Denver Awards
Category
Brand Transformation
Annual ID
DEN25_IG020M
Colorado Mountain College (CMC) is Colorado’s first Dual-Mission college, offering students bachelor’s and associate degrees through liberal arts programs and hands-on career-skills training. They are also a federally designated Hispanic-Serving Institute, with a Latino student body of 25%+. Because of these new classifications and changing demographics, CMC realized their existing tagline and brand position of “Do something MAJOR” weren’t resonating with their audiences as it felt generic, uninspiring and Latino students identified that the double entendre got lost in translation. Additionally, CMC realized its brand ethos needed to better articulate their market positioning and perception.
To deliver on this bilingual brand evolution, Heinrich knew it would need Spanish-speaking experts as a part of our CMC taskforce. Lucky for us, our multicultural team, Hispanidad, worked contribute their knowledge, expertise and transcreation skills to take our work from asi-asi to perfecto.
Using primary-audience research, Heinrich evolved CMC’s brand strategy and verbal identity, landing on the powerful new “Elevate your future” or “Eleva tu futuro.” According to CMC, this tagline “resonated above and beyond all others tested by a large margin—especially with our Spanish-speaking respondents.” We also created a brand architecture and visual system to differentiate and organize various academic and career communities—including using a secondary color palette, program color designations—while respecting legacy assets and executional needs of CMC’s multi-campus footprint. This helped create clearer on-campus navigation and opportunities for students to bond with their own Community color.
We then provided CMC with full brand guidelines that outlined new photography direction and graphic elements to help their team take this into the real world.
The result? Seeing our work in the wild is great confirmation of a job well done. Since completion, our efforts have been integrated into the college’s website and promotional channels, including video and recruitment integration.
To deliver on this bilingual brand evolution, Heinrich knew it would need Spanish-speaking experts as a part of our CMC taskforce. Lucky for us, our multicultural team, Hispanidad, worked contribute their knowledge, expertise and transcreation skills to take our work from asi-asi to perfecto.
Using primary-audience research, Heinrich evolved CMC’s brand strategy and verbal identity, landing on the powerful new “Elevate your future” or “Eleva tu futuro.” According to CMC, this tagline “resonated above and beyond all others tested by a large margin—especially with our Spanish-speaking respondents.” We also created a brand architecture and visual system to differentiate and organize various academic and career communities—including using a secondary color palette, program color designations—while respecting legacy assets and executional needs of CMC’s multi-campus footprint. This helped create clearer on-campus navigation and opportunities for students to bond with their own Community color.
We then provided CMC with full brand guidelines that outlined new photography direction and graphic elements to help their team take this into the real world.
The result? Seeing our work in the wild is great confirmation of a job well done. Since completion, our efforts have been integrated into the college’s website and promotional channels, including video and recruitment integration.
2025 Awards
Total Points: 1
Merit Winner
Credits
Agency
Heinrich / Denver
Art Director
Tori Sidell
Associate Creative Director
Leah Metz
Copywriter
Jay Roth
Creative Director
Gerardo Garcia-Jurado
Kristan Butler
Sam Swensson
Strategy Director
Kristen Brelig
Senior Art Director
Adam Berger
Associate Director of Project Management
Katie Emmons
Director, Digital Strategy
Blanca McKissick
Language Supervisor
Victoria Mendoza
Managing Director
Laura Sonderup
Project Manager
Julie Forbes
Research
Corona Insights
Resource Manager
Suzanne Leja
Senior Account Executive
Daniela Hernandez
Senior Media Director
Linds Jordan
Steve Greenwald
Studio Artist
Tom Beck
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