As you may know already, we are changing our name and identity to Parkinson’s UK with a bold new look from 8 April.
And we’ve done it guided by the advice of people affected by Parkinson’s. Last year, we ran and re-ran a number of focus groups with about 100 people over four stages of the re-brand. Another 40 people, including forum members and health professionals were interviewed individually. Another 10 or so people with Parkinson's who didn't have any involvement in the charity were interviewed individually as well.
Hundreds of members, non-members, and staff also took part in an activity about what they thought of the charity now, and in the future.
Anyone who came forward or volunteered to help, was involved in some way.
Our new brand focuses on the voice of people living with Parkinson’s. That is why at the heart of it is photos of real people with Parkinson’s holding placards with personal messages.
We showcased our new look at events for our volunteers around the UK on 10 February. The response at the events and feedback since has been overwhelmingly positive.
There have been passionate responses on the forum, lots of feedback from the branch meetings and queries and feedback being phoned and emailed in to our marketing team.
In my recent letter to all our members I asked them to send in their placard message and we have received hundreds back with more coming in every day. These messages cover a variety of themes, and I’ll be putting up some of them next week so you can see some of the feedback.
Steve Ford is Chief Executive at the Parkinson's Disease Society
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2 comments:
I am Secretary to the Friends in Northamptonshire Support Group. I have been frustrated in recent weeks by the lack of response to my request to be allowed to have the new stencil font available for use on my home PC - this would enable a co-ordinated approach to the various documents I am producing locally from our Support Group.
Whilst I can appreciate the Comms Dept would wish to exercise control over the wording of materials etc going out from branches and support groups, I feel it's rather sad and, may I say, untrusting to disallow a few designated people from the Branches and Support Groups the use of the font on their pc's - if the logo/font has been specially designed for PARKINSONS uk, then surely licences to allow limited personal use should be a natural, next step in the evolution of the re-branding process?
Would appreciate your comments on my request.
Thanks and kind regards.
Sue Wilson
Hi Sue
Thanks so much for your comments. We decided not to make the Parkinson's UK stencil font available for every branch and support group because this would be very expensive.
However, we are looking at different options for how we can make a broader range of graphics, words and phrases available.
I agree that the brand will evolve over time and at this stage it has been our priority to make sure that everyone has the basic materials they need to get them started.
In the meantime if you do have specific requests we will be able to help you to produce what you need.
I hope this helps and I'm happy to chat this through further.
Thanks so much.
Nicola Brian, Director of Communications
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