One of Westergaard Advertising’s oldest client partnerships is with the Betts Auto Campus. This luxury auto dealership truly has a storied history in the Des Moines area. After a transition of ownership took place between the Betts and Willis family, the time came to change the name from the Betts Auto Campus to the Willis Auto Campus. Westergaard was involved in this delicate and carefully executed rebranding process from the very beginning.

It can be daunting to update a logo as established in the marketplace as the distinctive Betts script. In many ways the transition from Betts to Willis is easy. However, the typography is much more complex. Betts begins with a large ‘B’ with bold loops and a dashed double ‘t.’ Willis begins with a wider ‘W’ and has two ‘l’s in the middle. Plus it is one letter longer than Betts. Handled incorrectly, the name can quickly get lost in the series of vertical lines made up of ‘i’s and ‘l’s. Our final solution was to emphasize the loops of the lowercase ‘l’s to give the logo hints of the original Betts flourish. The baseline was also modified to give it a slight upward lift similar to the optical illusion created by the dashed double ‘t’s in the middle of Betts.

Once the basic typography was in place, we took advantage of this update to clean up some dated items from the Betts logo. We removed the line between the brand name  and ‘Auto Campus.’ We also updated the font on the latter to give it a more neutral and modern look. Finally, we added a blue box around the logo. This was meant to mirror one of the most visible logo applications — the temporary plates on the cars at the dealership.

From the core logo, child logos were built out for each of the dealership’s nameplates.

The entire name change campaign was wrapped up using the theme The Tradition Continues. Launch items included several prominent print placements and customer email …

… and of course this notable TV spot featuring Chuck Betts and Rich Willis announcing the name change as the logo transforms behind them.

One of the most impressive aspects of this transition was the internal support on the client side. Sometimes when a business executes a logo transition, you can see traces of the old and new logos for months — or even years. This was not the case at Willis. Together we worked through a list of all consumer touchpoints. In the months leading up to the announcement, the Willis team orchestrated a mass transition of their diverse signage while Westergaard worked to update other in-dealership collateral and identity pieces. The end result was a seamless brand transition from one tradition to the next, reinforced by a consistent launch campaign.