Armed Forces Education Trust — Rethinking branding — Brand Ethos

Armed Forces Education Trust

Helping armed forces’ children for over 160 years
Rethinking the brand communications for the Armed Forces Education Trust to broaden its profile and support more young people.

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Supporting young lives

The Armed Forces Education Trust supports children and young adults whose education may have been affected by their parent’s service in the armed forces. Their grant giving helps improve educational opportunity and support special skills or talents.

Following the appointment of its first ever chief executive the trust decided its brand and communications strategy needed a major overhaul. Collectively the trustees lacked any specialist communications expertise, but they knew that their work could and should reach more young people. A radical new approach was called for.

Rethinking, rebranding, rebooting

We were appointed to help the Armed Forces Education Trust with their communications strategy, guiding them through a comprehensive rethink of the messaging, branding, customer journey and digital experience.

“One of the trustees, Merrick Willis OBE, approached us at a pivotal time for the trust to provide the brand and communications expertise that, as a board, they lacked. I had worked with him on the rebrand for the Charity for Civil Servants in 2012 where he was CEO.”

Peter Mills, Brand Ethos

A workshop with trustees explored a new brand model from which targeted messaging and positioning could be developed. This included beneficiary profiling, and mapping individual personae and journeys to help trustees think through the minds of their different audiences.

From this we were able to develop the UX and content specification for a new website. designed from a mobile-first perspective to reflect audience insights. We rebooted the visual identity including a new logo inspired by the tricolour of the armed forces and photography working with award-winning photographer and filmmaker, Remco Merbis. We storyboarded a promotional film made with one of the trust’s supported schools and featuring Charmian Hickman, the CEO. Lastly, a communications plan was devised to be implemented by the trust CEO with our ongoing support.

Visit the Armed Forces Education Trust website to learn more.

 

 

 

 

Image of schoolbags left by a bench in a school playground
Image of pots of poster paint for creative expression in schools
Image of children using paints to make an painting
Image of child creating images using coloured plastic shapes

 

A dark blue, red and light blue tricolour of the armed forces inspired the colour palette of the Armed Forces Education Trust, with an additional complementary purple. The colours aren’t an exact match as we wanted to ensure they are accessible and easily seen in print and online.

The team at Brand Ethos expertly guided us through a process that led to our rebranding and new website. They made the journey enjoyable and were good at keeping all the members of our team, with varying degrees of marketing experience, onboard.

Charmian Hickman Chief exective Armed Forces Education Trust
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