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Leonard Cheshire Disability


The challenge

For many years, the name Leonard Cheshire didn’t have a huge amount of recognition with the British public, despite being one of the UK’s largest charities. Founded by the eponymous WWII veteran, the charity now helps some 22,000 people and works across 52 countries.

But according to one of its executives, Stephen Elsden, “People didn’t remember who Leonard Cheshire was, and if they did, they thought we were something to do with war veterans. Our fundraising team were saying that our low public awareness was stopping us from achieving our strategy.”

The solution

The organisation is now known as Leonard Cheshire Disability – leaving no doubt as to its mission and purpose. Its logo was also redesigned, dropping the somewhat outdated previous ‘feather’ and creating a simpler, bolder look.

Having got the foundation right, the organisation launched a major brand awareness campaign through a series of TV and online ads, Creature Discomforts - a new twist on the Creature Comfort ads made famous by British Gas. This can be seen as part of the Marketing Matters video.

The charity’s head Bryan Dutton said, “We were able to take the everyday experiences of disabled people and present them in a non-controversial way with some humour and irony…yet, at the same time get across the very serious message that we need to change our attitudes to disability.”

The result

The campaign not only increased awareness of the plight of disabled people, but also the new Leonard Cheshire Disability brand and its purpose. “We had other organisations coming to us, asking if they could use our ads for their own audiences,” recalls Elsden. “They were doing our work for us!”

The response from the public has been outstanding – enabling the charity to screen a second series of ads. This follow-up campaign took the brand message a step further by relating specific stories of the disabled and how they overcame their challenges.

For Leonard Cheshire Disability and the people it serves, a strong brand has dispelled misguided ideas about them; informed the public and driven donations; but perhaps most importantly, galvanised not just disabled folk but everyone involved with the charity including the staff to be united in a common purpose.