Client: Millions of Friends Association
Year: 2018
Website: millionsoffriends.org
Services: Consultancy and strategy, Copywriting, Visual identity & branding, SEO, Landing pages, Web development
The Million Friends Association was founded in 1997. The activities, the programs carried out and the public awareness about the needs of disadvantaged animals have built a strong reputation for the association.
The challenge for our agency was first and foremost to achieve an impactful visual identity that clearly expressed the association’s directions of action.
Thus, when we started the project there were 3 logos for: the association, the bear sanctuary and the dog shelter.
The online presence was based on a presentation website, information, blog and news, an e-shop, 3 Facebook pages, each channel having a different logo with a different design.
Until contacting us, building a unified visual brand identity was not a priority for the Millions of Friends Association. However, in the context of the development and expansion of their reputation and the desire to reach as many animal lovers as possible, the association decided to develop activities aimed at strengthening their brand image.
The solution offered was to merge the logos, so that the two logos of the sanctuary and the dog shelter were derived from the association’s logo.
For over 20 years, Millions of Friends has been rescuing thousands of seriously injured and endangered animals, mainly dogs and bears (but also cats, donkeys, deer, wolves, foxes).
The Millions of Friends brand is an umbrella brand, encompassing the Libearty and Victory projects (and Education, in the near future).
The Libearty Sanctuary is home to over 100 European brown bears, all rescued from a cruel life of abuse in captivity.
Most of the bears have been rescued from a miserable life in tiny cages, providing ‘entertainment’ for restaurants, hotels, factories, petrol stations, circuses and even monasteries.
Established in 1999 in the eastern part of Brasov, Victory is one of the first dog shelters in Romania. A key facility for the management of stray dogs, the shelter is credited with treating, housing, caring for and re-homing over 15,000 dogs in the last 20 years.
Furthermore, it is the only social centre that hospitalises injured stray dogs and also allows the sterilisation of pets from low-income families.
The colour scheme contains vivid shades that reflect the most important characteristics of the association’s existence and purpose: brown, green and gold.
For the correct use of colour schemes and logos, we have produced a brandbook for the association that incorporates all the elements that we’ve developed.
At a later stage, we have implemented the visual identity elements on the website, Facebook, adoption certificates and all necessary materials for print or other presentations.
As far as the design of the new website is concerned, we have approached a new content strategy: the unification under the umbrella of the association of all activities, both those dedicated to bears, dogs and the education component in schools.
With this approach, we wanted the public to identify all the projects and actions of the association as part of the same source.
Thus, the new “Campaigns” and “Donations” sections have been better highlighted, in order to meet the association’s objective of mobilising volunteers and donors to get involved.
We have also provided the platform with new functionalities: integration with online ticket payment. The chosen solution was versatile, with easy and intuitive navigation and original design.
Our website was overloaded and overcrowded. We had a lot of information that we wanted to share with the people who visit our site, we really wanted to show them everything we do with so much dedication and passion. Millions of Friends Association is the first animal protection association in Romania and our work is very extensive - Libearty Bear Sanctuary, Victory Dog Shelter, Hope Farm and the "Education saves lives" program are just some of our projects.
The wonderful team at the Online Hub helped us to give structure to the site, to organise and highlight material, to convey information in a clear and streamlined way. They've also come up with a new brand image - more concise, more approachable from the outside, more friendly to our online searchers. Once they've taken care of our website, people have found it much easier to find our projects, without having to 'dig' through whole pages and sections!
(Paula Ciotloș, AMP Executive Director)
