Brand Story
Children grow – and so have we. Today, Cotlands is a national non-profit organisation providing a range of vital community services all around the country – but during the evolution process, as an organisation, we have outgrown the original brand imagery.
Over the past two decades, our logo has evolved to reflect the changes within the organisation and the direction it was taking. Those years saw much growth within our community reach and service delivery. Cotlands recognised that the time had come for a brand update.
For many years, and still today, we have found that a number of our donors still recognise Cotlands as a baby sanctuary. This has become evident through various interactions with visitors, at networking sessions and exhibitions, and even with international volunteers who enquire about our programmes. We have had to investigate why this notion is still so strongly attached to our brand when we have already accomplished so much more in various projects, nationally.
Firstly, the images that surrounded our logo – once believed to be child-like and symbolic of our work – was the first element that came under scrutiny. Our branding partners (HKLM and Talooma), along with new sponsors (Fifth Dimension, TBWA/Tequila and Kaelo) who are also experts in their fields, came together and reviewed the image Cotlands has been portraying for so many years. The panel of stakeholders all agreed that drawings were not effective in depicting the scope of our work.
Our communication material was also reviewed to ensure our message was integrated with our organisational strategy and could be clearly understood. This exercise begged the question: What does Cotlands do – to which there were various responses. We realised there and then that what we portrayed did not quite sum up our work. This was the start of many brainstorming sessions which finally lead to what you see today – a clean, simplified brand that encompasses what Cotlands is about.
We’ve evolved our logo so that it is less rigid and more friendly, yet bold and professional. The characters have fallen away and we’ve introduced real people and patterns as the human factor and the patterns of life at Cotlands are so varied from project to province to circumstances.
Since we decided to leave Kaya, Maya and Mo with Gogo and Jo in our archives, we were faced with another challenge – how do we get our donors to understand the strategy? We determined that our longevity and the thousands of children surviving today, our staff and most importantly, our donors, need to be recognised for their courage to do something about the social challenges we face. It’s because of each of us that Cotlands has grown to reach five provinces and 8,000 beneficiaries currently in our programme.
Over the past 75 years, our children have taught us about heroism. It’s the will to live, the will to give, the will to keep going even when the challenges are so much bigger than we are. There’s a hero in each one of us and when you partner with Cotlands, you help shape the lives of the heroes of tomorrow.
