An Ohio agency has created the distinctive yellow and black logo that is now the trademarked insignia of the AGRSS Council. OIA Marketing Communications, the Dayton, Ohio company donated their employee time and expertise to the endeavor.

"At one of the AGRSS meetings they were talking about somebody to design the logo and do some of the marketing work and somebody suggested they use us. That's how they contacted us and we said that we'd do it," said Steve Hamilton, account executive at OIA.

That somebody was Joel Timmons of Dow Automotive/Essex ARG, who is one of OIA's clients. When Timmons was asked about a good marketing company, Timmons volunteered to talk to OIA.

"It took about 2 months and it was a back and forth process where we came up with some ideas and presented them to the Council," Hamilton continued. "They talked about it and came back with suggestions, so we wanted to make sure there was complete buy-in with everybody."

"We really appreciate all the time OIA has donated organizing and designing the logo for us," said Deb Levy, chair of the AGRSS Marketing Committee.

OIA is a full service firm that focuses on business-to-business marketing communications. Its clients value its ability to quickly understand the competitive advantages of their products or services and to communicate them effectively to potential customers.

"We wanted to do it because we feel that AGRSS is a worthwhile corporation and we wanted to help the overall industry," Hamilton added. "I thought it was very easy to work with them, they had very good suggestions and it seemed to produce a very good logo. Our overall goal was to make a simple, professional, memorable look and I think we did it. This logo is going to represent a non-profit organization that is representing safety. So we had to make sure that it had a look of stability and reliability. That's one of the reasons we finally went with yellow because it's a color of caution. We just wanted a logo that says "I can count on these people.""