Bowel Cancer UK

Action inspiring hope

Challenge

Following Bowel Cancer UK and Beating Bowel Cancer merging in January 2018, The Team were tasked to create a brand to stand out in a very crowded and competitive marketplace.

Solution

During a two-week design sprint, in collaboration with Bowel Cancer UK, we defined a new brand strategy, vision, mission, values, personality and proposition which were brought to life by a new tone of voice and visual identity.

Whilst other brands talked of long-term cure and survival with a lot of fighting talk, few spoke with honest human authenticity. So, the vision became “Nobody will die of bowel cancer” with a proposition of “Help us stop people dying of bowel cancer”.

We defined the brand personality “Heroes of Hope”. Heroes reflect the values of Action and Community, and Hope the values of Hope and Authenticity. The latter two helping us to differentiate the brand by retaining an evocative human touch.

Research showed that Bowel Cancer UK had equity as a name, but we wanted to bring the “UK” to life by showing all the people that make up the bowel cancer community. The brand strapline “Beating bowel cancer together” acknowledges the combining of forces and the contribution made by supporters of the former charity.

The new logo incorporates the Star of Hope, the international symbol for bowel cancer. It represents hope for the future and for lives lost to bowel cancer. It is central to the charity’s identity as it strongly resonates with supporters and patients, who are at the heart of what the charity does.

The ribbon from the Star of Hope becomes the main graphic device and runs through all communications with dynamism, reflecting the charity’s energy and determination to inspire positive change.

We moved away from the previous brands colours for greater standout, with a new palette of dark teal, bright teal and yellow.

We are delighted to unveil our new brand. We hope this will enable us to build an active community of patients and their families, clinicians, politicians, researchers and others who will join us to ensure that we meet our mission to save lives and improve the quality of life of everyone affected by the disease. Bowel cancer remains the UK’s second biggest cancer killer, claiming over 16,000 lives a year – we are determined to change that.

Deborah Alsina MBE, Chief Executive of Bowel Cancer UK