How We Built the Brand Strategy Behind NAMI’s StigmaFree Workplace Initiative

How We Built the Brand Strategy Behind NAMI’s StigmaFree Workplace Initiative

Our mission with the National Alliance on Mental Illness was to help shape the strategic foundation for NAMI StigmaFree, an initiative designed to help organizations advance mental well-being in the workplace. EVG worked with the NAMI team to clarify the initiative’s identity, define who it needed to reach, and develop the brand and execution strategy required to engage more workplaces around its mission.

The Obstacle

NAMI had significant credibility, resources, and experience in mental health advocacy, but StigmaFree was developing as a distinct initiative and needed a clearer strategic identity for the workplace market. Without a dedicated in-house brand strategy function for the initiative, the team needed to answer foundational questions around who StigmaFree was for, how it should communicate its value, what differentiated it from other workplace mental health organizations, and how its mission should translate into an experience that organizations could understand and act on. The work also identified potential challenges around brand clarity, a developing internal team, the breadth of available resources, and dependence on participating organizations to meaningfully implement the program.

Our Approach

EVG began by working backwards from StigmaFree’s intended impact: helping organizations create environments where mental well-being is better understood, supported, and integrated into workplace culture. We helped define the initiative’s mission, vision, and six core values, creating a strategic foundation for how StigmaFree should communicate and make decisions. From there, we conducted market and audience analysis to identify the organizational decision-makers most likely to champion the program, including leaders across partnerships, communications, operations, external relations, DEI, and employee resource groups. We then assessed the competitive landscape across 17 relevant organizations and programs, examining StigmaFree’s strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats while identifying broader trends shaping workplace mental health. This work helped clarify where NAMI’s established reputation, national reach, lived experience, and existing resources could create differentiation. The strategy was then translated into a clearer value proposition, target-audience framework, empathy map, brand preferences, organizational culture, and brand promise. The objective was not simply to create messaging, but to give the StigmaFree team a strategic framework it could use to guide branding, workplace outreach, onboarding, program development, and future execution.

The Result

NAMI received a comprehensive brand strategy framework for the StigmaFree initiative, giving the team a clearer foundation for how the program should position itself, communicate with workplace decision-makers, and pursue its broader mission. The final work established strategic direction across the initiative’s mission, vision, values, audience, competitive positioning, value proposition, culture, and brand promise. It also identified opportunities for future development, including digital expansion, workplace programming, certification concepts, and greater use of NAMI’s national affiliate network. The result was a more structured foundation from which NAMI could develop the StigmaFree brand and approach organizations with a clearer understanding of who the initiative serves, why it matters, and how it should create value for participating workplaces.

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