope to people who are feeling hopeless.”
One such area is where Hurricanes Helene ravaged 500 miles of the Southeastern United States. The storm made landfall as a powerful Category 4 hurricane, with up to 15 feet of storm surge. As it passed over Florida and Georgia, Helene weakened to a tropical storm over the Carolinas. Many small communities in Western North Carolina, unaccustomed to hurricanes, were inundated with up to 15 inches of rain. The flooding washed away whole towns, decimated highways and bridges, wiped out infrastructure and altered river routes.
“I have never lived through anything like this before. We’ve had floods before, but we’ve never had anything like this,” said Elisabeth Bocklet, senior director of marketing at United Way of Asheville and Buncombe County.
UWW’s new brand strategy “seeks to clarify what we do, how we work and why we’ve so long been a partner of choice – so we can continue to mobilize our unrivaled network of volunteers and employers to action,” said Omoiye O. Kinney, executive vice president and chief marketing officer of UWW.