How Time to Change have used BrandStencil to empower their supporters

We’ve provided an online brand management tool for supporters to create and customise a range of campaign material to suit their specific needs, while ensuring consistent branding and messaging.

Challenges

Time to Change needed a one-stop shop for supporters and staff to access brand guidelines and assets, which would benefit their central Communications and Social Marketing teams by:

• Reducing the volume of printed materials sent out to supporters and partners.
• Reducing the need to adapt and approve materials for local use.
• Ensuring clear and consistent campaign messages and branding.

As the system needed to cater for a wide range of uses - from an individual in a local community printing off a small number of posters or leaflets, to a council adapting campaign artwork for local advertising - it had to be easy to use without training.

The ideal solution needed to strike the right balance between resources being editable, so partners and supporters could tailor their own versions of materials, and having enough restrictions to maintain consistent brand styles and messaging.

Solutions

Instant benefits

We created a range of initial templates for Time to Change, including: posters to advertise events and campaign messages; bunting to use at events; an email banner and wallpaper for digital campaign promotion, and a tip card with specific messages for employers and schools.

Turning these items into flexible templates eliminated the time spent by central teams on customising designs for different partners and community hubs. Supporters all around the country can now simply use BrandStencil to create, customise, download and print their own campaign materials, so there is no need for central teams to send them anything other than a URL!

Flexible templates, with just the right degree of control

To adapt these resources to suit their needs, Time to Change staff and supporters can select from four main background colours on most editable templates, and organisations have the option to upload their own logo alongside the Time to Change branding.

Some templates give supporters options for further customisation such as adding their own event details and messages, or uploading an image. Other templates are deliberately more restricted and let the supporter choose from pre-set messages and graphics. The tip card uses further control - supporters simply choose from three different versions, which display specific messages depending on whether the card is intended for general use, or for a school or a workplace.

Public, customised platform

We provided Time to Change with a public Brand Management platform. This means anyone who needs to can easily access their public, editable templates and their downloadable, branded materials - and their central teams don’t have to spend time on user management.

We took design direction from Time to Change’s website to customise the BrandStencil interface for them, so its look and feel matches their brand identity and is instantly recognisable to their supporter base.

Smart functionality and on-brand solutions

To create the bunting and tip card templates, we developed the ability for text to appear upside-down on a template, which can be folded or cut out once it’s been printed. We also gave Time to Change background banners, which change size to fit the amount of text entered, and match their brand style.