Discover MoveMEnt: Movement With a Capital ME

Melissa Desmet had a gift. She is a physiotherapist who helps older adults move well, one conversation at a time.

She wanted to share it with far more people. A community of seniors and families who move because they enjoy it, not because they were told to.

What she had was harder to see. Everything she offered happened one to one. Her clients came from referrals. Her Facebook group had about 30 members. Her older logo, a birdhouse, clashed with the dark, starry membership site she was building. She called it "a really big incongruency."

She named the problem herself in our first session: "I think that it's too loose right now." A customer, she said, wouldn't be sure "what they're to expect from me and whether or not I can deliver on that."

She didn't need more materials. She needed a center.

Her first question to us was a good one. How do you share what you know with people who don't want to be told what to do? Her ideal customer, she said, "wants that power."

She was calling the project "Movement with a capital ME" from day one. And she knew what kind of company she wanted: "I'm not interested in making a quick buck off this. I want to be first to the market and I want to be unparalleled in my quality."

So the work didn't stop at a document. Over fifteen months of weekly calls it went through three stretches: the strategy, then the concept and the identity, then the part she cared about most, taking it to real people. Pitch, questions, deck and class. Melissa wanted a coach in her corner for all of it.

Most of the method lives in her brand plan pages. Three moments gave Melissa's brand its center.

One line. After our first workshop she could finally say what she offered: "empowered by choice." She told us the work had helped her put her concepts "into a very small message." That line is the brand's spine.

The beach. When we asked what the brand should feel like, the answer was hers: "The beach is the way to go." A month later she told us why: "It felt like coming home." So the concept became a bonfire at the beach. Nobody gets dragged to a bonfire. People walk up on their own, warm up, and join in when they're ready. For people who won't be told what to do, that is the whole promise.

The enemy. The villain was inactivity, with the person's own reluctance behind it. For the adult child in her tribe, the roadblock fit in one sentence: a parent who won't move because "she doesn't enjoy it." The promise answered it: "The #1 place to have adventures with everyday movement!" One session ended with: "I have so much drive. I'm like potential energy right now."

We showed her the logo in June 2021: The Bonfire, Connected Guidance. A bonfire, kept simple, named for what she does: guidance that connects people.

We gave it two rules from the start. "This logo should work at least for 10 years." And: "Simplicity is a logo's best friend."

Her answer came almost at once: "I'm at peace with the logo... I'm going to love that logo my whole life. I know I am."

A week later, after living with it: "I wouldn't change a thing." The reason was hers too: "What matters is the soul and the spirit and the connectedness. And that's all there in the logo."

A brand is a promise. Melissa wanted to test hers where it mattered.

She already served a senior living residence. In our calls, she turned that relationship into a plan: whom to meet, what to ask, what to offer first. We rehearsed her discovery questions and worked on her pitch deck. "Tell me about your day" was the question we kept.

Along the way we worked on a story-class script together. She brought the movements and the first draft. We shaped the structure and the ending.

Then she took her story-led class into the residence, herself.

The class feedback she shared with us recorded what worked. Residents who had been disengaged took part. Residents who walk felt it help, and enjoyed it. The residence gained variety in its activities.

The class and its results belong to Melissa. Our part was helping her idea become something she could walk into a room with.

Melissa started with a cause, a skill and a pile of materials. She ended with a center, and a class where residents who had been disengaged joined in. They walked up to the bonfire.