Existing Brand Loyalists
- Daily café customers
- Subscription members
- Local community regulars
Congregation
Coffee Roasters
Marketing Architecture
New Orleans, LA
Engagement began in 2022
Overview
In 2022, Congregation Coffee Roasters engaged Between Projects at a moment of transition.
The brand had strong fundamentals and a loyal following, but growth had slowed. Ecommerce sales had declined post-COVID and marketing efforts were inconsistent across channels.
What appeared to be a performance issue was structural.
We developed a unified brand and marketing system to support ecommerce, retail, and future expansion while maintaining the character that made the brand distinct.
The Problem
Congregation had a strong brand.
It wasn’t being expressed consistently.
- Messaging was fragmented across packaging, website, social, and email
- Digital marketing ran in bursts, without sustained structure
- Ecommerce performance had declined, with no system in place to recover or grow it
This created a familiar pattern: good product, strong identity, inconsistent execution.
The issue wasn’t demand. It was coherence.
The brand existed. It just didn’t function as a system.
The Approach
A unification problem.
We approached this as a unification problem.
The key insight: Congregation’s strength isn’t just product quality. It’s accessibility.
Specialty coffee often signals expertise, which creates distance. Congregation does the opposite: high-quality coffee presented without intimidation, grounded in a distinctly New Orleans sensibility — welcoming, informal, human.
That idea already existed in the brand. The work was to make it operational across every channel, every product, and every location.
The Solution
A complete brand
and marketing system.
We designed and implemented a complete brand and marketing system.
Between Projects led strategy, brand structure, and digital execution, establishing a unified framework built to scale.
The system included:
- Brand strategy + guidelines — defining tone, positioning, and visual consistency across all touchpoints
- Website redesign + ecommerce — improving clarity, usability, and conversion
- Content + campaign system — a structured asset library for deployment across channels
- Channel integration — aligning email, social, paid media, and packaging under a single narrative
- Analytics + reporting — centralized performance tracking to guide ongoing decisions
The objective wasn’t to add more marketing. It was to make what existed coherent, consistent, and scalable.
Marketing Architecture
1. Studies
We began with a full audit of the brand and its performance.
- Existing brand assets and packaging
- Website and ecommerce performance
- Social, email, and paid media activity
- Internal perspectives from staff and partners
The finding was consistent across all areas: strong individual elements, no unifying system.
Marketing Architecture
2. Blueprint
We formalized the brand around a single principle:
“For Everyone,
For Every Day”
Accessibility without compromise.
This translated into:
- Clear brand standards for voice, tone, and visual identity
- Defined audience segments across ecommerce and retail
- A structured approach to messaging across channels
- A campaign system built for both everyday engagement and key moments
The goal was alignment: every touchpoint reinforcing the same idea.
Audience Segmentation
Ecommerce Customers
- Out-of-state fans
- Gift buyers
- Wholesale inquiries
New Audience
- Specialty coffee explorers
- Café culture enthusiasts
- Retail and grocery shoppers
Marketing Architecture
3. Design / Build
We translated the strategy into a working system.
- Website redesign and ecommerce optimization
- Brand refinement and graphic system development
- Content creation across photography, social, and email
- Packaging and print aligned with the broader identity
- Paid media introduced as a consistent, structured channel
Each component was built to work within the same framework: consistent in tone, coordinated in timing, aligned to conversion.
Marketing Architecture
4. Optimization
With the system in place, performance became measurable and adjustable.
- Ecommerce, retail, and campaign performance tracked centrally
- Messaging and creative iterated based on response
- Channel mix adjusted to support both daily sales and longer-term growth
As new cafes opened, the system extended — allowing each location to benefit from and contribute to the same underlying structure.
Results
Performance followed —
and scaled with the business.
+80%
Increase in ecommerce sales
+125%
Increase in café revenue
+1400%
Increase in social engagement
What This Demonstrates
Brand consistency is not aesthetic.
It’s operational.
When a brand is fragmented, performance is inconsistent. When it’s unified, each channel reinforces the others and growth compounds.
Congregation didn’t need reinvention. It needed alignment: a system that could express what the brand already was, clearly and consistently, across every touchpoint.
Once that system was in place, performance followed — and scaled with the business.
Credits
- Lead Studio + Marketing Architecture + Creative Direction
- Between Projects
- Brand Design (Original Packaging)
- Constance
- Photography
- Giancarlo D’Agostaro
- Website Design + Development
- Between Projects
- Digital Marketing + Analytics
- Between Projects