Rethink rebrands to clarify its role5

Governance | Gareth Jones | 19 Sep 2011

Rethink has rebranded as Rethink Mental Illness as it didn’t feel its name sufficiently explained what it does.

Supported by social marketing agency Audience and brand specialist Sheila Duggan, the charity has developed a new logo, visual identity and advertising campaign.

It also has a new strapline, which is “changing attitudes, changing lives”.

The charity began life as the National Schizophrenia Fellowship in 1972 before rebranding as Rethink nine years ago.

Mark Davies, Director of Campaigns and Communications for the charity, oversaw the refresh. “Millions of people are affected by mental illness, but not enough of them know about what we can do to help.

“Part of the problem was that Rethink on its own wasn’t clear enough about what we do as organisation.”

He added: “We will be known from now on as Rethink Mental Illness. It sets out a challenge and sums up our governing idea – that society must rethink its views around mental illness.

“The use of a full stop in our logo underlines this imperative.”

Directory: Rethink

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Monica
Trustee and volunteer
SignHealth trustee and samaritans' volunteer
10 Oct 2011

I'd have preferred:
Rethink mental distress

Avoid "illness", get rid of unnecessary big/capital letters and punctuation marks.

SignHealth is the charity for Deaf people and heath. Many Deaf people have distress that may make them ill but so often it is to do with communication and the fact that most people do not know about sign languages and they have not had access to so much information that hearing people take for granted.

Samaritans offers confidential listening support and we listen to people who are in distress, with many difficult feelings, and we do respect this and the fact that there is such a broad spectrum from emotional distress to mental distress which may at some point be "illness" but let's focus on distress.

[Reply]

Judith Haire
Author
7 Oct 2011

I am not really interested in the rationale behind the use of a full stop! Mental illness is not a consumer product! For a charity which is part of an anti stigma campaign (http://www.time-to-change.org.uk) adding in "mental illness" is not particularly clever to me. "Rethink" means little on its own and as Jean Davison has said, mental distress is not always anything to do with illness. There are conditions such as psychosis which are not illnesses they are reactions to major trauma. Why not swap "mental illness" for "better health". Let's drop labels such as "mental" too many connotations of strait jackets and asylums, white coats etc. Let's drop the idea of illness and think instead of distress and then maybe we can change attitudes. By the way is anyone at Rethink Mental Illness going to tell me how much this rebranding cost?

[Reply]

Jean Davison
Author and mental health trainer/helpline worker
7 Oct 2011

I don't like the new name. Many service users, and a significant number of professionals, do not accept that mental distress, even if severe and/or given a diagnosis, is necessarily an 'illness'. The medical model, although helpful to some, is often not appropriate and has done a lot of damage to many of us. Why have a title that links into all the controversy about this and shows bias to only one viewpoint? How is this about 'changing attitudes, changing lives'?

[Reply]

PS Siu
Fundraiser
RNS
19 Sep 2011

Come to think of it, if they'd used underlining in their logo it would have better underlined the imperative, even more so than a full stop. Underlining, AND exclamation marks (why stick with one?).

No seriously, well done guys.

[Reply]

PS Siu
Fundraiser
RNS
19 Sep 2011

Commendable, but I think somebody got a little bit carried away by marketing-speak, to come out w a statement like this:
“The use of a full stop in our logo underlines this imperative.”

[Reply]

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