Columbia Metropolitan Airport Rebrand & Marketing
In 2019, the Columbia Metropolitan Airport hired the agency I worked for to to bring their airport into the modern era while still paying homage to the roots that had been planted decades before.
Columbia, SC
Travel, Freight, & Defense
Audience Size
1.3M Passengers (2019)
2,000
Challenge
The two big challenges on this project were getting stakeholder buy-in from board members and local officials, and delivering a refreshed brand experience that represented CAE well.
Results
We won the RFP for the brand update and also tacked on the marketing and PR work post-launch. In 6 months, the team I led delivered a full rebrand that included usage and style guidelines, a website update, and helped the CAE team implement our work throughout the airport.
6 Months
to project completion.
4 Designers
The team I led on this project.
500K Views
On launch creative.
Process
Initial Pitch: Our initial pitch began with research on the airport's past, figuring out the flexibility that would be needed from a proposed logo, and learning the stakeholders that we'd be presenting to.
Research: My team had the CAE team fill out a branding document, identifying their target audience, goals, wish-list, etc. We then took all of that information, put it into a digestible format, fed it back to the client to double check, and then went to designing.
Visual Design & Style Guide: Design took roughly two months with 4 different designers on my team. I created the main identity, and then wrote briefs for the rest of the branding suite so that it could be executed by our team. We also landed on a photo and typography style for the airport, and packaged everything in a brand book for the CAE team.
Implementation & Marketing: Once all of the branding work had been approved, our team went fully into implementation mode. We worked alongside the CAE staff to bring the brand to life while making sure the style guide and standards created were being upheld.
Conclusion
This project was incredible, because the client put full trust in our team, but also gave great feedback. We were able to take that and bring to life the main goal of the airport – make a modern-day luxury airport accessible to their community.
