Challenges

Moto in the Community is the charitable arm of Moto, the UK’s largest motorway services operator. Marking their seventeenth year, the charity needed a new brand identity as they changed to become the Moto Foundation and announced their new national partner charities, Mind and SAMH (Scottish Association for Mental Health).

As an organisation that supports thousands of people, raises millions and operates nationwide, any brand system would need to complement Moto’s Smile brand and work alongside their new national partner charities, while retaining a unique identity for themselves, and being flexible enough to work across print, digital, and environmental spaces/media/mediums.

Solution

Our brand development process follows three phases; explore, imagine, and realise.

Through the explore phase we audited all existing brand and marketing assets, researched other charity brand identities, and conducted workshop sessions with the team responsible for Moto Foundation’s day-to-day activity.

This research was used to develop brand concept ideas through the imagine phase, reflecting the humanitarian ambitions of the foundation while also being considerate to Moto’s purpose, which is to brighten peoples’ journey through life. Developing a friendly, rounded typeface that works perfectly alongside the Moto brand font sets, with an icon that holds an element of hidden joy. Look closely and amongst the rounded, helping hands forming the caring heart and you’ll find the Moto smile!

Through the realise phase we ensure that a brand will work effectively out in the world and that the change is communicated to key stakeholders. Comprehensive brand guidelines and key design assets such as stationary and POS stands formed the brand kit. A five-year strategy presentation was designed to communicate the charity's five-year plan to internal stakeholders with two animated films produced to communicate the rebrand - one for colleagues, and another for the wider public.

Impact

The brand launch was delivered to agreed deadlines and budgets with initial reactions overwhelmingly positive from both internal and external audiences.

Our approach to developing brand guidelines as live documents has meant that as other agencies, printers and partners started to use the brand any exceptions were noted with guidance, updated and refined along with updating the asset library, all saving reams of time on email and administration.