Aspire West

A major programme to re-structure and re-brand one of the UK’s leading housing, campaigning and social support charities. To redesign its communication, corporate affairs and stakeholder engagement. To increase take-up of its services and drive inward investment for new builds.

Hillier Consulting’s expertise in not-for-profit, government and social policy is a perfect fit for such a complex and wide ranging organisational and communications change programme.

AspireWest Corporate ID, communications strategy and branding by Hillier Consulting

Expertise in complex social policy issues

The charity’s mission of providing support and access to quality housing for key workers and low-income families has provided the launch-pad for its campaigns in the fight against discrimination, poverty, social injustice and the challenges faced by disadvantaged neighbourhoods. Combating so-called ‘county lines’ is one such high-profile campaign. Hillier Consulting is an established leader in the field, with Andrew Hillier having been the chief officer and prime mover behind UK local government’s Crack House (Closure) Protocol, the pragmatic application of anti-social behaviour legislation, provision of care and services for asylum seekers and the amendment to Section 8, Misuse of Drugs Act 1971 to deal with the scourge of crack houses.

Organisational and communications audit

The limited visibility of and access to support services required attention. The organisation’s provision of quality homes had become obscured amongst the other information displayed on a website which had grown beyond its original function and architecture. Involvement in multi-agency taskforces and high level parliamentary lobbying was hidden by confused messaging. Staff were spread thinly across a range of activities and responsibilities blurred. Hillier Consulting determined a communications audit would address the the symptoms but not the root cause of the problem and undertook an organisational development review.

Hillier Consulting created and delivered an integrated, multi-channel communications, engagement and public affairs strategy to support and help drive the organisation’s groundbreaking work. A new identity, brand and website have also been produced. Importantly the organisation’s work is now streamed into three complementary and mutually supportive themes, Homes, Families, Action, each with its own colour theme within the overarching group identity.

Design of the new website

Exemplified in the new AspireWest website, the functional branding is applied across social media and sets easy-to-reference information and messaging categories. The key colours visually differentiate between service provision across the organisation’s range of activities – such as home maintenance and house building, family debt counselling, literacy and health through to parliamentary lobbying and local authority policy initiatives.

This is a considered approach to a significant communications and organisational challenge and we are thrilled with the result. The step-change improvement is not just to engagement strategy and communications practice, but also to the way the organisation is perceived and is now positioned to leverage its expertise and delivery of real-world solutions to the challenges facing disadvantaged families and the homeless.

This ground-breaking project follows on from Hillier Consulting’s communications and corporate affairs leadership at Thorngate Churcher Trust which may also be explored on this website.