Attempting to align its day-to-day operations, its economic development efforts and its new SCK LAUNCH education and workforce development initiative, the Bowling Green Area Chamber of Commerce on Wednesday unveiled a new logo and branding strategy.

Borrowing a term from The Leader in Me program the chamber helped bring to local schools, chamber President and CEO Ron Bunch said the new logo and branding will create synergy among the various aspects of the organization.

“The chamber is a more complex organization than most people realize,” Bunch said after the logo was revealed at the chamber headquarters on College Street. “This (rebranding) will enhance our overall professionalism and create synergy among our brands. It brings everything together.”

The new logo, created by Bowling Green’s Yonts & Co. marketing firm, attempts to create that togetherness with an icon that uses the “BG” acronym in a way that mimics the arrows of the South Central Kentucky logo used in the chamber’s regional economic development efforts.

The logo also incorporates the blue and gray coloring used in the economic development and SCK LAUNCH logos.

A news release about the logo and rebranding said the new visual identity presents the chamber as modern and evolving.

Joy Hunt, chairperson of the chamber’s board of directors, said it was time to retire a chamber logo that had been in use for nearly 20 years.

“We felt the old logo was a little outdated, and we wanted to meld all the logos together with a similar style and font,” she said. “This positions us for the future.”

Both Hunt and Yonts & Co. founder Jessica Yonts said the logo ties in well with economic development efforts that stretch beyond Bowling Green’s borders.

“We really wanted to tie it (the logo) in with a more cohesive approach to economic development,” Yonts said. “Our team worked through a bunch of different mock-ups and presented to a couple of different committees. We had a couple of revisions, and I think we have something that everyone can be proud of.”

Bunch said the chamber staff and its ambassadors have already started using the new logo on name tags and business cards. It is also being used on the chamber’s website, which Bunch said will be updated to reflect the new branding and the synergy among the different chamber programs.

“I feel very good about what we ended up with,” said Bunch, who is in his eighth year as the chamber’s CEO.

He is aiming to launch a redesigned website in 2019, saying: “The new website will bring the various chamber initiatives together all in one spot. We haven’t bid that out yet. We’ll contract that out to someone with expertise in building websites.”