Reigniting a brand for an environmental emergency

Purpose / Culture / Brand Strategy / Digital Engagement

The Hebridean Whale and Dolphin Trust (HWDT) conducts vital work protecting the under threat cetaceans across the seas of North West Scotland. They have run powerful research, monitoring and education programmes for 25 years.

Just as the grave danger to our sea life has become apparent, their communications environment has radically changed. So Pentameter was commissioned to help breathe new life into HWDT's brand, culture and communications.

Purpose, play and participation

Forming first a close client-agency joint team, we took a positive, whole systems approach with maximum participation. Staff, marine-scientists, children, the local community, industry reps, and technical developers were all involved, in a fun, multi-sensory, co-creative process.

Our initial focus was to work with leaders to re-clarify the trust's purpose, then draw out an understanding of the team at their high-performing best, a picture of what gives 'life' to their group - their 'positive core'.

This also allowed for personal and emotional reconnection with the Trust's purpose and values, supporting greater ownership of the brand and greater confidence in delivering the brand promise during day-to-day interactions.

Building a brand ecosystem that works across multiple touch points required understanding the wide variety of people intended to interact with them. Personas, UX scenarios, customer experience mapping, and user-testing were required to strategise, design and configure internal {collaborative} and external {web, app and social} software platforms. All this while keeping in close collaboration with science database and app specialists, Natural Apptitude. 

Beauty, differentiation and alignment

Most important was to develop a brand that was truly owned by the people, represented their passion and vision, and would help reignite their organisation's culture toward even greater achievments. Going beyond a cosmetic brand refresh, we also needed to modernise and differentiate HWDT from the tourist industry and create a professional and elegant identity.

Outcome: deep renewal

Leaders have reported positive cultural change, with enhanced creativity, collaboration and productivity all recorded. There is growing social media engagement and a strengthening online community.

The new HWDT brand output, whether digital, print or social media, has been received to near universal acclaim from staff, trustees and public.