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What’s the BIG idea?

By Peter Mills 18 Feb 2009.
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Making a big difference to people’s lives... at a rate of nearly £2 million every 24 hours.

Next time you chance your luck in the National Lottery, think about how a chunk of your pound will transform the lives of people across the country. There are children in Blackpool who had nothing to do but are now developing circus skills at Barnado’s Play. The Longstone Riding School in Northern Ireland is teaching the disabled to ride. And there’s Gorbals Recycles in inner city Glasgow, they’re helping people get fit by repairing and reconditioning bikes, and saving the environment. These are a few among thousands of projects; the money makes a big difference. At a rate of nearly £2 million every 24 hours!

From big, to bigger, to BIG

We were asked to help name the fund responsible for awarding half the money raised for good causes by the National Lottery – 14p from every pound spent on lottery tickets. It’s big money, being used to make a big difference, what else were we going to call it?

So how big is the Big Lottery Fund? Over the course of the last financial year the fund awarded £1,192 million, in the form of thousands of grants ranging from as small as £300 all the way up to £50 million. Almost everyone in the UK is within a few miles of a project they support.

When BIG first came into existence there was some work to do devising a brand model that would crystallise the business thinking and rationale of the new organisation.

The people working there had a strong sense of fun and a shared purpose; they were committed to bringing real improvements to communities, and to the lives of people most in need. We used this positivity and energy in sessions where we brought staff together to influence the brand, and then encouraged them to share their experiences with colleagues back in their workplaces. One outcome was a brand promise and identity that really connects with the public.

BIG, bold and pink

We determined that BIG needed to be more ‘high street’ than ‘Whitehall’ because it’s about how our National Lottery pounds get distributed. It affects each of us. So the brand needs to be bold, confident and big! And I didn’t want to limit it to just one colour. In the end we chose three. Pink. Blue. Purple. These colours don’t ‘mean’ anything. No colour coding going on here. The colour everyone was most nervous about? Well I can tell you it certainly wasn’t the blue or purple. The colour used most prominently on the website, and most popular among grant recipients looking to acknowledge their grant? Why, pink, of course!

Now BIG enjoys a high recognition among the general public – its highest ever. And faith in BIG’s ability to deliver grants to communities in need hasn’t gone unnoticed by government departments. BIG has been asked to manage the distribution of non-National Lottery funds under a new brand, Big Fund – also devised by us. This fund is handling substantial projects such as building new centres for young people and distributing unused local authority land and property and making a big difference to even more people’s lives. What could be more rewarding?

If you'd like to know more, please contact petermills@theteam.co.uk