*BRAND/NEW* Plunkett UK. Supporting rural community-owned businesses.

Plunkett UK is a national charity which supports people in rural areas to set up and run a wide range of businesses in community ownership. A noble mission that the organisation has been on for over 100 years.

Community ownership is the complete antithesis of the dysfunctional for-profit economic model we seem hell-bent on, despite a constant cycle of boom-and-bust and 99% of the world’s wealth sitting with 1% of the population.

Community-owned businesses are owned and controlled by community members who have an equal say in how the business is run. They range from village shops, pubs and cafes, through to woodlands, fisheries and farms.

The truly startling thing about these businesses is that they very rarely fail. The businesses that Plunkett UK help to incept have a five-year survival rate of 99% and over twenty-year survival rate of 92%.

Working in partnership with purpose-driven communications agency, PANDA, I set about creating a new brand identity for Plunkett UK, with excitement at the prospect of helping such a useful and relevant organisation to move forward.

The centrepiece of the identity system is a new name and logotype. Following a workshopping session, it became apparent that the outgoing name – Plunkett Foundation – sent out the wrong messages. Making the subtle change to Plunkett UK means the organisation isn’t stymied by preconceived ideas around what a ‘foundation’ actually is and does.