For this project, we were tasked with completely revamping American Research Bureau’s brand with a fresh visual identity, a modern website, video content creation, environmental branding, promotional product design, digital marketing, and content strategizing/copywriting.
47.2k
Ad Impressions
3,500+
Video Views
Challenge
It might surprise you that there is such a thing as an heir (not error) search industry. American Research Bureau, based in Salt Lake City, does precisely this, connecting unknowing heirs to their rightful inheritances.
The short explanation: Someone dies without a will and it triggers the court system and the administrator of the estate to settle it. If no heir can be found to inherit the estate, the money goes to the government. ARB has been in business since 1935, making sure displaced family members—separated due to immigration, adopted children, relatives in broken families, etc.— inherit estates instead of the money, by default, going to the government.
In 2017, ARB hired a new CEO who recognized that the website and brand were outdated. He reached out to TWIO to solve the issue. With our initial brand project, the goal was to make sure ARB maintained its status as one of the best heir search companies in the world (yes, there are many heir search companies). ARB hired TWIO for a verbal rebrand, visual identity development, and website overhaul.

“I thought the brand research that was done was thorough, deep, and robust. I’ve worked with some firms that just check the box. The elevation of the research and the element of ‘connecting families’ came out of that … and we’ve been using that to connect more to our heirs.”
Todd Hamblin
CEO, American Research Bureau
Process
TWIO was tasked with making ARB approachable and dispelling the myth that the heir search business is a scam. Let’s be honest, if someone calls you and says you are related to someone you didn’t know who died and they left you lots of money, wouldn’t your alarm bells go off? Major challenge. We tackled it through TWIO’s research and brand process. Next, we leveraged honest and authentic messaging to inform the design process, and it all came together in the website evolution, or, what we like to call, “the storytelling engine”.
Outcomes
TWIO took a brand that looked like it came out of the 1930s and transformed it into a timely, on-point representation of ARB. The design is clean and modern, and the new language is succinct and easy-to-understand. And the website … well, the same.