CASE STORY • BRAND STRATEGY + EXPERIENCE
Pine Haven Christian Communities
Creative Contributions
Design & Media
• Website redesign & build
• Organization-wide brochure system
• Direct mail
• Photography
• Video production & editing
• Television commercial production
Strategy
• Brand strategy & positioning
• Stakeholder interviews
• Messaging architecture
• Community event strategy
• Affiliate program
• Multi-channel campaign development
Brand Development
• Tagline development
• Brand standards
• Logo refinement & production standards
Marketing & Community Outreach
• Community liaising
• Fundraising development & donor engagement
• Marketing budget management
• In-house marketing production
Results
• Maintained more than 90% occupancy while supporting a major campus expansion.
• More than doubled website inquiry response rate.
• Expanded church relationships through new Affiliate Church Program.
• Increased annual charitable giving through integrated fundraising campaigns.
• Transitioned marketing production in-house, reducing costs while increasing creative quality and responsiveness.
• Repositioned Pine Haven, shifting community perception from "the old nursing home" to a continuum of care community focused on vibrant senior living.
.
Please be patient as we improve the site!
Page Under Construction
The Brand Story
Recognizing the Hidden Emotional Barrier
When I joined Pine Haven Christian Communities in 2014 as Director of Marketing and Community Outreach, the organization was preparing for the largest expansion in its history.
Nearly forty new residences were coming. Filling them meant addressing a perception Pine Haven had carried for years.
Founded in 1950 by a coalition of local Reformed Presbyterian churches, Pine Haven had grown from a small Christian nursing home into a multi-campus senior care organization offering supported independent living, assisted living, memory care, rehabilitation and skilled nursing.
Yet much of the community still knew it as “the old nursing home.”
And "nursing home" came with baggage: sterile hallways, institutional care, loss of independence—a place people went when they could no longer live their lives as they had before.
Then you walked through Pine Haven’s front door.
People smiled. Residents talked with visitors. Staff knew people by name. The building felt warm and lived-in.
The experience challenged the assumption.
That became the opportunity I saw: give more people reasons to walk through the front door and experience Pine Haven for themselves.
My First Day Told Me Everything
I experienced that difference before I ever worked there.
I had come to Pine Haven for an interview. Before it even began, a resident I had never met greeted me warmly, kissed me on the cheek and welcomed me as though I were already part of the family.
Then the interview began. With prayer.
A genuine request that God guide the decisions being made on behalf of the people Pine Haven served.
I had visited senior care facilities before. None had felt like this.
I remember thinking, "If people could experience this place for themselves, that would do all the sellling that was needed."
We just had to get them through the front door.
Finding the Story That Already Existed
The first task to develop a brand properly is to simply listen.
I interviewed residents, staff, leadership, and members of the community. I had never encountered what I found with Pine Haven. At every other company, when you asked different groups to describe the organization and what they do best, you'd get a different answer from each.
But at Pine Haven, they all told the same story. Different words, but all conveying the same thing.
At Pine Haven, Christ was served through serving His people.
That belief showed up in the way residents were greeted, families were welcomed, and coworkers treated one another. It was embedded in the culture rather than confined to a mission statement.
The story already existed. My job was to help other people see it.
Giving the Organization a Common Language
The name Pine Haven Christian Communities carried decades of history. For families unfamiliar with the organization, however, the name alone didn’t explain what Pine Haven offered.
We needed language that could communicate both sides of the organization: its Christian culture of service and the fact that it provided a continuum of senior care.
Working with the leadership team through many conversations and revisions, we arrived at:
Servant Hearts. Caring Hands. Inspired Living as You Age.
Every word was intentional.
The CEO felt especially strongly about Inspired—both as a reference to a life inspired by God and as an expression of the belief that growing older could remain a season of growth, contribution and joy.
That idea also challenged the emotional assumptions surrounding senior care: Pine Haven was a place where people continued to LIVE—making friends, worshipping, recovering, learning, laughing and remaining part of a community.
Sometimes the transformation was remarkable.
One woman arrived confined to a wheelchair. A few years later, she was walking into town on her own.
That wasn’t a typical outcome, but it embodied something I saw throughout Pine Haven:
People flourish in community.
Explaining the Journey
As I audited Pine Haven’s marketing materials, I found another gap:
There were brochures for individual campuses, but families were trying to understand something much bigger.
What was rehabilitation?
How was assisted living different from supported independent living?
What happened if someone’s needs changed?
How did all of these services fit together?
I created an overarching brochure that introduced Pine Haven’s complete continuum of care and showed how its services related to one another.
Then I developed individual brochures for supported independent living, assisted living, memory care, rehabilitation and skilled nursing.
Together, the pieces helped families understand both where someone might begin and how Pine Haven could continue caring for them as their needs changed.
Inviting the Community Inside
Pine Haven’s expansion was designed around a very different vision of senior living.
The new campus brought multiple levels of care together in one community, with neighborhood-style households, front porches, restaurant-style dining, courtyard gardens and a village square with gathering spaces, a café, beauty salon and general store.
It gave us something powerful to market: an experience that challenged what people expected senior care to look and feel like.
So I began creating reasons for people to come experience it. Some were educational. Some were simply enjoyable:
• A presentation on purple martins.
• Board game nights.
• Educational seminars.
• An evening exploring the incredible variety of Wisconsin apples.
Residents attended alongside members of the public. Again and again, I heard the same response:
“I never knew this was here.”
Each event brought people through the doors, where they could meet the people who lived and worked there and see Pine Haven for themselves.
The place did the rest.
Expanding the Circle
Pine Haven’s founding churches would always remain central to its identity. But the community around the organization had grown.
Many other churches shared Pine Haven’s values and were already recommending it to their members, despite having no formal relationship with the organization.
I proposed creating an Affiliate Church Program.
The idea was intentionally simple: affiliate churches would receive information about Pine Haven’s events, educational programs, volunteer opportunities and community initiatives and could share anything they believed would be useful to their congregations.
Church after church joined.
The program expanded Pine Haven’s relationships beyond its founding congregations and strengthened its connection to the wider faith community.
The Moment I'll Never Forget
During the move into the newly completed Haven Drive campus, one resident was being wheeled into his new room by family members.
He looked around in amazement and quietly asked: “What is this place?”
His family smiled. “This is your new home.”
He looked around again. “I live here?!?”
To him, it looked more like a luxury resort than a nursing home.
That moment has stayed with me because those three words captured the perception change we had been working toward: I live here?
Looking Back
One day, while attending a community event unrelated to Pine Haven, someone asked what I did for a living. When I told them I handled the marketing for Pine Haven, they immediately smiled.
“Oh yeah... Pine Haven’s marketing is everywhere.”
That stayed with me.
They were noticing the cumulative effect of community partnerships, church relationships, educational events, public outreach, advertising and storytelling. Each effort reinforced the others until Pine Haven had become part of the community conversation.
When I arrived, much of the community still knew Pine Haven as “the old nursing home.”
Over the years I spent there, more people walked through those front doors and discovered a vibrant Christian community where people could continue to live, grow, recover, worship and belong.
Pine Haven had been living that story for decades. I helped more people see it.