Welcome to the Valley
Using brand to integrate an acquisition and building a program that outlasted it.
Creative Manager, with the marketing team | 2017–2018
Brand research, identity systems, environmental design, internal communications
The Approach
We treated this as a brand problem with a business outcome: productivity, collaboration, and morale across two newly joined offices.
Researched before designing: I ran an intensive color theory study alongside employee focus groups to understand how the existing system actually landed
Reframed the values from nouns to verbs: creativity, clarity, empowerment, leadership, resolve became OWN · DO · INTERACT · LIVE · GROW. Each carried a supporting statement that made it actionable rather than aspirational. OWN: Be the solution. Always customer first.
Softened the palette, into a lighter, pastel-leaning range in the same tonal family keeping red, orange, pink and purple, and shifting the harsh dark green to teal
Built it into both buildings, not just a deck. Posters throughout the offices, banners in the warehouse, graphics in unexpected places, and a mural in the employee lounge with the values intertwined
Launched it interactively: five stations, one per value, that employees rotated through and engaged with directly
Turned recognition into a system: Printed cards let employees nominate a peer for the value they saw them live, paired with a pin
The Challenge
In 2017 Valley Forge acquired Contract Decor International, a commercial window treatment and decorative textile company in Brockton, Massachusetts and inherited its employees along with it. Two locations, two cultures, one company. Brockton was apprehensive about the change.
The existing core values - creativity, clarity, empowerment, leadership, resolve, fun, passion - were abstract nouns rendered in a hard palette of dark red, green, purple and orange. Nobody had ever explained what they meant or why.
They were decoration, not culture.
What We Made
Core values framework and supporting statements
Refreshed color system
Environmental graphics across two locations
Employee lounge mural · Interactive five-station launch
Peer recognition card and pin program
Branded merchandise such as notebooks, mugs, glassware, apparel
"Welcome to the Valley" internal identity
The Result
The recognition program is still running company-wide today, seven years after launch. It became genuinely competitive: employees compare who's collected the most pins.
"Welcome to the Valley" grew out of this work into the company's internal slogan, now carried across merchandise, marketing materials, and an active Instagram hashtag.
In 2026, Valley Forge was named a Top Workplace by the South Florida Sun Sentinel and employees were encouraged to run the same core values exercise as part of it.