Meaningful Marketing with a Streamlined Brand

The Scenario:

As a 100-year-old community and commercial bank born and bred in Chicago, Byline Bank had a strong and ownable brand but faced barriers communicating cohesively across their organization. The bank needed more consistency and simplicity in their marketing messaging, so they partnered with Adrenaline to develop a flexible framework for their brand that reaffirms their unique values and empowers them to tell a strong, unified story everywhere they serve.

The Solution:

With a name that comes from the journalistic term for authorship, Byline Bank is known for empowering their customers to write their own story. But over the years, the brand had become muddied with disparate communications coming from all quarters of the bank. Building on the current master brand, Adrenaline created a streamlined design system and updated the bank’s brand guidelines to reflect a renewed approach that results in more meaningful marketing and messaging to truly connect with customers.

The Story:

For Byline to tell a strong, cohesive story wherever they show up, the bank’s value proposition needed to be borne from their strategy, positioning Byline to serve customers with comprehensive banking solutions and the tailored “just-for-you” service that only a true community bank provides.

Through a revealing discovery workshop, Byline Bank shared their myriad marketing messages and outlined challenges with their current brand. Following the discovery process, Adrenaline developed Byline’s design and messaging strategy and updated and applied consistency to brand assets as a foundation for all creative outputs moving forward.

The renewed approach incorporates colors, textures, and photo styles and addresses how to apply to these design principles to each of the bank’s four business lines.

The Byline Bank logo is the most concise and consistent representation of the brand. With attention and rigorous practice, use of the revitalized logo is now unaltered in any way or for any purpose – providing needed uniformity for the brand.

Orange is the brand’s signature color and is worn proudly. While the color should be featured as a recognizable mark on any given piece of creative – as text, background or graphics – not everything needs to be saturated in orange to be recognizable. A little goes a long way and targeted use effectively harkens to the master brand in naturally intuitive ways.

A functional circle provides a design element that echoes the logo and builds even more visual equity for the Byline brand. By always using the circle in a functional way, the brand avoids unnecessary decoration and draws the eye to key spotlighted content.

Narrative direction for Byline’s internal teams includes a reminder that Byline is made up of people, so the brand principles of authenticity and humanity come through all communications.

Launching in the fall of 2024, the brand’s updated creative is honest, relatable, and embodies a distinct human energy. Even more, Byline’s tone will ensure that the brand always feels local, even outside of Chicago.

Activating their local, relationship-based approach, Byline’s brand now communicates that the bank stands ready to help personal banking customers write the story they deserve, no matter what stage of life they’re in.

For business customers, Byline Bank’s brand promise shows that their dedicated teams are committed to helping businesses thrive.

Whether through personal, business or commercial banking, all of Byline’s customers can now clearly see how the bank is ready to deliver flexible, tailored financial solutions designed to uniquely serve their needs.

Adrenaline is an end-to-end brand experience company serving the financial industry. We move brands and businesses ahead by delivering on every aspect of their experience across digital and physical channels, from strategy through implementation. Our multi-disciplinary team works with leadership to advise on purpose, position, culture, and retail growth strategies. We create brands people love and engage audiences from employees to customers with story-led design and insights-driven marketing; and we design and build transformative brand experiences across branch networks, leading the construction and implementation of physical spaces that drive business advantage and make the brand experience real.