CLIENT
Alliance to End Plastic Waste
PROJECT
Rebranding an NGO for global impact
DISCIPLINE
Brand Positioning, Corporate Identity, Stakeholder Messaging, Brand Guidelines
The Alliance to End Plastic Waste (AEPW) is a global non-governmental and non-profit organisation with the mission of ending plastic waste leakage into the environment.
After relocating to Singapore in 2019, AEPW wanted to address some brand perceptions that were negatively impacting the organisation. Due to its industry-founded and funded model, AEPW had experienced difficulties in fully engaging with diverse audiences across the sustainable solutions value chain. As part of a renewed effort to address these groups, it was decided to review the organisation’s proposition and identity to make both more effective in articulating the brands capabilities and approach and building a broader range of difference-making relationships.
The project began with a series of stakeholder interviews to understand the ambition and intent of the organisation and the barriers to engagement that existed, and an extensive stakeholder mapping to determine the needs of players from across the plastics value chain, from industry and investors to government authorities, NGOs and non-profits and the general public. From these insights we developed a new positioning and proposition for the organisation focused on being ‘the global platform for eliminating waste that unites the ecosystem around urgency and impact.’ This was then further developed into a detailed brand narrative, personality and tone of voice to guide communications across all channels.
Next we turned our attention to the Alliance’s brand identity. The existing logo made up of a water droplet and a leaf was highly undifferentiated within the existing brand landscape of NGOs and sustainability-focused organisations, and was not supported by a visual system to govern its use across different media and applications.
We developed a new typographic logo that in its graduated treatment embodied the mission to eliminate plastic from the environment. The drop/leaf symbol was retained as a more subtle visual element that could work in combination with the wordmark, or as a secondary visual element.
We also found that formality of the organisation’s name was a contributing factor to some of the negative perceptions around AEPW’s alignment with the plastics industry. Changing the name at this stage was practically not an option, so we developed a shortform version – ALL – which would become the visual calling card for the brand, reinforcing the collaboration and unity of purpose at the heart of its new proposition.
The new identity and naming approach was brought together in a sophisticated visual system with a focus on elevating and connecting all communications, from video production and project updates to events and activations all over the world.
The refreshed brand strategy and identity was launched in Q4 2020, extending across all key touch points for the brand and becoming the foundation for both corporate membership activities and wider audience education and activation campaigns.
Within a calendar year of the brand refresh, corporate membership had almost doubled.
