Society of Defense Financial Management

Reimagining a critical component of the Business of Defense.

Objective:

Needing to reconcile 75 years of tradition with a broad membership whose diverse roles and responsibilities had outgrown its current name and brand, the American Society of Military Comptrollers (ASMC) came to Mekanic looking for a change. For starters, it wanted a new name, but more crucially, it wanted an expanded vision and implementation of its brand, the audiences it served, and what was in store for the future.

Strategy:

Aware that the profession of defense financial management had expanded to include audiences that were military, civilian, corporate, private, and global – the Mekanic team worked first to build and define a strategy that could keep a renamed and rebranded ASMC relevant to its broad membership and industry as a whole.

Tactics:

Mekanic’s work on the ASMC rebrand kicked off with a lengthy research and discovery period – including multiple surveys and rounds of stakeholder interviews to understand the audience and the profession as a whole. Our Strategists traveled to St. Louis, Missouri, to attend ASMC’s 2023 Annual Event, PDI, where we conducted workshops to test messaging and naming with some of ASMC’s loyal, longstanding, and newest members. Our writers created a new Core Brand Messaging that was dynamic and inclusive of ASMC’s new audiences, and the design team crafted a new brand design that paid homage to ASMC’s legacy while modernizing and emboldening the visual storytelling.  Finally, we defined a new name that helped to bring all these reimagined and dynamic elements together – The Society of Defense Financial Management (SDFM).

Outcome:

The new SDFM brand was launched at the 2024 PDI Conference in Phoenix, Arizona, and was enthusiastically received by SDFM’s membership. The brand was rolled out across all existing platforms and channels, solidifying SDFM once again as the premier association of the profession and drawing renewed attention and excitement from the greater defense financial management community.