Ascend Federal Credit Union

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Overview

Ascend Federal Credit Union needed a digital experience that reflected the confidence, accessibility, and personal service members receive every day. The goal wasn't simply to redesign a website—it was to create a platform that made complex financial decisions feel approachable while helping members quickly find the products, tools, and guidance they need. Inspired by the brand's commitment to putting people first, we crafted an experience that feels as welcoming as walking into an Ascend branch while making digital banking faster and easier.

Modern banking, designed around people.

Approach

We reimagined the website from the ground up with a modern, user-first design system built around clarity, confidence, and ease of use. Every interaction was carefully considered to reduce friction—from streamlined navigation and intuitive content organization to mobile-first layouts that perform seamlessly across every device.

Financial products can often feel overwhelming, so we focused on creating clear pathways that guide users toward the right solutions without unnecessary complexity. Clean typography, approachable messaging, and thoughtful use of imagery reinforce Ascend's reputation as a trusted financial partner while giving the brand a polished, contemporary digital presence.

Calculator Tool

Financial tools were designed to be as intuitive as the rest of the experience. The interactive earnings calculator gives members a quick, visual way to estimate their potential annual returns based on the products and services they use, turning complex financial information into an engaging, easy-to-understand experience.

The website gives Ascend a modern digital experience that makes banking simpler and more engaging for members. With intuitive navigation, interactive financial tools, and a flexible platform built for growth, the site helps users confidently explore products while providing Ascend with a scalable foundation for the future.

Results

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Banking & Finance

We design and develop websites that combine strategy, compelling creative, intuitive user experiences, and scalable technology to help organizations grow with confidence.

Websites

The quality of video production says a lot about the quality of a brand. Whether it's a scripted commercial on TV or a customer testimonial on social media. Our in-house production team provides full-service capabilities. Lighting, shooting, casting, editing and finishing—we do it all from beginning to end. Growth is beautiful. And we make sure it looks that way.

Content Production

Martens BeLite 

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A visit to the Martens brewery museum in Belgium set Buffalo Rock President and CEO Matthew Dent on a 15-year path toward bringing the family-owned brewer’s nine-generation legacy to American drinkers.

Martens brought the brewing expertise. Buffalo Rock helped shape the product for the American market. Together, they created Martens BeLite, a crisp Belgian light beer with 90 calories and 2.2 grams of carbs. But in one of beer’s most crowded categories, pedigree and product claims alone wouldn’t make a new name stand out.

Lewis was brought in to position BeLite, build its launch platform and introduce the beer to America.

Turning rivals into drinking buddies. 

Brand Strategy & Creative

BeLite needed to quickly grow awareness and turn it into movement at the shelf. That meant finding an idea that could build name recognition while giving the new beer a point of view.

Lewis answered with a simple, ownable invitation: **It’s time to BeLite**. The Rivals campaign brought it to life through familiar adversaries—hunter and deer, knight and dragon, shark and surfer—sharing unexpectedly easygoing moments over a BeLite.

Simple, surreal and instantly understood, the campaign made the name memorable and turned “BeLite” into a way of looking at the world.

    

The Campaign

Rivals gave BeLite a flexible platform for advertising, social, retail, point-of-sale and the product launch. The creative campaign took the brand strategy behind _It’s time to BeLite_ and made it easy to spot wherever the brand showed up — from posters and social posts to earned media and the retail shelf.

New pairings could extend the campaign while preserving its recognizable structure: tension gives way to an unexpectedly lighter moment over a BeLite.

Early Recognition

Within three months of the campaign launch, BeLite began turning widespread attention into a measurable retail movement. Lewis’ earned media strategy generated coverage across 22 outlets in advertising, business and local media, including <a href="https://adage.com/creativity/work/aa-martins-belite-rivals/?utm_id=gfta-ur-260720&share-code=UIC7JESBVBACVCMKHNJQT5RWGE&user_id=user-id&customer_secondary_source=aac_articleGifting" target="_blank" rel="noopener">
  Advertising Age</a>, <a href="https://www.brewbound.com/pr/2026/04/30/9thgeneration-brewery-martens-and-buffalo-rock-company-partner-to-launch-belite-across-the-southern-us" target="_blank" rel="noopener">
  Brewbound</a>, <a href="https://roastbrief.us/a-268-year-old-belgian-brewery-launched-a-new-lite-beer-in-alabama/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">
  Roastbrief</a>, and <a href="https://bhamnow.com/2026/06/08/new-beer-debut-in-birmingham-thanks-to-local-partnership/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">
  Bham Now</a>, helping introduce BeLite’s new point of view to audiences well beyond its initial distribution footprint.

That visibility also showed up at the point of sale. BeLite unit sales in Alabama grew 17.4%, making it one of only five beer brands posting growth in a declining category.

In a matter of months, BeLite moved from a little-known beer on Alabama shelves to a growing brand with measurable sales momentum, national media attention and a campaign platform built to expand.
By making “light” mean more than calories and carbs, Lewis gave BeLite something harder to copy: a recognizable point of view and a lighter way of looking at the world. It’s time to BeLite.

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Turning rivals into drinking buddies.

Food & Beverage

Behind every return on investment is a lot of number crunching. The same is true for marketing. We're equal parts left brain and right. Using data, analytics, and deep insight to inform standout creative. It's how we create advertising that moves the needle and brings measurable ROI. And that's a beautiful thing.

Marketing

USA Health

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Situation

That’s how many pages the USA Health Website had when the client came to us. Their site had grown unwieldy, with segmented, hard-to-find, and sometimes outdated content. The user experience was wearying, not welcoming, because of its clumsy navigation and inconsistent design.

15,189.

And the site architecture meant that searching the voluminous number of pages was a frustrating and often fruitless task. The client realized this was no way to present itself to patients who were seeking the expertise of an academic medical center.

A task this herculean was not to be solved overnight. In fact, it took months of disciplined research to inventory the site, audit its capabilities, interview key client personnel as the basis for more compelling content, and develop clear goals.

Ultimately, we agreed that a new site was needed to present a clear positioning statement for the brand, enhance the user experience, and improve site search, physician search, and lead generation, all while creating a solid technical foundation that provided measurable results and a platform for future growth.

Solution

A revamped positioning statement now takes center stage on the client’s home page. Navigation is streamlined so that users can find exactly what they want in two to three clicks.

We utilized Swiftype search capabilities in order to provide users with a robust search experience where results are organized more intuitively.

We created a “provider online shopping experience” so that patients are now more readily finding a doctor that suits their needs.

We created user-friendly tools such as “find a clinical trial,” “refer a patient online,” and “request an appointment” as well as other features to increase lead generation.

Of course, all of this would be for naught if we hadn’t built it on an SEO-friendly platform with a HIPAA-compliant database, which we did using Craft as the CMS and NEO as a plug-in that allows administrators to easily add modules to the pages.

This project, nearly two years in the making, was always about results, and the early returns have not disappointed. Within the first month of this nearly 1,400-page site being live, the client saw:

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Healthcare

Protect The MoonPie 

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Mobile, Alabama is the birthplace of Mardi Gras — a point of pride often overshadowed by New Orleans. And at the heart of that raucous celebration is the MoonPie, hurled by the millions from parade floats to eager revelers lining the streets. More often than not, these delicate pastries end up crushed underfoot before the first bite. It’s a tiny tragedy every Mobilian knows by heart, but no one has ever thought to name.

Working with the City of Mobile, Lewis launched Protect The MoonPie, a homegrown movement that began with a parade snack and became a rallying cry the community chose to own.

Giving a city born to celebrate its next great tradition.

The Execution

Through a website and social media accounts, Protect The MoonPie enabled parade-goers to share their MoonPie moments—saved, crushed, or celebrated—using #ProtectTheMoonPie. Throughout downtown and on parade nights, the team went “boots on the ground”, passing out buttons, posters, and stickers along the route.

Protect The MoonPie moved beyond social and into the community itself. Parade-goers recognized it on the route and participated without being prompted. Local media covered the movement. Local businesses, civic leaders, and public institutions joined in, including the Chamber of Commerce, the Sheriff's office, and the Mayor. People didn’t just engage online. They wore it, shared it, posted it, and talked about it on the route. The city recognized itself in the idea.
Protect The MoonPie didn’t interrupt tradition. It honored it. And in doing so, it showed what happens when an agency creates something authentic and impossible to ignore—proving that participation, not media spend, is what builds cultural relevance.

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Travel & Tourism

Birmingham Zoo

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The Birmingham Zoo came to us with a simple ask–create a logo mark for their 70th anniversary. What they ended up getting was a year-long integrated campaign celebrating the biggest birthday in Birmingham and inviting everyone to get in touch with their inner party animal.

A bold look for the Birmingham Zoo.

70th Anniversary Logomark

To celebrate the zoo's 70th birthday and the amazing diversity of animal species found there, we created a flexible logo that featured four of their most popular animals in a clean, modern, and most importantly, fun design.

Integrated Campaign

To help promote the zoo's 70th birthday, we created an ad campaign that let the animals show everyone how they each like to party in their own particular way. The ads served as birthday invitations to zoo lovers across the region to join the fun in seasonal events throughout the year.

Campaign Event: Cougar Crossing

To promote the zoo's new Cougar Crossing exhibit, we teased a giant present arriving soon. We even had artwork in a local art gallery defaced by mysterious claws. Then we took our larger-than-life gift around town, where it growled at passersby before the big reveal.

Campaign Event: Carousel Reopening

When the newly refurbished carousel was about to reopen, we placed life-size carousel animals on already existing lamp poles to let everyone know another gift was headed back to the zoo.

Cahaba Brewing Partnership

The party continued all year, and when the annual "Zoo Brews" event arrived, we partnered with Cahaba Brewing Co. to create custom Blonde Ale and Hazy IPA designs. The perfect drinks to raise a toast to 70 years of wild.

The 70th Anniversary campaign helped drive record community engagement and position the Birmingham Zoo as one of the region’s premier attractions during its milestone anniversary year. Through an integrated mix of creative, media, social, and experiential marketing, the campaign contributed to more than 500,000 visitors while increasing regional visibility and tourism interest.

The momentum generated during the anniversary year helped the Birmingham Zoo earn recognition as the <a href="https://bhamnow.com/2026/05/08/birmingham-zoo-named-1-attraction-in-the-city-heres-whats-new/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">
  Greater Birmingham CVB's "Attraction of the Year"</a>, further reinforcing the Zoo’s impact on the city’s cultural and tourism landscape.

The campaign also earned American Advertising Federation "Best of Show" honors, demonstrating the power of creative work that drives both awareness and measurable impact.

Recognition & Impact

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Brand Identity is the systematic visual language—from logos to usage rules—that define your brand’s inward and outward appearance.

Brand Identity

Everyone knows that branding is much more than colors and a logo. It's an experience. We craft every touchpoint with thought and care. Creating a symphony of memorable moments from beginning to end. Crafting brands that feel once-in-a-lifetime every time.

Branding

Kentucky Bourbon Trail<sup>®</sup>

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The KBT™ was formed 25 years ago and has grown into one of America’s most beloved ways to taste and explore 46 distilleries, drawing more than 2.5 million visitors annually from all 50 states and 25 countries. After a national search of agencies, Lewis was selected to develop a new brand and website as part of their 25th Anniversary celebration in 2024.

A brand worth savoring.

The distilleries on the trail have created new and elevated experiences that are bringing in a more affluent guest. To better reflect today’s experience there was a need for a new brand identity that conveyed a joyful sense of discovery, elevated adventure, and attainable luxury.

The Digital Experience

In addition to the new identity, creating a new digital experience was critical. A reimagined Kentucky Bourbon Trail<sup>®</sup> that encourages greater exploration, slowing down and savoring the moment in an online experience that’s easier to understand, navigate, plan and enjoy. The new site now allows for better tracking, optimization and understanding of visitors which will in turn help the KBT and distilleries better plan for the future.

The new KBT brand and website launched to raise glasses from across Kentucky and the globe. Leveraging earned media coverage across national and international markets, we reintroduced bourbon’s birthplace to millions of eyeballs and set the stage to welcome even more discerning palates.

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A full-service marketing, creative branding and digital communications agency specializing in strategic content creation.

A Full Service Branding and Digital Agency | Lewis

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Unless you like wasting money, return on ad spend is a necessity. We take a deep and constant look at every touchpoint in your customer's journey. Optimizing areas that are potential hiccups. Why are so many customers abandoning carts? Is it taking too many clicks to get to what they want? Could they be upsold before checkout? In the end, if your marketing dollars aren't converting into sales, something is wrong. And that's exactly what we're here to fix. 

ROAS

Great packaging does more than protect a product—it creates connection, builds recognition, and influences purchasing decisions.

Packaging Design

From corporate headquarters and retail destinations to museums and public spaces, we create environments that bring brand stories to life and leave lasting impressions.