Spitfire worked with Trust Women Foundation to develop branding that clearly conveyed the organization’s core values and unique role in the reproductive justice field.
Julie Burkhart founded Trust Women in 2009 to reestablish access to abortion services in Wichita, KS after the assassination of her former boss and the city’s only abortion provider, Dr. George Tiller. While Trust Women had received substantial public attention since its founding, at times the organization struggled to communicate to its target audience what Trust Women is, what the organization does and why it matters.
To ensure our branding recommendations were well-grounded, Spitfire underwent an extensive research process to determine how Trust Women is perceived by the organization’s target audiences and develop a better understanding of Trust Women’s unique value. Spitfire’s research illuminated three significant challenges that Trust Women’s updated brand needed to overcome:
- Trust Women’s relationship to its local clinics was unclear. Trust Women exists to open clinics that provide abortion care in underserved communities. However, many target audiences did not understand the relationship between Trust Women and its flagship clinics, leading them to question what exactly the organization was doing to improve access to abortion services.
- Even Trust Women’s supporters did not fully comprehend the need for the organization. Spitfire’s research revealed that many of Trust Women’s supporters did not fully comprehend the acute abortion access issues that exist in the Midwest. This lack of understanding led people to question if Trust Women was a truly unique and needed organization.
- Trust Women wasn’t talking about abortion enough. Since its inception, Trust Women’s inclination had been to talk about the variety of health care services available at its clinics and not put abortion services front and center. Spitfire’s research found that Trust Women needed to do the exact opposite. Providing abortion services in a safe, friendly and stigma-free environment is exactly what makes Trust Women’s clinics unique from others, and the organization needed to own that.
This comprehensive research enabled Spitfire to develop branding and messaging that resonated with both Trust Women and its target audiences. Spitfire crafted a brand promise for Trust Women that clearly articulated Trust Women’s unique niche and underpinned the branding recommendations:
Trust Women is the only organization that has the drive to open clinics that provide abortions in hostile areas and the knowledge and resources to do it.
Trust Women immediately implemented Spitfire’s branding and messaging recommendations, updating all of its materials to reflect the new brand. Since then, Trust Women has broadened its base of supporters and seen increased giving, which has allowed them to open two more clinics in Oklahoma City, OK and Seattle, WA.
In recent years, Spitfire has continued to partner with Trust Women to create and execute a profile-building plan for founder Julie Burkhart. Spitfire created a tailored media plan for Julie including meetings with magazine editors, reporters and columnists interested in reproductive rights and women’s issues. We also helped Trust Women secure a contributor position with The Hill through which Julie is able to amplify the work of Trust Women by tying their work to current events, such as the recent legal cases in which the government has attempted to prevent undocumented women from obtaining abortions. Armed with compelling branding and messaging and a more public profile for its charismatic leader, Trust Women has elevated its voice in the reproductive justice community.
