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Digital Team Case Studies: Branding and design

To better educate the public on what our team does for the City, we've put together case studies of our work. These case studies go into detail on how we help departments get stuff done.

The case study below breaks down our design work with BOS:311. The project brought together the different ways you can report non-emergencies with the  City of Boston under one distinct brand.

The challenge

Each day, the City accepts hundreds of reports of broken streetlights, missed trash pickups, etc., by phone, mobile application, social media, or online. The phone number you needed to call was 617-635-4500. The mobile app was called CitizensConnect. The twitter handle you needed to reference was @NotifyBoston. And the website was http://www.cityofboston.gov/mayor/24/.

Few constituents knew they could report issues through any of these channels, and even fewer realized all these requests went to the same place. Our challenge was to clarify the options for residents to request City services and raise awareness that citizens can report these issues.

Image for a view of the city of boston's old citizens connect app

Image for a view of the city of boston's old citizens connect app

The goals

  1. Create a cohesive and recognizable way to talk about and promote contacting the City for help with non-emergency issues.
  2. Create a cohesive digital experience so that users clearly understand and have access to ways of reporting non-emergency issues.

The outcome

After three months of project work and campaign rollout, the City moved all requests for non-emergency services into a single brand: BOS:311. Our campaign was focused on pushing a new, cohesive BOS:311 brand and on educating the public that we want and need their help to know where to invest City resources.

311, also a nationally recognizable brand, allows anyone in Boston to submit a request for help and never have to know who/which department might be responsible to resolve the request. So, whether a user calls the City, tweets at us, makes a request through our mobile application, or visits our website, they’re always redirected to BOS:311.

Image for the new bos:311 brand

Image for a view of the bos:311 website

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