Youth cancer support organisation CanTeen has refreshed its look and logo to show people it’s not just a ‘kids with cancer’ organisation.
While supporting young people aged between 12-24 who have been affected by cancer, whether they be themselves, their siblings or their parents, Peter Orchard, CanTeen CEO told B&T it’s been really hard to shake the misconception it’s just an organisation for ‘kids with cancer’.
“There’s still a huge gap, and even though we’ve been going out with National Bandanna Day and the last three years I’ve certainly been saying it in every press interview I’ve done and we’ve gone out many, many times with brochures and so on, there’s still this misconception,” he said.
“If you ask someone, ‘do you know CanTeen?’ they either know bandannas or ‘kids with cancer’.
“It’s been really hard to break that incorrect understanding.”
The organisation launched a survey of 2200 people to see how the brand was perceived and the results showed two thirds of those surveyed didn’t know CanTeen worked with both offspring and siblings as well as patients, said Orchard.
To turn this perception around, the thirty year-old brand has launched a new brand campaign and switched up its logo for a new, more clean cut one.
The new logo, created in partnership with marketing agency Behaviour Change Partners, will be rolled out across all collateral, including the organisation’s iconic bandannas for this year’s National Bandanna Day. The new tagline is ‘Cancer’s different in a young person’s world’.
One aspect of the refresh Orchard said they’re focusing on is to show the older demographic – those aged between 18 and 24 – that CanTeen is available for them and not just the younger teenagers.
Changing up the logo was a key point in this goal, as the old logo was seen to be a little childish and of the times when it was created a few decades ago.
“The brand we’ve gone for is a brand we think works better with that older demographic in terms of looking a bit more funky, a bit more polished, a bit more sophisticated than the original CanTeen brand,” said Orchard.
The brand is also launching a cinema ad to target all demographics.
“The idea of a cinema ad is it really strongly reinforces this idea that we are here for offspring, siblings, bereaved, patients and former patients,” explained Orchard.
“Because it’s in a cinema we can run it for 60 seconds, it allows us to really make it clear who we’re talking about.”
And laying over a track from 90s hip hop band Hilltop Hoods is another way the brand is trying to engage the older market.
Another point Orchard said they’re reinforcing, is that offspring who have, or had, a parent with cancer, or who lost a parent to cancer, know the service is available.
Of the new brand campaign, Behaviour Change Partners’ principal, Paul Fishlock, said: “The more time we spent with CanTeen the more we understood CanTeen’s unique combination of experienced professionalism and youthful energy. Members are a big part of all major decisions and a majority of the Board are under 25.
“Our challenge was to capture CanTeen’s spirit in a brand idea that worked across the organisation and would address the popular misconception that CanTeen is just for young people with cancer.
“With the help of director Tim Gibbs, production company Heckler and the Hilltop Hoods, the ‘Cancer’s different in a young person’s world’ campaign finally takes this incredible organisation to the outside world.”
