The Brief
The public and the food industry come across nutritional guidance from multiple sources and not all of this is based in scientific evidence. This results in confusing messages and an increasing lack of trust around who is right. An approachable and credible voice on nutrition in the UK needs to be heard.
Having spent many years working with the science community, educators and food organisations behind the scenes, the British Nutrition Foundation recognised that it was time to become more prominent and to position themselves as the leading public-facing nutrition charity in the UK.
To do this, they identified the need for a rebrand to give a more modern and appealing look and feel to the organisation. Barley was brought on board to create new branding that would be effective across a wider range of stakeholders – adding consumer appeal without jeopardising any of the important relationships with existing audiences.
Insights and Approach
Our development of the brand strategy began with a deep immersion phase – researching the British Nutrition Foundation’s landscape and competitors, holding interviews with key stakeholders across the organisation and hosting an interactive, information-gathering workshop. This gave us valuable insights from which to develop a clear set of initial recommendations to follow.
Once approved, we used the organisation’s existing vision, mission and values, and built from them to articulate their brand foundations, key brand messages, brand story and tone of voice. In conjunction, we used the strategic work to help brief the Barley design team to develop three visual concepts rooted in meaning and purpose. We needed to ensure that these concepts could be flexible and applied to materials with entirely different audiences – sometimes consumer-facing, sometimes industry and academia.
To ensure that certain elements of the brand work would resonate with the target audiences, we ran qualitative and quantitative testing, using the insights gathered to help clarify the decision-making process.
With a large amount of stationery and other assets to be created, we oversaw the design and production of all supporting brand materials, as well as a social media templates, before developing a comprehensive set of brand and messaging guidelines that can now be used internally and with third party contractors.
The Outcome
The rebrand work that we carried out with the British Nutrition Foundation has created an entirely different identity for the organisation, one that is now reflective of their mission and values and will have longevity.
Visually, the logo and supporting brand elements speak to more audiences and are immediately more palatable to the public – a shift from their previous focus on academia.
In the messaging, their brand proposition is a clear triangulation of their core pillars, while also showcasing their ultimate vision: Connecting people, food and science, for better nutrition and healthier lives.
This brand strategy has provided a springboard for the next phase of British Nutrition Foundation’s important work. We’ve been delighted to continue to provide strategic support on their communications planning and social media strategy to give evidence-based nutrition education a stronger voice.
