Cancer Research UK combines science and humanity in the battle against disease, but its old brand wasn’t getting to the heart of the issues. Brittany Golob spoke to the charity about its rebrand.

It’s a land where white coats are the symbol of heroes and ordinary people band together to beat a dark and mysterious force. A land where science beats nature. No, it’s not the future nor is it a chapter in the life of Gotham City or Metropolis. It’s Cancer Research UK and its newly rebranded identity. Every superhero needs a secret identity. For CRUK that means a new logo and one big C.

CRUK has become of the nation’s leading fundraisers and most prominent cancer charities due to its scientific research and its presence on the high street. But its 10 year old logo was criticised for being everything from confusing to boring. It was time for a change both to the brand structure and to the integration of fundraising efforts to CRUK’s public persona.

When ordinary people band together to beat a dark and mysterious force. A land where science beats nature. No, it’s not the future nor is it a chapter in the life of Gotham City or Metropolis. It’s Cancer Research UK and its newly rebranded identity. Every superhero needs a secret identity. For CRUK that means a new logo and one big C.

CRUK has become of the nation’s leading fundraisers and most prominent cancer charities due to its scientific research and its presence on the high street. But its 10 year old logo was criticised for being everything from confusing to boring. It was time for a change both to the brand structure and to the integration of fundraising efforts to CRUK’s public persona.

From its origins in the merger of the Cancer Research Campaign and the Imperial Cancer Research Fund in 2002, Cancer Research UK has emerged as one of the nation’s leading charities. But developing its brand was essential to continued expansion in a difficult economic climate. A detailed breakdown of the cost of its new brand, totalling £687,000, is flagged up on the new website, and the charity believes that the awareness and increased fundraising it will bring about will substantially outweigh the initial costs. CRUK projects the cost of the rebrand to amount to .03% of its income over the next five years.

Brands and logos are designed to communicate a large, complex idea to consumers and stakeholders in a simple, elegant yet effective manner. CRUK’s brand needed just this kind of revamp after 10 years. It teamed up with design agency Interbrand to discuss ideas and intended outcomes.

Interbrand has a strong background in designing branding for non-profits and charities. In 2001, it redesigned the American Cancer Society’s identity across digital, physical and national outlets in order to improve brand consistency. It is also responsible for the now ubiquitous Oxfam O and X logo. Its work in the sector has focused on developing consistent brands for sprawling organisations with strong ideals at their cores. The Cancer Research rebrand falls within this remit while also achieving a full integration of digital, physical, fundraising and marketing efforts.

The result of Cancer Research UK and Interbrand’s work was the brand new ‘United We’re Stronger than Cancer’ campaign. “From a strategic point of view we wanted to celebrate that we are making progress and beating cancer every day,” Natasha Hill, marketing director for the charity, says. “We wanted that optimism and energy and dynamism to come through in the new mark. The C takes front and centre stage, it’s not got hard edges, it’s flowing and soft. It represents the integration of collective force.”

CRUK wanted to bring life and emotion back into the organisation to connect with the people most affected by cancer and those who can have the most affect in fighting cancer. Fundraising, Hill says, has an emotional base and the new campaign seeks to evoke that. The new design is bold and has personality that its 2002 predecessor lacked. One of the challenges, however, was translating CRUK’s outlook as a research and advice organisation to its supporters and target demographic.

“Research labs do great stuff on a daily basis, but this needs to translate to the man on street,” says David Jenkinson, creative director at Interbrand. “People understood the brand as it was but not what it stood for. It needed to appeal to the layman.”

The old brand was clunky and outdated. It failed to have an impact on high street shopfronts and stood awkwardly against shorter, punchier brands like Tesco in partnerships. It even confused people who mistakenly followed the logo’s non-directional arrow at events. Cancer Research UK toyed with changing or shortening its name to address these issues but decided on more confident branding in place of a name change.

Hill says, “The tone of voice overall is stronger and bolder. It’s more confident with more of a point of view to it. We are also introducing a sense of humour at appropriate times. When it’s consumer-directed we can use this, particularly when portraying scientists – heroes wear lab coats and so on – it’s a bit more of a sweet, soft-sided personality even when talking about research.”

But the change did not come about with a quick, telephone-booth change and a shiny new cape. The rebrand was the result of a year-long, researched effort by both Cancer Research UK’s internal team and Interbrand. CRUK put internal polling in place and undertook consumer research before deciding to rebrand. The results told the charity that consumers did not understand its impact on cancer and were unaware that donation money was directed into research. In a world where high street competition for donations has become the norm, this did not bode well for the public perception of Cancer Research UK. Similarly, the internal consensus was that the brand was forgettable and bland.

“We weren’t talking in the way we were acting,” Hill says.

Interbrand decided that the new brand needed to find a balance between humanity and science in order to solidify CRUK’s place in
the market and purpose in the eyes of the public. The agency aimed to develop a visual link to the charity’s heritage to maintain continuity as an evolutionary change to the brand’s identity. The result was a clarification of the charity’s role in cancer research, support and advice as well as a modernisation of the brand’s overall personality.

“It’s freshened and clarified. It shows it’s an organisation moving forward with energy, people are inside and included. It makes itself an active part of the movement around cancer,” says Graham Hales, CEO of Interbrand.

The fight against cancer is making leaps, but still needs the heroic efforts of organisations like Cancer Research UK to provide research and science funding. One in three of the population of the UK will be diagnosed with cancer in their lifetimes. But funding has decreased over the past three years.

Cancer Research UK wanted to bring science back to life: to prove that doctors and researchers have the power to change lives; and to give consumers a look at its internal culture and the research that allows CRUK to combat cancer on a daily basis. The new brand outlook is allowing CRUK to celebrate science and unite its internal culture by joining the research and fundraising arms of the charity toward a common externallyfocused goal. Interbrand notes that Cancer Research’s scientific heritage is deeply ingrained, but it “gets a bit labcoaty.” Interbrand’s goal was to integrate this heritage with the shifted focus of the charity sector to an empathetic approach to fundraising and science.

Science is only one part of the organisation’s outlook, however – as Hill says, “science is how we do what we do, but what we do is to save lives. We’re a live-saving organisation, rather than a science organisation.” CRUK’s roots are on the high street and it relies on donations from innumerable sources. Nearly 90 per cent of donations are of £10 or less.

The charity relies on an ever-expanding awareness of its role and purpose within the cancer community and the support from both massive and manageable donations. The new brand seeks to harness this support and promote the idea that every single contribution makes a difference to the fight against cancer. The Big C is represented by a literal big C, comprised, graphically of many dots and pictorially by many people, coming together to stand stronger than cancer.

Jenkinson says the rebrand is designed to boost fundraising and engage people in the fight against cancer. He says, “The idea was all about capturing the spirit of collective nature...It embodies life reflects the statement that no man is an island.”

The organisation’s biggest event, Race for Life, also received new packaging in the rebrand. CRUK says it hoped to reinforce the ties between its core activities and the Race for Life. CRUK expects that the refreshed image will attract new sponsors and promote the event to a wider audience. Hill says Cancer Research did not reengineer the entire experience of the Race, but worked with the new brand to reinforce Race for Life’s emotional links with participants. This was true of the entire brand strategy. Interbrand took what Hill describes as “a mess of brand architecture” and streamlined its fundraising, events and public persona.

Cancer Research is not the only charity that has decided to shake off an outdated image in favour of a new, modern look. A slew of charity rebrands have cited the need to present a refreshed image to the public in response to the economic downturn and flagging donations both on the high street and online. Cancer Research’s rebrand allows for a streamlined online donation process integrated into all the charity’s digital outlets. Other recent rebrands include Prostate Cancer UK and other prominent British organisations, large and small.

Prostate Cancer UK, an amalgam of two prostate cancer charities, redesigned its brand in July. The charity hoped to improve its lobbying ability in Parliament and promote awareness. Similarly, Samaritans and the Snowdon Trust both underwent rebrandings to breathe life into their identities and engage in high-profile partnerships. Oxfam announced a fresh redesign for its storefronts. Other organisations, like the Donkey Sanctuary and the Whale and Dolphin Conservation Society revamped their websites, branding and public image. Most recently, the Institute of Cancer Research adopted a warm, science-inspired rebrand in the hopes of attracting donations.

While it has been one of many to change in recent months, Cancer Research’s rebrand allows it to clarify its stance within the scientific and research community and redefine its positioning on the high street. Around 100 of CRUK high street shops will be freshened this year with the remaining 450 to be completed over the next few years. The lively new rebrand leads to inherent marketing strategies such as pictographs representing speech bubbles, idea lightbulbs and even a cameo from the old CRUK arrow.

“You try to deliver a degree of transformation to an organisation,” Hales says. “In a charity you are conscious of commerciality, constantly talking about the value of the brand and how it can help an organisation. In this case it’s about securing funding for the future and getting their constituents to understand. Every stakeholder needs to understand the value of a brand and how it increases and organisation – not as a cost, but as an investment.”

The CRUK’s rebrand hits the mark in revamping its communications with stakeholders, redefining its stance within the scientific and medical communities and redesigning its public image on the high street. In the land where science and compassion triumphs over disease, a rebranded image may be just the not-sosecret identity Cancer Research UK needs.