GERST FUNERAL CARE

Gerst logo in white

Location

Grand Rapids & Lowell

CATEGORY

Funeral Care

Rebrand

2022

Overview

Leverage welcomed O’Brien-Eggebeen-Gerst Funeral Home & Roth-Gerst Funeral Home as a client at the beginning of 2022. At first, they came to us for a new website, but after getting to know them and their current marketing, it made the most sense to introduce a rebranding effort. The funeral industry has rapidly changed over the past several years, and the Gerst team was eager to change with it.

As part of their rebrand, their name was changed to Gerst Funeral Care, because “care” is the true essence of who they are as people and as providers of funeral services. Luckily, authenticity and relationship-building are something Leverage already has at the center of our culture, so it was natural for all of us to embrace Gerst’s brand messaging throughout the rest of their materials.

Previous Gerst logo
Gerst Rebrand logo

SOCIAL MEDIA

Let’s admit it: you’re probably wondering why you (or anyone) would follow a funeral home on social media. The stigma around end-of-life decisions, planning, and death in general is quite a negative one in our culture. Leverage develops messaging to combat this, breaking down the emotional and societal barriers between the audience and funeral care. Gerst’s social presence emphasizes preplanning, family support, emotional health, grief, and other topics that offer unique insight into a somewhat taboo topic.

Design Work

Establishing a new brand comes with quite a checklist of design work: stationery, business cards, an obituary worksheet, and dozens of digital graphics for social media and beyond. Perhaps most impactful in terms of design, Gerst Funeral Care launched their new website in the summer of 2022. The new site was designed to be accessible, informational, and reflective of the type of care a family would receive when working with the Gerst team. By putting the families they serve at the forefront of their design and brand strategy, we were able to emphasize exactly what sets Gerst Funeral Care apart from the crowd.

Gerst Stationary
Gerst Responsive Web
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