Workforce Collective

The Niagara Workforce Planning Board has served the Niagara Region for decades under a data-centric mandate that worked to capture insights and trends about work in Niagara. Through visionary thinking, leadership and collaboration, the current roster of professionals at the helm considered what that data could mean and do. How could they turn these insights from data on paper to calls for action, drivers of change, encouragements of good work and more?

Enter Hughes&Co. We joined them in a collaborative thinking process that dug deep, considered every element of the future of this organization and ultimately led to a renamed, rebranded and well-strategized deployment plan for communications moving forward. We found that one of the biggest challenges was a fundamental misunderstanding of what they do, what they could do and why they do it. Workforce Collective better captures the broader mission of the organization, and through their work with us and other partners they have developed a brand ecosystem that will serve them well for the decades of good and important service to come.

Hughes&Co designed the brand to align with the future focused concept of their work. How does this organization thrive in the coming years? We paid homage to their foundation in data and research, including the circle because there is no corner in their work — it is collaborative and open. Dialogue is central to their service. The colours feel inclusive and are a jump-off from the blue that felt overused in their immediate market. We are so happy with this beautiful and truly representative result.

Results

Workforce Collective is an exciting result following an extensive and conversation-centric process of discovery in learning who this organization is and where they are going. The process focused on how do we take an organization that has existed for decades under a name that doesn't serve them and transform the conversation about them to refocus on what they actually do and can do.

Research began with a look at who they are and have been, what had been written, who they talked to, where they are featured and in what context have they been discussed. We found some core themes to the conversation about the organization and built a survey around those to find out if the published conversations reflected the broader conversations. Armed with lots of information we began turning those ideas into the basis of concepts for renaming and rebranding the organization. This process took us through the evolution of many early-stage themes and thinking all the way to the final concept that you see today in their brand.

The challenge with rebranding as reinvention is that it requires a supported communications framework to truly deliver. We worked to build a strategy that focuses on core channels for information delivery, the brand application in aesthetic, tone and voice for each channel and how these channels can/will evolve with the use of a variety of communications mediums (written, visual, video). From there we built out supporting narrative elements to ensure that the whole brand story reaches the intended audiences and built taglines to support the new brand, colouring the concept with some context.

We loved working with Workforce Collective and are so happy with the resulting brand. Such a fun opportunity for us.