Over the past few years, Age UK has gone through a period of great change – from navigating the COVID-19 pandemic, to welcoming our new CEO in 2022 –and more recently launching a new charity strategy.
So, it was the right time to look at our brand, to refocus and articulate what we are doing now to support older people, and to define our vision for the future.
Our first step was to listen – to what older people thought of us and what they wanted us to be, how our partners and colleagues felt about the ways we presented ourselves, and how the public perceived us. We conducted 35 focus groups and 43 in-depth conversations with colleagues, current and potential service users, donors and volunteers. Working with our creative agency, Neverland, we spent almost a year examining those responses in depth to chart where we were with our brand, and the challenges we needed to address.
Reflecting our charity strategy
Next, we needed to make sure our brand accurately reflects why Age UK exists and what we’re here to do. We know that people are living longer, and by 2050, a quarter of the UK population will be over the age of 65. Yet every day, millions of older people are living lives of loneliness and isolation, poverty and ill health.
Age UK’s new five-year charity strategy is clear in the need and the ambition to bring that number down, by working nationally and locally alongside local Age UKs.
Our strategy sets three main objectives for our work:
- Transforming attitudes to ageing.
- Tackling poverty and inequalities.
- Ensuring health and care needs are met.
These overarching goals are key to forming our refreshed brand.
‘Let’s change how we age’
That’s our new brand strapline, and we feel it’s at the heart of everything we’re trying to do as a charity. It recognises that our society needs to change its thinking around what ageing should look like. Because it should never look like an older person choosing between eating or heating because of the persistence of the cost-of-living crisis, waiting weeks for an essential appointment with their GP, or spending months with no one to talk to. And that’s the reality for too many older people right now.
‘Let’s change how we age’ reflects our ambition to continue to change the lives of older people in need right now, as well as our commitment to working together with communities, partners and the Government to make those systemic changes that will ensure older people are not left behind and forgotten.
You can help us change older people’s lives – now and in the future
Our refreshed brand grounds us in the reality of ‘now’ while pointing us in the direction of where we want to be – we’re realistic about the challenges older people face but we’re optimistic for a future where all older people are valued and included.
We hope it’ll help start a national conversation about what kind of later life we want to have. Most of us put off thinking about being older because, quite frankly, it scares us. But it needn’t – if we can commit to making the UK a better place to grow older both for ourselves, and for society as a whole.
This change isn’t something Age UK can do alone, nor would we want to. We need everyone to start talking about ageing, start thinking about what it means for you and your family, and to believe that together we can make the changes necessary to ensure that older age is not something to be afraid of but to embrace.
Let’s do it together. Let’s change how we age.
