The ultimate measure of success
This week has finally seen the start of our rebrand project. The leadership team (ok, mainly me) has been discussing the need for a process like this for a while.
I suppose it is not your typical rebrand. Yes, we are refreshing our visual identity and making our brand architecture more cohesive. However, underneath all that, this process is about re-aligning and reconnecting with our vision, proposition and future direction.
Firstport has changed significantly in the last few years: We went from being one charity to a group structure, having set up Firstimpact (our sister company supporting purpose-led entrepreneurs) and a social investment arm to manage the Catalyst Fund.
While the changes have been gradual, they mean that we are now a social investor and a grant funder and engaging with a new audience in the broader ‘business-for-good’ ecosystem.
We eventually concluded that our brand, proposition and messaging have not kept up with the pace of the changes above. Taking the time to revisit who we are, who we are here to serve and why we do what we do felt increasingly necessary.
As you do with projects like these, we put together a brief, outlined the outcomes and deliverables we wanted, invited some agencies to submit proposals and eventually awarded the project to Korero Studio.
There are lots of reasons why we went with Korero. However, ultimately, we felt that they really ‘got’ how important the cultural aspect of this project is. And this is what has been playing on my mind all week.
Andy, Phil (from Korero) and I have talked a lot about the fact that a rebrand should happen with you, not to you. We can end up with the most impressive new visual identity, a cohesive look and fancy brand guidelines. However, suppose the result is a vision, proposition and branding that the team doesn’t feel belongs to them. In that case, we won’t have achieved what we wanted.
Not everyone in the team is as excited as me about this process, some may not even see the point of it (yet), so it is all about bringing people along with us.
I went back and had a look at the ‘What success look like’ section of the rebrand brief, and our first measure of success is:
- The Firstport Group has a clear vision, aligned with our values . The vision is accepted and embraced by the team and gets the backing of the board(s).
While this is really positive, it is point one of seven. I am starting to wonder if ultimately, this is THE measure of success I need to keep coming back to as we go through this process.
