CorpComms Magazine

When it reached the grand old age of 70 last year, social housing agency Home Group felt it was time for a change of image. Home Group, which has merged with and acquired other organisations along the way, decided to rebrand itself in a bid to promote its non-housing operations.

As well as social housing, Home Group lets properties to mid-market professionals and provides social services such as helping ex-offenders or people with social care problems integrate into society. And with 4,500 staff, 120,000 tenants in more than 50,000 properties and an annual turnover of £250 mn, Home Group has certainly come of age.

Following a series of informal interviews with a number of design agencies, Andy Lee, Home Group's director of communications, appointed Newcastle-upon-Tyne based Gardiner Robinson last October.

'We had a new corporate governance structure in place covering all our different operations,' explains Lee. 'And we didn't feel our brand reflected those.' Darren Robinson, director of Gardiner Robinson, led a grassroots consultation of Home Group's staff. As part of the rebranding process, he held workshops over four months with 120 senior managers to discover their perceptions of and vision for the group.

The workshops were invaluable, according to Robinson. 'When we redesigned the identity we were able to create a look that perfectly met Home Group's aspirations. The whole company bought into the concept because theywere so involved in its creation.'

During the consultation, Robinson 'found that one of the key messages coming from the group was about growth - personal growth and community growth. So we decided on the word 'home', with the letters getting bigger. The word has a lot of positive connotations, so we used red - a warm and passionate colour - for the lettering.'

A picture of a house was cut from the logo in order to reduce the group's association with housing.

The new look was unveiled at the Chartered Institute of Housing's annual conference in Harrogate in June. 'What I found most rewarding about this project was the change in attitude to communications that it has brought to Home as an organisation, in terms of the role of its corporate identity,' says Robinson. 'It was nice working with a company that wanted to collaborate with its staff on this.'

Gardiner Robinson has helped Home Group to develop a communications strategy for rolling out the new brand to clients, staff and tenants. 'We will take out advertisements in the trade press, send letters to clients and take space at trade fairs,' adds Lee. 'I expect to see the new logo being widely used by April 2007.'

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