Published before February 2009
Organisational change is as important as your visual identity, Amanda Bringans tells Gideon Burrows.
“If you’re going to be the same organisation, but with a nice new pink ribbon or blue bow, just don’t do it.”
For Amanda Bringans, there’s no point in any organisation launching a new identity or logo, if change is only skin deep. And she should know a thing or two about rebranding. As long ago as 2003, Macmillan Cancer Relief – now Macmillan Cancer Support – began to take a long hard look at how the outside world perceived the charity. Bringans was there at the start. As project lead for the most comprehensive rebrand in the organisation’s history, she’s still putting the final changes in place some four years later.
Cultural change“The first thing we did was decide this was not just about rebranding a logo, but a repositioning of our strategy and where we were as an organisation,” recalls Bringans.
When Macmillan carried out public perception research back in 2003, the results were worrying. People did not know what the organisation did, apart from a vague idea about nurses. People didn’t know what the organisation was. And most startling, people with cancer didn’t know what services Macmillan offered, or how it could help them.
“We’re in the service delivery business and we aim to help people affected by cancer,” says Bringans. “If they don’t know who we are, what we do, and how we can help them, then we’re failing our beneficiaries.”
The rebrand team knew that for the public’s perception and trust of Macmillan to be turned round a whole cultural change within the organisation would also be required. Indeed, the whole rebrand process began not with logos and colours, but with developing the ideas and values of the whole organisation.
“The sheer scale was the biggest challenge,” says Bringans. “We’re a big organisation of 700 employees, so the scale of managing that kind of project was huge.”
Consultation, consultationWolff Olins – the designers of the loved and loathed London 2012 logo – offered their services pro bono to the organisation. From the start, the agency worked not just on visuals, but on cultural and strategic change.
Through a long process of consultation among staff, service users and volunteers, the agency gathered the key values and themes that make Macmillan what it is, distilling it finally into the idea of ‘life force’. In all of its work, Macmillan is dedicated to life, and can be a force for change.
“They condensed everything, and then they exploded it again to come up with phrases and imagery that encompassed that idea,” says Bringans. “It took six months going forwards and backwards with the management board to finally hone it down.
Six months onFinally, out went the old Macmillan Cancer Relief logo, along with its fancy writing and pretty bow, and in came the more striking ‘We are Macmillan Cancer Support’ typography. The idea being that support and identity being key to Macmillan’s new culture, as well as its logo.
The organisation held an internal and external launch of the rebrand, for which striking the balance was a huge challenge. On advice from Wolff Olins, the senior management team kept the final results of the rebrand secret, even from Macmillan staff, to prevent media leaks.
“We didn’t want our new logo, and how much it cost, to be the story,” says Bringans. The organisation released a major piece of research alongside the brand and was delighted that the research became the headline story.
Was the rebrand process a painful one?“It was painful when you do things wrong; its painful when you forget to consult a particular group of volunteers in the right way and they get cross; its painful when some staff don’t feel included.
“But for those of us who understood the organisation was old fashioned and that people didn’t understand us, we were absolutely convinced it was something we had to do,” concludes Bringans.
“So, it was exhilarating, rather than painful.”