American Arbitration Association
American Arbitration Association, a nonprofit and global authority within its field with a 100-year track record of transformative advancements in the world of dispute settlement.
“Every organization has a timeline, but History Factory helped us find our heartbeat. They took generations of AAA’s service and turned raw material into a living, breathing narrative that reminded all of us why the work our organization does matters so deeply.”
— Christine Newhall, Senior Vice President, AAA
The Power of Stories that Connect
It’s the perennial question for organizations hitting a milestone: How do you balance celebrating a 100-year legacy with the future-focused innovation required for today’s—and tomorrow’s—success?
A story we heard early on in our work on the American Arbitration Association’s (AAA’s) centennial milestone held an important clue. One of the first things President and CEO Bridget McCormack did upon joining the organization was train a custom AI chatbot on the writings of AAA co-founder Frances Kellor.
The chatbot wasn’t just a tech experiment. It also proved that the AAA’s history isn’t an anchor holding it back—it is the ultimate source of authority and credibility fueling its future innovation. As we planned the campaign, we recognized this story’s power to engage audiences with the anniversary’s purpose. We filmed Bridget McCormack sharing the chatbot story direct to camera and inviting audiences to share in the same journey of discovery—then kicked off the anniversary celebration with this video.
It was part of a multichannel strategy we developed around content that spanned the entire milestone year, including in-person events and sales opportunities, designed to inspire external audiences to engage with the AAA and energize internal audiences.
Sticky Stories
Sticky stories are 22 times more memorable than simply facts and figures—so it’s no coincidence that McCormack and others have found inspiration in Kellor’s story. Kellor was a social reformer and advisor to Theodore Roosevelt’s 1912 presidential campaign, shaping the Progressive Party’s platform on the rights of women, immigrants and the incarcerated before women had even secured the right to vote. She co-founded the AAA in 1926 and later wrote the definitive text on arbitration—all in service of creating a more just world for everyone.
“By giving everybody the ability to have a voice in how they resolve their disputes and do it on their own terms and preserve relationships and come out of it with creative solutions, [Kellor] believed that was a recipe for a better world,” McCormack said. “We still think that, and we just have more tools to be able to deliver on it.”
Multichannel Storytelling
Our team discovered numerous stories that stick with audiences, like the chatbot one, that we amplified across channels during the anniversary.
Video suite
“Building the Future”: This eight-minute mini-documentary screened at the AAA’s annual May gala-style event weaves together 100 years of stories and a vision for the future to create a thesis statement for the entire gathering.
The Frances Kellor hero video demonstrates how her vision of a better world with access to justice for all continues to resonate in everything the AAA does and will do.
A series of “greatest hits” thematic vignettes shines a spotlight on the people who have lived through moments of particular consequence for the AAA. They recount their experiences with personality, emotion, humor and bucketloads of passion, making for highly engaging, very watchable social content.
Storytelling website
Like a lot of organizations, the AAA needs its main site to be uncluttered to serve its clientele. In order to keep it that way while sharing the AAA’s story, we created a storytelling site, promoted across its owned communications channels, that illustrates the impact of its work over the decades (did you know that arbitration actually saved the Golden Age of Hollywood?). Each piece of content leads back to relevant parts of the main site for lead generation opportunities.
Anniversary brand identity and tool kit of visual assets
We conceived the AAA’s centennial identity, the most accessible and omnipresent element of most milestones, as a stepping stone into its future. We retained elements of the existing logo but reprioritized the triangular shapes to emphasize stability, signifying its place as the bedrock of industry. A tool kit of visual assets for seamless and consistent application (including Zoom backgrounds, slide templates and email signatures) maximized the new logo’s impact.
Content bank of pre-approved messaging
Messaging elements including fast facts, talking points and event-style remarks equipped communicators and sales teams for a variety of scenarios and provided enough content to last the entire centennial year.
Traveling archival display
To authenticate the AAA’s century of preeminence in American legal history, we created a modular display to showcase rarely seen archival materials such as letters from J. Edgar Hoover, Dwight D. Eisenhower and Bill Clinton; an original copy of Kellor’s book with a personal inscription; and even a copy of the 1940 Motion Picture Decree accompanied by a letter from Boris Karloff.
Centennial materials or content made an appearance at more than 50 events, and the 100th anniversary landing page is the most-visited content page outside of the site’s functional pages, with centennial content overall hitting more than 35,000 page views and getting consistent engagement throughout the year.
“I did not know that about the AAA.”
“This is a cool place to work.”
“I cannot wait for the next video to come out.”
The AAA’s anniversary empowered audiences to discover or rediscover the passion that brought such a vital organization into existence 100 years ago. Its sticky stories are sticking with them and inspiring its next century.