Case Study | Athens Area Chamber of Commerce: Storytelling Tools

Client: Athens Area Chamber of Commerce
Location: Athens, Georgia
Organization Type: Large Non-Profit / Member Association
Service Provided: Brand Differentiators
Outcome: A suite of five messaging phrases now deployed consistently across Chamber communications

Client Overview

The Athens Area Chamber of Commerce has long been one of the most active and wide-reaching organizations in the Athens, Georgia community. Under the leadership of President David Bradley and Director of Membership & Marketing Marissa Chastain, the Chamber serves businesses of every size. They do a lot: they connect members to networking opportunities, advocate with lawmakers and elected officials at every level, help bring major employers to the area, and even offer access to small business health insurance. 

That breadth, it turned out, was both the Chamber’s greatest strength and its most pressing communications challenge.

The Challenge

The Athens Area Chamber of Commerce didn’t have a messaging problem born of inactivity or failure. Membership and event revenue were growing. Programming with legislators was succeeding. Members and stakeholders were expressing genuine satisfaction. The wins were real, and they were many.

But when your organization’s work spans everything from health insurance access for entrepreneurs to conversations with large employers, how do you distill that into a single email subject line? An annual report opening? A sentence a board member can say at a community event?

Marissa Chastain recognized the gap and reached out to me (Zach) at Rooster High Productions. What began as an exploratory conversation about a potential podcast quickly revealed a more foundational need: the Chamber didn’t have clear, consistent language for communicating what made it uniquely valuable to the Athens community. Without that foundation, no content strategy (podcast or otherwise) could reach its full potential.

The Solution

I deployed my Brand Differentiators process: a structured methodology for helping an organization discover what makes it powerfully different from its peers, and distilling it into a set of three to five phrases it can use in its messaging.

Here’s what’s special about this process: differentiators aren’t invented. They aren’t brainstormed around a conference table. They are discovered — pulled directly from the hearts and minds of the people the organization actually serves.

That means interviews. Real conversations with whomever your organization interacts with.

For the Chamber, the process involved four primary research inputs:

• Three group interviews with Chamber stakeholders
• Ten one-on-one interviews with individual members and partners
• An email survey distributed to the broader membership
• A review of several years of Chamber communications materials

I carefully designed the interview questions to uncover what the Chamber did differently from its peers, what its audiences most valued, and what misconceptions we needed to address in its messaging. Questions included prompts like “Describe the Chamber as if it were a person” and “What do people get wrong about the Chamber?”

The research phase lasted several months. Once I had all the necessary data, I spent a few weeks synthesizing it: finding patterns across hours of transcripts and survey responses, identifying language that was both authentic to the organization’s culture and strategically useful for its communications goals. 

I presented the Brand Differentiators to David and Marissa as a set of five phrases:

1. Catalyzing prosperity through commerce.
2. Win-win conversations at any scale.
3. Convening the community on our literal common ground.
4. Where you maximize your relationship ROI.
5. Championing whole-picture business growth.

Each phrase functions as a standalone message that can be deployed across different audiences and mediums, from social media copy to board reports to CEO quotes in earned media. They ensure that anyone writing on behalf of the Chamber is speaking from the same foundation.

The Results

The Chamber wasted no time putting the new language to work. The Brand Differentiators were embedded across multiple touchpoints in their communications ecosystem, including, for example, their membership welcome email.

The strategic benefits of the differentiators include:

• Messaging consistency across every Chamber communicator, from staff to board members
• Authentic differentiation from peer organizations in the Athens market
• Audience clarity. Different differentiators can be emphasized depending on whether the Chamber is speaking to prospective members, longtime partners, or community stakeholders

Perhaps most importantly, the language is entirely grounded in real member and partner experiences. Not invented in a boardroom, but discovered through listening.

An Example of the Brand Differentiators In Use

Here’s the welcome email that the Chamber sends to new members. Can you spot the Brand Differentiators?

Takeaway

For organizations like the Athens Area Chamber of Commerce, whose value is relational, wide-ranging, and difficult to quantify, the most powerful communications tool isn’t a new campaign or a new channel. It’s the right words. 

Rooster High’s Brand Differentiators process gives organizations exactly that: language that is authentic, consistent, and built to last.

Ready to find out what makes your organization powerfully different? [Get in touch.]

Client Testimonials

Could Brand Differentiators help your business or organization clarify your messaging and make you stand out? Schedule a meeting with me and we’ll see if they are right for you.