The London Borough of Merton

The Client: The London Borough of Merton

The London Borough of Merton has a diverse local population. Within the borough, extreme affluence sits alongside extreme deprivation. Over 25% of residents are from ethnic minorities and vast numbers of different languages are spoken. Families tend to be transient and there are significant numbers of identified, yet underserved groups. These local challenges led to Merton being one of a number of Local Authorities awarded Government funding to redesign their suite of family support activities and position them under one overarching “Family Hub” brand.

What are family hubs?

Family Hubs are a new concept developed as a direct response to the knowledge that families often need support throughout the entirety of childhood years – from conception through to the age of 19 (or to age 24 with additional needs). Yet current service provisions tend to operate in silos, with no cohesion between each step of the journey.

By bringing all of the support services together under one “hub”, families and young people can benefit from greater access, connections and relationships with the service partners offering the support, help and advice they need for all stages of family life.

The Family and Education departments within the Council that were responsible for designing the new hub were committed to developing a brand that their local community would buy into and engage with. They knew a co-design project approach would help to meet that goal and asked Keystone to orchestrate a brand development programme with this ethos at its heart.

The Challenge: Create a brand identity that repositions the borough-run family services under one umbrella – the Merton Family Hub – and appeals to local residents and is representative of the borough’s unique diversity.

Despite its name, the Merton Family Hub is not one single place. It is a mix of physical Family Hub buildings, online information, and outreach via other sites such as children’s centres, youth centres and libraries. With limited current cohesion between the 24 local service delivery partners, the Family Hub would align but not change this service offer.

Our challenge was to curate a brand identity that would work across multiple services and locations, be unique to Merton, and engage diverse users and service providers. Initially, we were tasked with delivering two main projects:

1. Brand development: Develop a strong visual identity for the Merton Family Hub that would be embraced by everyone and provide the internal comms team with all the assets and guidance they need to fully embed the new brand.
2. Campaign rollout: Create a marketing and communications campaign plan to support the rollout of the new Merton Family Hub concept, explaining what it is and its benefits.

The Solution: Undertake equal engagement with internal stakeholders, external partners and the local community to ensure that all parties feel seen and heard in the creative process.

Co-design at the core
It was clear that a co-design process would ensure that all parties had an opportunity to participate in the development of the brand. Getting buy-in throughout the creative process would not only unlock the insight that we required, but it would also pay dividends during the rollout and increase the likelihood of creating a strong emotional connection with the brand.

Community engagement was key
Workshops and focus groups with our stakeholders and family hub users helped to gauge feelings about the important elements for a new overarching brand. With this understanding, we were then ready to test logo concepts, photography and messaging proposals directly with the local community during a dedicated Consultation Week. Over 100 responses uncovered some clear and powerful insights for the design team, and gave respondents a sense of ownership of the final identity. The involvement of local people also created local community champions who would assist with spreading the message about the Merton Family Hub and its purpose.

A soft launch built wider awareness
The new Merton Family Hub brand had a soft launch to the local community in the summer of 2023. The launch was supported by a marketing and communication campaign plan, created by Keystone for the internal comms team to deliver through their existing local channels.

Merton Family Hub Play Day, August 2023

And new opportunities came…

The rollout of the Merton Family Hub is an on-going transformation project. Tasked with delivering a great deal of change within a short space of time, the delivery team within the Council soon identified another area where they were in need of further marketing and communications specialist support.

Keen to maximise awareness of the vision for the Merton Family Hub and increase opportunities for collaboration between the service partners, we helped the team plan and deliver a partnership engagement event. Held in January 2024, it was attended by over 70 partners, representing the 24 support services as well as other partner organisations. Our number one focus for the event was on ensuring that everyone who is part of Merton’s Family Hub delivery felt informed, ready and excited by the change. On the day itself, facilitated by Keystone’s Hayley Williams and Katherine Hesketh, we provided numerous opportunities for networking alongside information sharing and interactive workshopping activities. Attendee feedback was hugely positive with many commenting about how excited they were to be part of the Family Hub transformation.

2024 Merton Family Hubs Partners Conference, January 2024

And along came another brand asset – the creation of a visual pledge

Soon after the partnership engagement event, we helped the team create a brand new and crucial piece of marketing – a visual representation of the Merton Family Hub. Led once again using a co-design model, the customised illustration with limited use of text shows how families, young people, community partners and wider services would want to experience, and be part of, the Merton Family Hub. The image proudly and clearly represents the diversity of the local area, and the broad mix of families and young people who will use the hub. Having a visual and highly accessible representation of the hub to share with families and young people as well as service delivery partners, was hugely important for the borough; as part of their overall commitment to connecting families and young people with access to help when and where they need it.

 Client testimonial

Merton has worked with Keystone since early 2023. Their innovation and creativity has supported Merton to produce what we feel, is a warm and welcoming Family Hub visual identity. Keystone has delivered in a variety of ways, from the rebranding of our social media account to the hosting of a large-scale partnership engagement event.

 

Hayley and Katherine were always very helpful and flexible and whenever faced with a challenge, they were solution focused in their approach. Most recently, our work with Keystone has culminated in the creation of ‘Merton Family Hub Vision’. This was co-produced with young people and parents input and provides a visual reflection of the way in which families and partner services in Merton will experience and be part of our Family Hub offer.

Merton Family Hub Transformation Team