Case study: Why creating clear brand guidelines for Abling helped clarify the venture's mission

Background

Abling provides an opportunity for businesses and members of the public to offer their skills, assets or activities to terminally ill patients or those under charitable care. The website allows users to donate time and skills to fit around their schedules, while carers and registered charities can easily see what’s available and book the free resources.

Founder Richard Bourne prides himself on being able to create a difference for those less fortunate or deemed more vulnerable by connecting them to people who can help. The platform now contains thousands of volunteers who are all able to lend their services to someone who needs them.

Appetite Creative was brought on board to create a new website and, custom CMS, and reporting system, while also finding a solution that would fit the ethos of the organisation.

Strategy

Tasked with this mission, Appetite Creative recognised the importance of displaying warmth, honesty, and clarity in their messaging. They needed to highlight and reinforce the standards practiced by Borne and Abling.

Abling is all about enabling people to share life-changing experiences and fun activities with those in difficult times of illness. While the initiative is about inspiring others, it is also about making sure volunteers feel inspired while giving their gift of time.

Appetite Creative used this as a core mantra to be rooted in everything that emerged from Abling – from the website to photography, business cards and newsletters. The website had to be the epitome of simplicity; it had to be easy to use and this accessibility sat at the centre of the agency‘s creative process.

Process

The Appetite team began with the UX and navigation, prioritising the user‘s experience. From there, using Abling‘s existing brand book, they designed a UI that maintained the brand‘s look.

They decided to use colours to create a distinction between users – with blue hues representing Abling‘s Ablers and pink to embody the Enablers; those that wanted to offer their time and activities and those that are looking for experiences respectfully.

The site also had to be user friendly so that activities could be easily uploaded, viewed and requested. A chat option was also added so that Ablers and Enablers could connect wherever they were. Activities would be listed and then easily marked as booked, requested, completed, and pending, so both sides could clearly see where they were in the process. The fully integrated booking system meant that Enablers could even choose specific dates and times to take part in their chosen activities.

The custom-built CMS system allowed admin accounts to track users and accounts, so that Abling retained full control of the images submitted to the site and could ensure that all gallery pictures were suitable. The same was decided on activities, with the Abling team able to review and decide if the suggested tasks were appropriate, otherwise amendments would be suggest. Options for editing content-heavy items such as T&Cs, privacy policy pages and contact forms were easily available.

Result

Appetite Creative helped to create clear brand guidelines for Abling which could be applied across all of their assets - including email fonts and business card colouring. It helped to unite the company, making it instantly recognisable, while also pushing Bourne‘s mission and positivity for the brand.

The team also built a smooth functioning peer to peer platform that connects terminally or seriously ill people to those who have something to donate. The system has been very well received, accumulating 44 active users with an average session time of two minutes, within the first week of launch.