The Not Forgotten

Background
A military charity who have been combatting the causes of loneliness and isolation that affect the wounded, injured, sick and disabled members of the Armed Forces community for almost 100 years.

Brief
Undertake a total brand refresh to modernise the charity, while celebrating their rich heritage.

Established in 1920 by Miss Marta Cunningham, the charity was formed following a visit to a WWI hospital in 1919 where she was surprised to find hundreds of injured veterans still lying in beds here and up and down the country, all but forgotten by society. She started to organise tea parties, concerts and outings, and soon the ‘NOT FORGOTTEN’ Association was born. Within a year, 10,000 men had been entertained.

After almost 100 years, the charity still remains absolutely true to the founder’s original principles. What was identified, however, was the need for a clearer, more consistent brand image to better communicate their aims and outputs with the public, beneficiaries and partners. The centenary in 2020 provided an ideal time to make this change and look forward to the future.

Solution
After undertaking an in-​​depth discovery phase – meeting beneficiaries, attending events, interviewing stakeholders, auditing the brand, researching the charity’s history and the origins of the elephant in the logo – two things were very clear: 1) the elephant should remain and 2) the values and ethos of the Not Forgotten must not be changed.

With these valuable insights, we focused on carefully redrawing the beloved elephant roundel, which has been in place for the past century, so it looked proud and modern, and turned it to face forward into the future. We developed a new key message of ‘Proudly Not Forgotten’ and dropped the word ‘Association’ to further focus on this message. We chose a strong military green as the primary colour, which acted as a striking background for the campaign images shot by photographer Peter Zownir. We built a new website, designed to showcase the work the charity does in a clear and concise way, with clear call to actions.

The rebrand has clearly distinguished the Not Forgotten from other military charities, concisely communicating the important work the charity has carried out over the last century, and will continue to do so into the next.

To discover more about our work, drop us a line at seathinking@​seadesign.​com