CRUK: Be afraid...

I have a confession to make. It might be an unpopular and unfashionable view. But, I LOVE the new Cancer Research UK brand.



I love the new identity, the logo and the beautiful design. But as a fundraiser what I love most is the shift in tone of voice. I'm lucky enough to be able to work with it, it really really is good. It’s so much more confident and progressive than the previous one. It leaves you in no doubt that CRUK are supremely confident that they will at some point eradicate this disease.

“We are going to beat cancer, just like we've beaten other diseases. Help bring that moment forward.”

When it was first launched I heard some negativity from the great and the good of fundraising.

“It's too expensive. It's not driving response. It needs a call to action.”

I'm not sure I agree. Sure, some charity rebranding exercises leave me scratching my head trying to figure out how on earth the new brand will help the fundraisers, but not this one.

I think CRUK were well overdue a brand refresh. This is an organisation that in 2011/12 raised £350 million in voluntary income. To sustain that level of fundraising you need everyone in the UK to know who you are, what you do and where to find you. You also need a massive range of fundraising products to support that total.

Look at Dryathalon, in it's first year it raised over £3 million pounds, you don't get the opportunity to do that unless your brand is strong. Some other headlines...

1 million regular givers. That's a million. How many do you think CRUK need to recruit every year just to keep the file at that level? Do the math!

Up to 750,000 women participating in Race for Life.

All of these mass engagement fundraising products need a strong brand combined with some brilliant direct response activity to drive their success. The trick is to optimise the brand spend to drive response. I for one, have every faith that the clever people at CRUK will get this right.

So should the rest of the sector be afraid?