www.charitycomms.org.uk/events

1. Developing Your Brand and Image Conference
30 March 2011
Building your brand from the inside out
CharityComms is the professional membership body for charity communicators. We
believe charity communications are integral to each charity’s work for a better world.
W: www.charitycomms.org.uk T: 0207 426 8877 E: emma@charitycomms.org.uk

2. Building your brand
from the inside out
Helen de Soyza
Brand Manager

3. Purpose of today’s session
• Getting staff, including senior colleagues, to understand the importance of
brand
• How to engage staff to communicate your brand effectively
• Brand vs brand identity – getting over the „brand police‟ issue!
• Making brand fun
• Top tips

4. Action for Children – context
• One of the UK‟s largest charities
• 140 year history
• Over 6,000 staff and around 480 services right across the UK
• “Doers” not “talkers” – working directly with the most vulnerable children and
young people
• Most of our staff work on the front line, often with limited time to access PCs
• Local authority brand alliance
• Extremely complex stakeholder network - internal and external!
• Brand audit in 2006 started brand programme (NCH who?)
• Huge rebrand, launched in September 2008, required staff buy-in to be
successful

5. Key challenges
• Lack of understanding of brand among staff
• 139 years culture of reticence and “modesty”
• Policy of not advertising and not investing in
promotion
• Lack of organisational buy-in to fundraising
objectives
• Organisational culture that seriously impeded both
brand promotion and brand implementation
• Over 75% staff against rebranding before brand
launch

6. Revisited and defined our
stakeholder groups
• 10 key stakeholder groups:
- Commissioners
- Donors and supporters
- Staff and volunteers
- General public
- Policy makers
- Service users
- Methodists
- Media
- Trustees and EMT
- Old boys and girls

7. Major internal engagement project was
key to success
• Engaging internal comms strategy designed to
engender brand ownership
• 6,000 staff and 3,000 volunteers = excellent sales force
• Creative engagement tools included:
- Competition bringing our brand platform to life
- Poster competition to engage staff in new core values
- Intranet/staff magazine interviews with respected companies to highlight
importance of brand (eg. Innocent)
- Brandwagon roadshow 2 months before go live date
- Talking up – building a buzz via internal comms channels leading up to
our Switchover day
- Switchover guide
- Simultaneous switchover day briefings and celebrations at 500 locations
- Brand hotline

8. Teaser – our identity, what’s next?

9. Competition bringing our brand platform to life

10. Switchover guide

11. Making brand fun!
Spot the brand…

20. Because you’re worth it
Because you’re worth it

24. Group exercise – visualising brand
Group 1: If your brand was a dog, what breed would it be?
Is it different to what you would like it to be?
Group 2: If your brand was a theme park, what rides would
there be and what experience would the customers get?
Are those the right rides/experiences or would you prefer
them to be different? How could you influence the change?

26. Practical brand tools

27. Brand tools
• Brand toolkit: http://brand.actionforchildren.org.uk
- writing style
- imagery style
- logo request form
- signage
• Sonic toolkit
• Web2print
• Templates – Word and PowerPoint
• Bremy asset library
• Intranet…

35. Example with two images
Shaun Kelly
Head of Safeguarding
Dame Clare Tickell
Chief Executive

36. Finally, we surrounded them
with the brand...

38. Did we stop there?

39. So we need to try new methods of keeping
staff engaged with the brand…
• Brand clinic with staff from Children’s Services as well as Policy, Fundraising, Brand
and Comms.
• Brand guidelines on toolkit site, intranet and in booklet
• Using internal comms channels to regularly remind people of the importance of
brand
• HR
- Recruitment – advertising, job descriptions
- Inductions – training
• Setting up a formal brand champions scheme to get others to spread the good word (I
am but one person)
• Engaging with people about their work and helping them understand how brand
should lead their work – it’s a two way street, not a dictatorship
• Young people and the brand – involving young people in developing our brand
portfolio and ensuring we represent them accurately and in a way they approve of
(and they’re not backwards at sharing their opinions)
• Regular brand research – sharing updates on the impact brand is having
• Showing before and after pictures/leaflets/templates and proving how much more
effective our brand really is and that it works…

40. Before...

41. After...

42. THANK YOU!
brand@actionforchildren.org.uk
helen.desoyza@actionforchildren.org.uk