AARP Brand Refresh_2021

AARP’s purpose is to empower people to choose how they live as they age. While we have incredibly strong brand recognition, audiences often don’t recognize all of the organizational offers that extend beyond perceptions of retirement. They are also not aware of our work beyond Washington D.C. within local communities. Based on a 2018 audit of how the brand shows up in marketing and communication channels, it was determined to recalibrate our identity. AARP needed to create greater brand consistency within our landscape by broadening perceptions of what AARP does and connecting to the strength of local community programs, We engaged Siegal+Gale, a global brand identity firm, to calibrate and create visual and verbal consistency standards to work across all programs, services, tools, education and communications. The objective was to encourage audiences to reconsider the role they assigned to AARP. Using research and data insights from our internal Consumer Experience team as well as insights from across the enterprise, standards were developed and implemented in the winter of 2020. The results show a marked shift in consistency—more clearly communicating AARP as the primary brand behind the various offerings, without diminishing content or messaging.