And breathe… What I learned from the media launch of the new RSPCA brand

It’s nearly a month on from the launch of the RSPCA’s new brand For Every Kind. As we rattle towards our 200th birthday in June, there’s been little chance to pause, but I wanted to take a moment to reflect on what I’ve learned from working on this hugely intense, immensely exciting and ultimately very rewarding rebrand. Here are my top 5 takeaways from working on the external comms strategy:

Learn from others

With so much riding on a rebrand, it’s difficult not to agonise over the best way to release it to the world. But the great news is, you’re not the first to do it and ours landed around the time of some brilliant new rebrands in the charity sector. So in the months leading up to our launch date, I looked at what others did, weighed it up, what worked and what didn’t and why. Ultimately, however, no two brands are the same, and they all come with different histories, contexts, cultures and supporters, so you have to build a strategy that works for you.

The RSPCA is 200 this year, and for many it’s a national institution which means everyone thinks they know us and what we do. So we knew lots of people would have an opinion, not least about whether we should have rebranded or not. We decided on a ‘big bang’ proactive approach across multiple channels for maximum impact and to help our supporters understand why our rebrand was so important for animals.?

Focus on what your supporters care about

With so much amazing work from agency Jones Knowles Ritchie (JKR) , Olivia Reid , who led on the rebrand work and our internal brand team, under Louise Stevens , in developing our brand, it’s tempting to want to shout about this to all your audiences. After all, this was months of hard work (and 50 years) in the making. But a rebrand itself is rarely mainstream news… unless something goes wrong. It’s so important to think about what your audience really cares about - in our case, animal welfare - and lean on a strong and confident narrative that links firmly back to the cause.?

Animals are facing some of the biggest challenges in our 200 year history and our brand set out to engage more people than ever in the cause of animal welfare, in line with our ten-year strategy Together for Animal Welfare . We focused our mainstream media narrative, not on the fact that we have rebranded, but on an engaging campaign, with a call to action asking people to do ‘a million kind actions for animals’ to celebrate our 200th year, which brought our new brand to life. This complemented our For Every Kind brand marketing campaign , with its uplifting and thought provoking advert, developed in partnership with creative agency, AMV BBDO .

We capitalised on the extra attention from a TV advertising campaign, which included a partnership with Channel 4’s Gogglebox, out of home and digital, to drive action and engage people who were interested in supporting us. We drove people to a new online quiz to find out what more they could do to support animals, and gave them a range of ways to get involved with us. This allowed us to answer directly the inevitable question, ‘how does a new brand help animal welfare’ and brought the concept of For Every Kind vibrantly to life for people.

Plan for the best but prepare for the worst

This was a big departure for us, with a radical new look and feel, and a bold brand campaign. We knew our advert, in particular, was likely to drive a strong response in some areas and we had an extensive FAQs, throughout the process, updating as new parts of the brand and the campaign developed. We drew on the expertise of teams across the RSPCA - everyone from our finance team to colleagues in Animals in Science and RSPCA Assured. We tested the messaging internally with different audiences and refined it until we had a narrative we could be completely confident in.?

We discussed laying the groundwork of our strategy ahead of our brand campaign launch, but decided that would only tell half the story and leave too much space for misunderstanding, so decided on an earned media strategy which launched simultaneously with our brand campaign. Alongside a high-profile mainstream media launch, backed by our amazing VIP ambassadors, we placed stories and blogs in charity media, trade media, on our website and on social media, which fully explained our strategy and process - the reasons for our rebrand. And we shared a fantastic film with our followers, created by JKR, which positioned our rebrand in the context of 200 years of animal welfare and the challenges of the future.?

Also critical was helping everyone else feel confident in responding to challenges too. For those of us working directly on the brand, it felt like we were living and breathing our messages, but it was really important to make sure everyone else believed them as well. We spent time with all public-facing teams - including our cruelty line call centre, enquiries, events team and supporter care - to make sure they really understood it and bought into it too.?

Hold your nerve

Expect criticism - not everyone is going to like it, and that’s OK. Work out what you need to respond to, and what you don’t, and refer back, again and again to the narrative behind the decisions. Be confident in what you’re saying and your strategy.

Lean into it, and stand firm in what you believe in. The RSPCA advert garnered (anticipated) criticism from certain quarters, that we were being ‘woke’ in asking people to care about all creatures, from snails, to cats and dogs, to the cows on our farms. We had been prepared for the challenge, but rather than deny being woke, we held firmly onto our message that every animal deserves our kindness, and challenged the very premise that being woke was negative, with an opinion piece from Chief Executive Chris Sherwood in the Observer . Our confident message helped to draw a line under the criticism and keep control of the narrative.

Remember your teams

Our media and social media teams are incredibly busy and that didn’t stop just because we were going through a major rebrand. My colleagues Chris O'Brien, Emily Stott and Rachel Burn played a vital role in the media rollout, with Tess Macpherson-Woods leading on social and Alan Laxton leading the broadcast team and did a phenomenal job delivering on the huge expectations of the launch and managing the response on their channels. But everyone else was working just as hard on the day-to-day, keeping the cogs of our high-performing team turning, with the unswerving support of Catherine Peerless . When everything is focussed on brand, and the shiny, exciting new world coming down the track, it’s easy for those slightly removed from the launch to feel like their work takes second place. So it’s crucial to recognise not just those on the frontline of the rebrand but everyone else who is continuing to do their usual amazing jobs.?

So we’re launched, but that is just the beginning. There’s lots more to do to bring the brand to life and demonstrate how we are for every kind - every kind of animal and every kind of person. The brand is the platform for us to do some really brilliant things for animals but we need everyone to get involved rspca.org.uk/foreverykind