Boldness. An excellent quality in a brand partner. Especially one who ‘Dares mighty things’ in the kidney care arena.
Kidney care and dialysis are not your typical conversation-starters, but we’re not your typical conversationalists, so we’re launching right in with them because A) It’s important. And B) See A.
If you’re unfamiliar with the topic (as we were just a few short months ago), brace yourself. We lead with some disheartening stats – but keep reading. The storyline veers quickly into happier, more hopeful territory, leaving the ‘dis’ behind, and moving right into the ‘heartening’ part. Here goes.
37M(!) people in the US live with chronic kidney disease (CKD), which – for those of us who don’t excel at mental math – is almost 10% of the entire population. And 90% of patients with stages 1-3 don’t even know they have it until they end up in the ER. Bottom line, it’s a sobering situation desperately in need of a shakeup.
Enter shaker-upper, Cricket Health, a tech-forward, community-focused new approach that identifies CKD earlier, enabling doctors to treat it sooner. Founded by former LinkedIn execs along with kidney care specialists and health care visionaries with a shared passion for what needs to change, Cricket came to Fame for branding that reflected this entirely new model of care.
It’s rare that we encounter a startup brand with such meaningful, thoughtfully articulated values. But this team had obviously invested some serious think-time in how they verbalized their well-stated brand-value wisdom – from ‘Humility is a source of our strength’ and ‘We dare mighty things,’ to ‘Everyone is worthy’ and ‘We bring joy to this work.’ They’re the kind of words you want as your own life mantra – and well worthy of a visual identity system that does ‘em proud.
It’s a brand that’s daring. Highly human-centric. And mission-critical for millions. They needed a visual system that immediately telegraphed the power of their purpose. So we transformed their look and feel to incorporate more heart. More hope. More humanity. We introduced imagery that reflected more patient engagement, collaboration and a welcoming sense of community. A palette that moved away from the safe ‘corporate’ blue of airlines and insurance companies, bringing in more vibrancy for an energized, optimistic feel. And added an approachable, ownable system of icons to help communicate their unique model of care.
CKD is a life-altering diagnosis, with treatment protocols weighing heavily on patients and their families. Nephrologists we are not – but we have other skills we were eager to engage. We reworked the website for clearer navigation, sent launch kits full of swag to employees and new patients to welcome them to the Cricket fold, and provided templates for ongoing communication – doing everything in our power to honor Cricket’s mission and help these patients stay as healthy as possible, for as long as possible.