Shaw Trust has been delivering the Brent Connexions service since 2006. We provide information, advice, guidance, help and support to young people aged 16 – 18 (or 24 with an Education Health Care Plan) who are not in education, employment or training in the borough of Brent.
Our dedicated staff speak to hundreds of young people offering them one-to-one support, CV writing, job application support, workshops and much more.
The service is commissioned by Brent Council, and after discussing the continuation of the service we decided to refresh the branding. Aiming to create an identity that service users could relate to and reflected the current needs of the community.
The first step was a name, the Brent Connexions team worked with young people and came up with four name options.
- Brent Youth Futures.
- Brent Youth Ambitions.
- Brent Youth Advice.
- Brent Youth Pathways.
We surveyed over 100 users of the service and young people in the area. With 45% of the vote, “Brent Youth Futures” emerged as the clear winner. We had a name, now we needed to create a brand.
We organised and facilitated a brand workshop in Brent with young people. Led by Braden, our Senior Graphic Designer, and supported by myself (Stacy) a Marketing Officer and Ann Marie, Interim Marketing and Communications Director.
Five young people were selected to take part in the workshop, and we started by talking about what a brand is, how we recognise brands and how a brand’s reputation can affect them. From this the young people took part in some brand exercises to get the conversation flowing. We started by looking at what the service offered, then asking the young people to decide how the service was going to be delivered and then, the most important bit, ‘why?’.
Why the need for the service? Why does it exist? And why should young people choose us? From there a conversation began and we moved on to choosing values. We needed five values that the Brent Youth Futures team will stand by when supporting users of the service. Overall, the young people at the workshop came up with an impressive list of 30 different possible values to choose from. Then the hard part came… getting the list down to just five.
Some values that will undoubtedly be reflected in our service, but didn’t make the cut were; responsible, aspirational, attentive, relaxed and encouraging.
And the five that made it…
- Respectful.
- Welcoming.
- Honest, open and authentic.
- Passionate.
- Supportive.
And as you can imagine, narrowing down 30 potential values to just five sparked plenty of debate and discussion among the group. Particularly around why some were chosen and others weren’t.
Overall, the young people decided that they wanted Brent Youth Futures to ‘make local young people feel hopeful’.
The final part of the workshop was looking at our audience and how the young people wanted our tone of voice to sound. They were given a sliding scale of ‘authority to friend’ and ‘playful to serious’ to name just two.
After the workshop had finished it was time to head home, so we packed up and hopped on the tube having discussions about how exciting the day had been and all the ideas we already had.
Once back, Braden asked for three volunteers to take on a branding brief and create a potential design concept to put to young people. Anna, Dan and Steven from the MarComms team were brave enough to step up to the challenge. Braden briefed them on the workshop and gave them all the information they needed and off they went. From this we got back three design concepts:
- Modern impact
- Vibrant ambitions
- Career pathways
These were then handed over to the Brent team to once again put the decision in the hands of young people. A survey was created and sent to the young people who took part in the workshop and users of the service.
We are pleased to share that Vibrant Ambitions was chosen by our young people receiving 40% of the votes.
From here we will be working to deliver the new brand to the young people of Brent which will contribute to bringing new life to the service and help us support more young people every day.
A huge thank you to the young people for being open to the process and being honest with us about their thoughts and opinions.
Also, a massive thank you to Braden for developing the workshop materials and helping to facilitate conversations and give young people a space to voice their thoughts without judgement or fear of being wrong.
Finally, thank you to Anna, Dan and Steven for their creative and exceptional design concepts that were innovative and original.
