Global Witness - Rebrand Project Management

Project managing the creation and launch of a clear brand narrative, identity and website for Global Witness.

See and Speak Truth

The Scenario

Global Witness is an investigative, campaigning organisation. They expose how the industries fuelling the climate crisis profit from destruction, and stand with the people fighting back to defend their communities and their rights.

After being founded 30 years ago, NGO Global Witness informs the news that we all consume and the impact of its campaigning and policy work is felt across the world. Now, their work focuses on the climate crisis, specifically deforestation, disinformation, fossil fuels, transition minerals and land and environmental defenders. Their brand refresh seeks to strengthen their identity, campaigning and fundraising - reinforcing their values and engaging the public.

Their website also needed a rebuild and content review. With over 5,000 pages on the old website, content was difficult to find and it lacked a clear content structure - it needed an improved user journey and new content types so readers could navigate clearly through campaigns of interest.

The Process

Creating a brand strategy

In August 2023, I started project managing the rebrand and website redesign - starting with the strategy and messaging work. Working with Leeds based agency, Something More - we delved into the positioning of Global Witness and how to succinctly describe their purpose. Through workshopping we landed on the personality traits of ‘forensic insight’ and ‘daring grit’, being the ‘grown up in the room’ in the climate fight.

This personality led into the identity work.

Collaborative working and testing

As we needed to ensure the brand represented every strand of work and the community that’s affected by the climate crisis, we set up a creative council of stakeholders for getting feedback on the messaging and identity, influencing the final brand concept. These were ran through one to one interviews online.

We also set up an internal brand squad, with representatives from each campaign and office feeding into the brand strategy, content types and visual identity. This meant that we got internal buy-in for each stage, and we explained the decision-making process behind every phase.

Brand identity

Continuing our work with Something More, they created a concept that retained the core colour pallet, but made it more urgent, ownable and created a logo which represented both the investigative and campaigning aspects of Global Witness - a symbol of ‘see and speak truth’

Content strategy

Whilst working on the brand identity, we worked on the content strategy for the website - auditing the full 5,000+ pages of the existing website and interrogating each page to determine whether it needs to be kept as it is, rewritten, archived or merged with another page.

Once the audit was completed, we planned the new content out into each content type and started to manually migrate the content into the newly built website, ensuring that pages were optimised and accessible.

Website build

Once the brand identity was approved, we began on the website design, ensuring it stuck true to the brand identity and improved the user experience and accessibility. Working with the digital agency Hactar, they built a new site in Wagtail which hit the specifics that the Global Witness team required to futureproof their content needs.

The website was then fully tested, populated and checked before go-live.

Launch and embedding the brand

The website and brand launched in February 2024, and ahead of the launch we needed to ensure that all teams at Global Witness understood the rebrand, and how to use it in their daily role.

I created a comprehensive training plan including: introducing the brand, writing as Global Witness, writing for the website, how to design as Global Witness, multi-media training, using the new website. These sessions were run by the internal leads for each area, and the training plan and launch communications were planned and circulated for two months before launch, to ensure that everyone had time to digest the information and attend their relevant training sessions.

PR

I worked with Something More and Global Witness to create the press release for launching the brand to the creative industries, and creating an internal FAQ document for internal leads in case they had any questions from stakeholders and donors.

I ran core launch planning sessions in the run-up to the launch to ensure that all offices and external engagement leads were updating their audiences and answering any questions that they might have.

What they said about working with me

“Emily has been project managing a number of major brand, digital and editorial projects for us, and I can honestly say I don’t know what we would have done without her! She has slotted right into the team and managed everything impeccably. She is always several steps ahead, pre-empting issues we hadn’t even spotted yet.

“Emily is so easy to work with and feels like she is a member of the team, and colleagues outside of the core projects teams have come to know and trust her too. No issue ever seems to faze her and she is always upbeat and normally has a range of possible solutions up her sleeve! I wouldn’t hesitate in the slightest to recommend Emily. “

Ariel Haber, Head of Brand and Content, Global Witness