In order to immerse ourselves in SFHA, and its audiences, IE undertook a comprehensive qualitative and quantitative research exercise, including:

• Staff and Board away day sessions
• Member panels and interviews
• Stakeholder interviews
• Members' online survey
• Review of existing communications and messaging frameworks

The research revealed a complex picture. While SFHA was well-respected as the collective voice of the sector and valued for their knowledge and guidance, several important challenges emerged.

The positives:

• Strong reputation as the collective voice of the sector
• Seen as essential for liaising with government and regulators
• Valued for knowledge, guidance, and support
• By far the majority across all audiences rated SFHA's reputation 'excellent' or 'good'

The challenges:

• Low awareness of specific campaigning activities
• Brand personality lacked distinctiveness – people only recalled 'blue and yellow'
• Communications tendency to deflect attention away from SFHA toward members and sector
• Unclear whether SFHA should engage more with the public to reshape perceptions of social housing.

Our brand recommendations included:

Embrace their own identity
SFHA had developed a habit of immediately diverting attention toward members rather than celebrating their own achievements. We recommended greater confidence in telling SFHA's story alongside the sector's, making it clear why society needs SFHA, not just social housing, showcasing SFHA's value rather than simply promoting the sector.

Discover their brand personality
Stakeholders wanted to see SFHA evolve from thorough to imaginative, anxious to confident, reactive to proactive, and from useful to indispensable. This pointed toward a bolder, more active personality that already existed within the team but needed channeling into communications and visual identity. The new brand needed to convey energy, renewed momentum, and organisational confidence while balancing professional excellence with warmth.

Turn Up the Dial
Rather than revolutionary change, SFHA needed to evolve – speaking louder and prouder, acting with greater urgency and conviction. This meant using compelling present-tense language, celebrating success through stories and statistics, being completely transparent about capabilities, and creating more engaging content formats like videos, animations, and infographics.

We also recommended broadening member engagement beyond senior management to reach frontline staff, considering increased public engagement to influence perceptions of social housing, and making the most of SFHA's 50th anniversary as a vehicle to showcase their transformative work.

It was agreed that the new SFHA identity needed to:

• Create a new logo/marque based on the letters SFHA
• Differ sufficiently from the existing SFHA logo to signal change and progression
• Be vibrant and dynamic, conveying energy and renewed momentum
• Demonstrate the scale and scope of SFHA's work
• Project heritage, impact, credibility, and expertise
• Work for both designers and non-designers across professional applications and everyday tools
• Embody the desired personality: imaginative, confident, modern, expert, brave, focused, proactive, collaborative, leading, engaging, and agile
• Balance professional excellence with warmth (capturing head and heart)

We illustrated how design outputs like the website homepage, advertising, statistics and data visualisations, stationery, editorial content, and social media might look with the new identity. Demonstrating versatility by showing how the identity could be applied across both print and digital channels, maintaining consistency while allowing flexibility. The result was a comprehensive identity framework which finally makes SFHA look and sound as good as they are, while support their new organisational strategy and honouring a 50-year heritage.

Because SFHA had invested in research and identity design, it made sense to actively protect their investment through a detailed brand guidelines document which records best practice. This will provide clear guidance to internal designers and any agencies who subsequently create collateral for the new brand.

The new website and membership portal work seamlessly with the refreshed brand identity, ensuring SFHA's digital platforms reflect the confident, professional, and engaging personality established through the brand evolution process.

Read our full case study for the SFHA website