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Thursday Apr 13, 2006
Cutting the mustard
As predicted, the branding of the post-Russell Commission charity has provoked plenty of discussion, helped by the decision to carry out consultation via an online survey .
I contacted Jonathan Rigby from branding agency LOVE Creative to ask him more about the process.
The consultation exercise is open until next Tuesday 18 April, so please get as many people as you can to give us their thoughts – their views really count.
First of all we spent time in a series of broad discussions with a wide number of youth groups –drawn from our contacts at organisations including Connexions, Millennium Volunteers, Positive Steps, Livity etc
A longlist of names were generated through a series of working sessions with V20 [the Russell Commission's advisory group of young people]. LOVE then worked with V20 members to develop the basic look and identity for each.
We then presented the ideas back to The Russell Commission and recommended the shortlist of 5.
We then commissioned three separate pieces of consultation/research :–
1) A quantitative research study amongst 16-25 year olds (1,000 + split 75% non-volunteers, 25% volunteers).
2) An in-depth qualitative research study comprising 10 groups of 16-25 year olds – again a mix of volunteers and non-volunteers.
3) A broader piece of public consultation open to all ages – volunteers, volunteer organisations, volunteering opportunity givers, employers, education authorities etc.
The decision will be made having weighed up all of the feedback we've been given – but as you can see, we are putting a lot of emphasis on developing and choosing the name in collaboration with as many young people as possible. (This is what The Russell Commission rightly suggested, and this is exactly what we've done)
It's worth bearing in mind that brand creation is a somewhat curious business. Who would have thought that Orange would be a good name for a mobile phone company? And creating logos be even harder.
It might have been sensible to have presented at least one option in the survey that was quite traditional, however, and used the word "volunteering". Perhaps that had already been rejected by V20, and it might have got rejected after the survey, but at least people (jnclduing young people) would have had the chance to vote on it.
Posted by Tom Green ( 9:05 AM ) Link to this post Comments[0]