ASCS: building a brand for adult social care services
The Adult Social Care Services (ASCS) department of Rochdale Metropolitan Borough Council was a service ‘spinning-out’ from the Council and is now an independent social enterprise, co-owned by staff and service users
THE TASK
We were asked to get involved in this project by the Cabinet Office, through its Mutuals Support Programme. The Adult Social Care Services team at Rochdale was ‘spinning out’ of the public sector into a new ‘community interest company’. At the stage we got involved it had no name, brand or plan prepared for how it would raise awareness of the new organisation to stakeholders. We were commissioned to support the development of a brand identity, together with a communications strategy.
OUR SOLUTION
Our team held a series of workshops in Rochdale, meeting service users, staff – and the animals at its therapeutic farm! We explored the organisation’s mission and vision for the future, and what that meant in terms of the values that the team wanted to live by, what they wanted to be known for and the outcomes they wanted to achieve (both in terms of business and social impact). We took the team through a rigorous naming process, alongside the development of creative designs. This paved the way to a bright and vibrant brand identity for the newly named PossAbilities, which combined two of the words that were most important to the organisation’s vision for the future – in which the focus is on the abilities of the people it works with, and making it possible for them to lead fulfilling and independent lives. We then created a set of brand guidelines, to ensure the brand and identity could be developed consistently across visual communications into the future. Alongside this we created an action plan that considered the communications tools that PossAbilities should look to implement in the short term to help launch the new organisation. In the longer term this would be used to reach target audiences effectively.Our design team developed a series of concepts, and after further consultation with the range of UK Youth stakeholders we landed on one clear winner to take forward for further development, review, and design exploration. The new brand reflects elements of the old logo in the mix of colours and alludes to the red, white and blue of the UK flag. It has a modern and youthful style with the addition of a more vibrant colour palette, yet importantly is flexible enough to also remain simple, clean and professional.
CLIENT:
Rochdale Metropolitan Borough Council
SERVICES:
Branding, Insight & Strategy.
