Improving recycling through effective communications: Branding and Message

Having identified your target audiences and their needs you need to develop your brand and message. This section will help you develop your communications brand and its identity, the tone of voice for your communications and explains how to link to the national Recycle Now campaign brand to get the most out of it. It uses some of the most recent research into people’s barriers to recycling and looks at the implications for messaging.

Branding encompasses concepts such as identity, personality, promise and visual identity:

• Identity is the outward expression (name and visual appearance) of a company or campaign.
• Personality is the assignment of human personality traits, e.g., seriousness, warmth, or imagination, to a brand.
• The promise is the experience consumers should expect from all interactions with the brand e.g., your recycling collection services.
• The visual identity is the overall look and feel of the brand – the images used, the style and design.

Brands and identities are easy to produce but can be hard to get right. Developing the right brand for recycling communications is something in which a great deal of time, research and effort has been invested to get right.

Explore other pages in the report:

• Improving recycling through effective communications
• Background
• Situational analysis
• Aims and objectives
• Target audience
• Strategy & communication methods
• Communication activities
• Scheduling & costing activities
• Monitoring & evaluation
• Conclusion