Background

Millions of metric tons of plastic are produced worldwide every year.  While half of this plastic waste is recycled, incinerated or discarded into landfills, a significant proportion of what remains ends up in our oceans.

In 2019 the Alliance to End Plastic Waste was founded as a non-profit organisation to help solve this serious and complex problem by encouraging companies from across the plastic value chain to become Alliance members with a commitment to invest in concerted solutions to prevent leakage and to recover and create value from plastic waste.

But, as a relatively new organisation seen to represent major global plastic-related businesses, the Alliance had a huge job to do to engage a broader range of stakeholder, from industry and investors to national local government to individuals and activists.  The Alliance had the team and expertise in place to do this, but the brand was not yet not ready to take on the challenge, so Bonsey Design was appointed to help.

Approach

We began with extensive engagement with Alliance staff, members and industry experts, from which we developed a foundation stakeholder mapping.  This provided the basis for a new brand proposition that defined the Alliance as 'the global platform for eliminating plastic waste that unites the ecosystem around urgency and impact'.

To accompany the new proposition, we refreshed the logo to better reflect the Alliance's fundamental task of eliminating plastic waste.  But the name Alliance to End Plastic Waste remained a barrier to engagement across the diverse set of stakeholder.  The name couldn't be changed, so instead we developed a short form version if it - ALL - which encapsulated the collective vision of the organisation and quickly became a shorthand in communication to express the Alliance's collaboration and can do attitude.

Results

The new identity was launched in late 2020 and has become a mainstay of the Alliance's burgeoning communications and outreach.  Within a calendar year of the brand refresh, membership had almost doubled, with an equivalent increase in the investment potential for plastic-reducing projects.