Developing a brand from within: Involving employees and volunteers when developing a new brand position

In February 1996 Barnardo's invited six of the UK's leading advertising agencies to pitch for the provision of full and above the line communications and marketing services. Banner McBride was included as part of a joint WPP communications and marketing team (including Ogilvy & Mather) selected to support Barnardo's efforts to reposition and communicate the Barnardo's brand. As the WPP team said at the beginning, Barnardo's were ‘a well-known brand that was not known well’. The challenge was to increase the organisation's saliency, but at the same time build on years of heritage and ensure that employees and volunteers were included from the beginning. This paper describes how the brand building exercise was tackled and how internal communications were developed by the provision of different media.