Here’s How We Helped World Animal Protection Achieve its Mission to Tackle Animal Suffering on a Global Scale.

Here’s how we helped World Animal Protection to re-establish and embed their brand positioning so that staff and supporters can understand, deliver and represent the brand, no matter who they are and what they do.

The problem

World Animal Protection (formerly known as WSPA or World Society for the Protection of Animals) had undergone a major rebrand and brand repositioning in June 2014. The rebrand was initially successful in driving greater awareness and understanding of the organisation’s work. However, 3 years on, and after significant internal change, it was time to review the positioning and develop the next phase of brand strategy so that that the organisation was able to move beyond the rebrand and look to the future.

Brand By Me was brought in to help World Animal Protection create a brand strategy that reinforced and embedded who they are and what they stand for, both internally and externally so that the organisation could achieve its mission and tackle animal suffering on a global scale.

The Solution

Step 1. Audit

A MASSIVE LISTENING EXERCISE. From over 30 global 121 stakeholder interviews to internal focus groups and a global staff survey we worked to gather learnings and reflections from staff across 12 countries. This was really useful to understand the complex challenges faced by teams across
the organisation in building awareness and understanding of the organisation across the world.

In parallel we worked with research agency Voodoo, to run a major in-depth piece of global public attitudes and perception research around the brand.

Our major finding? Although there was a basic understanding of what the organisation did (driven by the simple name and bold logo), the meaning of the organisation’s purpose had been lost (both internally and externally and people didn’t understand how it was different from other organisations.

Step 2. Explore

WORKSHOPS, WORKSHOPS, WORKSHOPS As World Animal Protection is a global brand it was important to look at the strategy from the perspective of each country office and the different functions within offices too. So we gathered 50 people from 12 countries together to look at the brand opportunities, priorities and challenges for the organisation, working together to review the purpose, refine the personality and reflect on its vision.

Following this initial global brand workshop, we created champions who were tasked with taking back the learnings to their teams across the world and gathering feedback on the draft content.

Our big learning? Equipping teams to share the information themselves was a great way to create ownership and momentum – especially after the buzz of the initial global brand workshop.

Step 3. Action

CREATING THE PLAN. No brand framework can work if it’s left as theory alone. We ran follow up workshops and action planning sessions with the global Communications and Fundraising team to brainstorm and capture the tangible actions that would make a difference in bringing the brand to life and embedding it across the organisation. These fast paced, creative thinking sessions fuelled detailed action plans that fed into existing priorities and initiatives across the organisation – so that the brand strategy was embedded rather than adding to the workload of an already busy organisation!

Step 4. Embed

MAKING IT REAL –We were able to support the organisation in the day to day implementation of the new brand strategy by ensuring that we followed up on the workshops with tailored and
individual support where needed. We facilitated country brand planning sessions with country offices and the Global Brand Team to embed the brand framework and actions into country specific business plans, designed to make sure that the brand strategy helped drive the organisational strategy on every level. And we mentored managers within the organisation as they rolled out and implemented core initiatives within strategy, to help them manage this often tricky process across the organisation.

Here’s what Stephen Sibbald, Country Director at World Animal Protection UK had to say at the end of the project:

“Excellent workshops and very inspiring process to be part of. It really captured and contributed to something of the organisational ‘zeitgeist’ for collaborative working and positive change.”

A new brand strategy that will help the organisation tackle animal suffering on a global scale. And a collaborative process that brought the global organisation together in the process. A win win!