Great Ormond Street Hospital Charity
Together for childhood
Verbal identity and campaign copy for iconic children's health charity.
Great Ormond Street Hospital is one of the UK’s best loved children’s hospitals, treating kids with rare or complex illnesses from across the country. While the day-to-day running is funded by the NHS, support services, medical research and equipment that go above and beyond are funded by GOSH charity.
We created a tone of voice, core brand language and campaign and fundraising copy to take the charity brand to new audiences and increase support. Our new voice transformed brand awareness into brand love by putting childhood at the heart, across multiple touchpoints, including OOH, digital, social, direct mail, events, fundraising, corporate partnerships, legacy giving, and high net worth givers.
The story
In the competitive UK charity market, Great Ormond Street Hospital (GOSH) Charity needed a new visual and verbal identity to cut through and connect with new audiences. It needed a narrative that would transcend the charity's beginnings as a hospital fundraiser, to establish its own compelling story and stand for something bigger than itself.
GOSH Charity was already well-known among older, more traditional audiences. Our challenge was to transform that brand awareness into brand love, to engage new audiences, to build relevance, loyalty, and, ultimately, increase donations for this incredibly important hospital.
To future-proof this charity with its roots in Victorian philanthropy, we needed to engage with new generations of supporters and help them feel part of the charity’s impact. We needed to reach beyond those with direct experience of the hospital, and connect with people of all ages, including those without children. And we needed to ensure we took existing audiences with us on the journey too.
Our solution was to create a story and a voice that put childhood - not just children - at the heart. Childhood defines GOSH Charity, and their work to fund the support that gives seriously ill children at GOSH and across the UK childhoods that are ‘fuller, funner and longer’.
As well as anchoring the language in the idea of childhood, we identified four tonal values United, Determined, Purposeful and Heart to inform our writing. Together, this verbal identity communicated a feeling of collective, solutions-focus, purpose-driven endeavour, deepening connection with audiences from gen-Alpha to the postwar generation.
The new tone of voice established GOSH Charity as an advocate for childhood, a cause that people with and without direct experience of the hospital could connect with. The voice enabled flexibility, so we could speak to the harsher realities of childhood illness, and to the fun and optimism found at the hospital, against all the odds.
While awareness of GOSH is high, few people realise that the hospital relies on funding from GOSH Charity to remain at the forefront of children’s healthcare. So it was vital that the voice that could fluently speak to all the charity’s funding and impact areas, from lifesaving medical research, equipment and building projects, to Play teams, family hotels and in-hospital arts.
The new language was developed alongside a new visual identity, that reestablished the original, iconic hand drawn GOSH logo, and new childhood-centred colour palate, illustration style, typography and child’s eye view photography.
Partnered on: Tone of voice, brand narrative, core brand copy, campaign and fundraising copy, across OOH, DM, social, mass participation events, legacy and HNW giving.
Collaborated with: the Brand Narrative team at Pentagram, Ashley Johnson, Ishaan Pamnan, Independent brand designer Stuart Gough, JKR creative director of motion Tom Gould, and the charity’s in-house creative team.
As seen in: Transform, Creative Review, Creative Boom, Creative Bloq, Marketing Beat, Brand the Change, Third Sector, Charity Today News, Civil Society Media and Yahoo.
The new brand also achieved coverage in national newspapers such as The Mirror, The Sun, Metro, Daily Express, Daily Star and Daily Post, as well as regional news
Awards:
Gold, Best Use of Copy Style or Tone of Voice, Transform Awards Europe
Best Brand Development, Third Sector Awards
Silver, Brand Refresh, Drum Awards
Bronze, Not-for-Profit, Brand Impact Awards
Key copy:
“We’re hugely excited by what our refreshed brand will enable us to do, better communicating our purpose and inspiring more people to join us in our mission. This will allow us to make a greater impact on the hundreds of children treated at GOSH daily, as well as those with rare or complex illnesses worldwide. Because we believe no childhood should be lost to serious illness.”
Emma Guise Director of Marketing and Communications at GOSH Charity
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