BRANDING WITH COMPASSION
Rebranding for Mercy Hospice who have a long tradition of providing specialist community palliative care and hospice services for people facing life limiting illnesses.
Brand Research | Strategy | Positioning | Staff engagement | Design | Website
Project outline
Mercy Hospice, formerly Mercy Hospice Auckland, have been an integral part of Auckland communities since the 1850’s. Hospice specialises in palliative care, which is caring for people at the end of their life. Mercy Hospice is a successful organisation rich in values that drastically needed modernisation. Their incredibly compassionate and intimate service to those with life-limiting illnesses and the families that surround them, leaves a lifelong admiration for the people and service.
Our brand assessment revealed a brand that lacked consistency, understanding of who it was and an emotive, modern connection with their different audiences.
As a business based around fundraising and key partnerships we undertook extensive research of the Senior Leadership Team (SLT), staff, sponsors, donors, suppliers and referring healthcare facilities to understand the unique perception each party held and what they needed from the relationship. What was clear was the vast disconnect between how the brand was perceived and the services experienced by patients and families. It also showed the common misconceptions towards hospice care.
From our research and insights we refined the brand down to a clear what, how and why the do what they do. This generated consistency from the SLT right down through the staff who we engaged with throughout the process.
We proposed and tested their appetite to moving the brand to a more community-oriented organization that would resonate with the values and research. Through collaborative exploration we arrived at a solution that verbally and visually positioned them as community- focused organization but only involved a slight modernisation to their ‘precious’ logo.
To reflect the new brand we softened the colour palette, humanized the typography and focused on empathetic photography of staff and patients.
The end result is Mercy Hospice now have a brand that the entire organisation is proud of and the community engages with. It continues their 168 year history of compassion into a new era.
“This has brought our traditional values into a new era” – Paul Couper, Mercy Hospice, CEO
