The Arc US rebranding 3 emails

Three emails follow.

The first arrived from The Arc US on May 7. Delarc, Director of Community Relations and I participated in the webinar referred ot in the first paragraph which was held on April 28.

I responded to the very simple survey but also decided to weigh in with a more substantial response which I did on May 11 (email # 2).

She then responded to that (email #3).

I hope you will find them interesting, thought provoking and enjoyable. I have the changed names that appear in various places.

Email # 1:

Dear Chapter Leader,
The Arc’s rebranding initiative is continuing to move ahead and right on schedule. CoreBrand, the agency we hired to assist us with our rebranding; has completed its interviews with key stakeholders. Last week, we hosted two conference calls/webinars that allowed many of you to participate as a “group interview”. Along with sharing your comments, CoreBrand has been looking to define the real “essence” of The Arc.
These conversations yielded a number of key words, terms and phrase. CoreBrand is analyzing them to identify the heart of our “Brand Platform”, which will become the building block for our new Brand Identity.
Just as the collection of our chapter logos was informative, CoreBrand recommended that gathering the taglines that many of you use to give meaning to your chapter’s identity in your communities could be similarly helpful. Therefore, we are asking you to provide us with any current taglines that you already use to help us define The Arc at the State and local level.
Simply click on the link below, which will take you to a two question survey. We want to know, 1) if you regularly use a tag line (i.e. Nike, “Just Do It”; UNCF, “A Mind is a Terrible Thing to Waste”); 2) the name of your chapter, and 3) The tag line. This survey will be open between now, and Wednesday, May 18th.
Thank You.

Email # 2

Hi Jan, I wanted to follow up with you regarding the issue of rebranding and tag lines. First off to say thank you for the webinar on April 28th. A great way to keep people involved and learning from each other. The second is to share a little more detail about our perspective on the matter. I understand how difficult this process is and will be. Highly charged for some, of little or no interest to others (until you ask them to do something differently) and lots of people in between.

Here in Delaware County, NY we went with ARC for most of our existence but changed to The Arc of Delaware County and Delarc over the last few years. But most people outside the organization and some within it, including Board and staff still refer to us as ARC. A little frustrating but understandable. In some ways the thought of another name change is difficult to imagine, at the same time though, thinking in the long term, I think our board would be OK with another name change, if others agreed. So, overall I guess that might put us in the position of supporting a new name.

But I think many others will not be as willing. I can think of two or three other chapters in NY who have invested a lot of time and money into completely different names over the last few years, and after witnessing their campaigns I find it hard to believe they would be as willing to go for another name change. So I think the idea of a common tag line and a common logo may be the best way to move us forward.

I think I mentioned in the webinar that within the last few weeks one of our newest staff members and I were talking about this dilemma and she said, "When I see a puzzle piece, I think autism and when I see a pink ribbon, I think breast cancer awareness. So maybe a good logo is all we need." I told her she might really have something there. Promote a common, well designed logo (spare no expense, it will have to be good, to generate support) with a powerful tag line would move us to a place where a common name might be more acceptable down the road (if we are willing to wait that long?).

As I have been thinking more and more about the tag line and the common thread that weaves through all Chapters I keep coming back to "Caring about People with Disabilities." It truly is what we all do. Large or small, service providers or solely advocates, we all care.

I ask myself, when I am out in public and people ask what do you do? Or where do you work? I say Delarc or The Arc of Dealware County and they say, "What's that?" And I say we used to be ARC. Some know us but many say, "What's that?" and then I say, We use to be the Association For Retarded Children, but we aren't any more and then after three or four exchanges, they finally say "Oh. OK" Like so many others in this field I'm tired of talking about what we used to be, but aren't any more, but kind of still are.

I also think we need to make sure it would be about caring "about" and not caring "for". Caring "for" can stir up thoughts of custodial care and that certainly would be terrible. But caring "about" is the common thread. We care, simple, clear and yet open to a multitude of local definition (we advocate, we provide x, y, or z services, we serve adults, we serve children, we serve only people with ID, we serve people with any DD.)

A little more about caring. If you check our website, or talk to Jinny Doe you will find out Delarc is pretty special. In New York we are the only Chapter, indeed the only one of over 700 approved service providers with a written Board of Directors' policy prohibiting the use of physical intervention or restraint of any type. And the policy has been in place for over 30 years. And we serve people with exceptionally challenging behaviors. We don't turn anyone down.

This commitment has resulted in our developing a proactive philosophy and positive approach that has gained a national reputation for effectiveness. The heart of that success has been our ability to systematize caring. We know that everyone says they care and to a large extent, they do. But we have developed systems that take caring beyond the realm of individuals and has woven into our recruitment, orientation, supervisory, coaching, performance review and even our time management practices too generate a culture that is distinctive, and again, highly effective.

We have learned that deep and genuine caring is not only the key to behavior change, it is also the key to effective teaching / skill development. It is not the only element but it is the most important. Without genuine caring, learning and behavior change is incredibly slow to achieve. With it, results are amazing.

I sent Jack a copy of one of our books, Shift Happens ... Making the Shift to Proactive Behavior Management. Borrow it and read the first couple of sections and you will see what I mean. In fact, we are in discussions to determine if Delarc and The Arc can partner to bring our positive message and accomplishments to The Arc family. I will forward the email I sent Jack and Jinny a couple of weeks ago, to give you a little more background.

Last point, not from a rehab perspective but from a marketing one is look around and you will see how the word "caring" is working its way into the marketing world. Watch a professional basketball game on TV and you will see their new tag line, "The NBA Cares". Not only is caring important, marketing people are starting to capture the power it conveys. Thinking in even bigger terms, there is far too little caring in the world and it seems like less so all the time. The Arc, through a common tag line in hundreds of communities across the country has the opportunity to refocus America, and help it start caring again.

"What do you do?"

" I work for The Arc."

" Oh, you're the folks who care about people with disabilities. I like what you do."

Cool, huh?

Please don't hesitate to call if you would like to discuss any of this further.

Thanks for the opportunity to share our perspective.

Regards, George Suess,


Email # 3:

George

What a thoughtful, comprehensive and enlightened response. If this is the kind of effort you put into serving our community – I can absolutely believe you have a particularly special chapter.

Jinny Doe came over quite enthused a couple weeks ago to tell me about your book and the consideration you and Peter may put into including it as part of our best practices strategy – I am sure if they want my involvement – they will ask – and I will be happy to help make this happen. To say the least, I hope I get to meet you soon (NCE?) so we can chat further. I did receive the partnership email. Thank you for keeping me in the loop

I am also copying Jack, Jane from our Board, as well as our friends from CoreBrand on this response so they too will understand your position. I am glad you are so receptive to the change we are looking to make. I can tell you that should we make the determination that a name change is not in our respective best interests, it will be done with a great deal of thought to give us the full tool kit we need to get past concerns about the prior acronym, about the “R” word and will most certainly include a tag line.

Thanks again.