Environmental Defenders Office

Challenge

Since 1985, the independent branches of the Environmental Defenders Office, ‘EDO’, have been empowering communities and protecting the Australian environment through legal advice, public-interest litigation, and lobbying for law and policy reform.

Recent federal funding cuts have left many of the EDO offices struggling for funding, restricting their ability to advise, represent and educate Australian communities and fight for their interests in the area of environmental law. Working as independent branches was no longer a sustainable model for the EDO and so steps had to be taken to bring them under one national umbrella organisation that could mobilise new audiences to take action to support the EDO’s work.

Approach

The decision was made to merge the offices, bringing them under a united, strong and distinctive national identity and structure that could mobilise new audiences to take action to support the EDO’s work.

While the rebrand was designed to be supporter-centred and focused on engagement with a view to boost supporters and fundraising, it was crucial that the new brand and website be representative of all aspects of EDO’s work. 

Theory of Change

We will engage internal and external stakeholders to gather insights and drive consensus around the new brand direction to develop a professional and accessible brand that will act as the foundation of the organisation across its many audiences in order to merge existing brands and websites into one, digital destination that highlights all the work EDO does, ultimately driving discovery and donations. 

Environmental Defenders Office and Purpose worked together to reposition its brand to  increase community involvement & support whilst enhancing the existing reputation that the organisation had built amongst key professional industries & communities.

Purpose created a new logo & identity system that functions as a strong visual representation of EDO’s work and reflects the key brand attributes of nature, justice and protection. The new brand unites the eight state-based offices under one new distinctive brand.

Logo 

Purpose created a fresh new logo to represent EDO under one united national identity. The logo needed to reflect the legal and environmental mission of EDO, in a style that was clean, sophisticated and approachable.

Brand Guidelines

With a variety of different communication channels, as well as multiple offices across the country, EDO needed a strong, but flexible brand system that could fit their many needs. 
Purpose provided a set of brand guidelines that specified everything from logo application to photography to color palette.

Purpose designed and developed the new national website, combining all relevant information from key state offices into one hero location. With a strong focus on driving public donations, the UX drove a clear supporter journey and provided key information upfront. The websites design strongly reflects the new brand identity; inviting viewers in through beautiful Australia wide photography, lots of clean space, and the accented brand green to call viewers to action.

With the need for a dynamic backend, the CMS was created with a lot of flexibility
allowing staff to easily add new content, create tags, insert action and donation blocks, and edit photography.

Purpose worked with EDO to provide visual mockups of how the new brand could come to life across a variety of everyday collateral. From a launch pull-up banner, to their annual report to a letterhead template, we refreshed everything with the sophisticated new brand look.

Campaign Highlights

• • Two full-day workshops with EDO core team, 20+ stakeholder interviews and a survey of over 50 members of the public ensured insights and consensus at every point of the process

• • The development of a distinctive visual and verbal identity that can flex across the many audiences, both public and professional, as well as allowing a local, national and global conversation 

• • Designed, developed and deployed a user-centric website that combined all required information from key state offices into one hero location that clearly communicated the work of the organisation and drove a clear supporter journey

Campaign Impact

As a result of the launch, EDO and its new brand was featured in over 170 print and online stories about the  launch and first cases, representing a reach of over 2 million people.  National EDO was also featured in 150 television and radio broadcast items, representing a reach of over 1 million Australians.

The donor response to the merger and launch resulted in more than $300,000 raised over the launch period.  This represents an increase of 40%+ on the combined appeal income of all EDOs in the previous year.

The campaign directly reached more than 100,000 people on Facebook, with 35,000 engagements and 30,000 likes. On Twitter over 150K tweet impressions for @EDOLawyers, & over 10K followers across all Twitter channels. 

Overall, the project repositioned EDO towards community involvement & support whilst enhancing the existing reputation that the organisation has built amongst key professional industries & communities.