Purpose partnered with KABOOM! on a brand evolution to create a new positioning strategy, visual and verbal identity, website audit & insights, suite of creative assets, and employee engagement experience to make their mission come to life.
The work sought to evolve the identity and storytelling approach of the KABOOM! brand to reflect their deep programmatic focus on “playspace equity” — where playground access and racial equity intersect — in keeping with the political and cultural landscape.
Play is disappearing at home, at school and in communities. Particularly within communities in need, playspaces either don’t exist, are poorly maintained, or aren’t safe. This disproportionately affects communities of color.
The playspace equity gap is the disparity that keeps some kids and communities from having access to safe places to play & the advantages that come with them.
To recenter play as a necessity for childhood development and community well-being, KABOOM! and its diverse partners have an opportunity to scale their work, using playspaces to transform communities.
KABOOM!, a US-based non-profit, set out to spark a playspace revolution in order to catalyze further change and close the playspace equity gap for good. While KABOOM! is well-known in its sector, they wanted to revisit their brand to ensure that the way KABOOM! appears in the world matches its reputation as a leader in community, play, and equity.
Partners and community members know and trust KABOOM! because of the positive ripple effects of community cohesion and collective action sparked by playspace builds and the playspaces themselves. KABOOM! has the experience and the credibility to use its playspaces as a jumping off point to be fearless about its ambition to bring safe playspaces to every community, unapologetic about the urgency of the need, and bold in voicing every small and large impact that having access to playspaces brings to kids and communities.
Our team set out to build a brand that would ensure that the way KABOOM! appears in the world matches its reputation as a leader in community, play, and equity.
A key component of this approach was to build on KABOOM’s commitment to addressing racial equity in its work – and not being afraid to name the disparities of the issue space it works in.
The key creative strategy for KABOOM!’s new direction was to evolve current logo from ‘comic book’ to ‘graphic novel.’
It was important for KABOOM! to be able to tell a story through their logo, but to not make it too literal. While KABOOM! does build playspaces, their work is not just about playspaces.
KABOOM’s new brand is clean, current and more mature, utilizing the imagery of the spark for playspace equity.
Brand Assets
KABOOM!’s brand assets needed to be cohesive digitally and in-person at playspaces, events, and activations.
KABOOM! needed help bridging their brand legacy and current brand purpose. We found a tone and voice for KABOOM! that is bold, inspiring, energetic, dynamic, experienced, empathetic, driven, and fresh. This voice brought together the need to demonstrate fun with maturity, and was reflected through a set of verbal assets that Purpose delivered.
A key component of KABOOM’s verbal identity is voice equity. KABOOM! speaks with empathy, which means that they not only listen well, but take their audience’s perspectives into account. Purpose worked to translate that empathy into voice equity with Verbal guidance, including putting people first, avoiding idioms, and being sensitive to stigma.
In order to ground our strategy in insights about real audience members, Purpose conducted desk research, audited existing KaBOOM! resources and interviewed nearly 30 stakeholders and audience members.
Purpose then delivered brand strengths, brand opportunities, audience segmentation, audience insights, and strategic messaging recommendations to help KABOOM! reach their new and current audiences with messages that would resonate and connect them to the work.
This new identity for KABOOM! was one big step in realizing their mission to ensure all kids and all communities have equitable access to quality, imaginative playspaces.
This partnership continues to better equip KABOOM! to engage diverse audiences & partners and reach new communities with playspace to close the playspace equity gap.
KABOOM! is a leader in unifying diverse audiences and partners to tackle the systemic play inequities that cause kids to miss out on healthy childhoods and keep communities from thriving.
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