Charity staff should set boundaries with their trustees when working on a rebrand, the director of marketing and communications at Great Ormond Street Hospital Charity has recommended.

Speaking on the Third Sector Podcast, Emma Guise advised charity staff to set clear parameters when consulting the board during a rebrand.

Gosh Charity updated its brand identity in June to make it more relevant, improve accessibility and be better suited to digital channels.

Guise said Gosh’s trustees were passionately engaged with the rebrand from the outset, adding that she brought the charity’s governance, risk and reputation subcommittee of trustees “along on the journey at every single stage”.

But when approaching the main board of trustees, Guise said it was only for key moments when they were needed to sign off on the direction of travel.

“[This meant] I had an engaged and supportive subgroup in that room who could vouch, endorse and understand,” she said. “It allowed me to get through those milestones of sign-off each time,” she said.

“The biggest tip I would give people, though, with your trustees is you need to really set the boundaries of what you’re asking them,” Guise said.

Instead of allowing trustees to “wordsmith” or “pick apart the minutiae”, Guise says that staff should ask them whether it met the brief and if they would therefore support the direction of travel.

She said one of the most important considerations of Gosh’s rebrand was adapting it to better suit digital channels. 

Having not rebranded since 2017, Gosh’s brand was “very static”, said Guise, adding that it had nothing that moved or animated in the way that many other brands do.

“If you think about how we all consume digital, we are scrolling through reams and reams of content trying to grab our attention.

“Our attention needs to be grabbed through really simple devices like color, imagery, tone of voice, language, motion and graphics. Our old brand just simply didn’t speak to that.”

Guise said that the rebrand sought to “digitally enhance us, make us come alive and make us more accessible”. 

Changes included new motion graphics and a set of guidelines to help the team with producing more motion and film content across digital platforms, as well as out-of-home assets.

“People often think about digital in the context of doing more digital marketing,” Guise said. “But if your content isn’t digitally enabled to be on those platforms, then you’re potentially spending money that isn’t showing up in the best possible way for your brand.”

The Third Sector Podcast featuring Emma Guise can be found here.