
Hc-One & Wellbeing Club
Reinventing the care home and wellbeing experience
- Brand Strategy
- Brand Identity
- Naming
- Design
- Messaging
- Copy Writing
- Tone of Voice
- Illustration
- Uniform and launch collateral
The UK’s largest care company had an ambitious growth plan. The HC-One brand, however, was really holding them back. Cold and clinical, the brand simply wasn’t connecting with key audiences. In a heavily regulated sector that already struggles with retention of staff, root and stem change was required.
We defined a new vision and simple philosophy about care, rejecting the standard jargon and impersonal approach for something completely transformative. Far more than a simple rebrand, The Kind Care Company is an entirely new philosophy, informing how the company behaves — nurturing staff and residents, and setting a high bar for the industry as a whole.

ODA’s work had a profound effect on the business. I’ve been working in this sector for 20 years and I’ve never seen the sort of feedback this has generated. Everyone I’ve introduced the new brand to tells me it’s turned HC-One into an outstanding sector-leading brand. We get people applying for jobs who tell us the very reason why they’re here is because they buy into our kindness-first philosophy.
Emma Charlton Marketing Director HC-OneNEW BRAND VISION AND VALUES WITH KINDNESS AT HEART
We worked closely with HC One to embed the new values into the culture. Together, we built positive connections between residents and staff. We also redefined the brand architecture to create a more local experience by flipping the hierarchy to lead with home name and statement ‘belonging to the Kind Care Company’.

SIMPLE SENSORIAL BRAND IDENTITY
Care is emotional, it’s all about feelings, so we created a sensorial brand. An ownable hand drawn font and simple ink illustrations bring a genuine feeling of warmth and humanity to the identity.
We retained the brand’s recognisable orange brand colour but introduced a new sensorial colour palette.

HUMANISING THE LANGUAGE OF CARE
We championed the use of familiar language that people would both understand but also feel. Instead of sector jargon like ‘respite’ we named it ‘a little break’.
In a sector first, rather than the usual facts and figures approach, we introduced authentic stories that demonstrated the care ethos in a way that people could feel. We worked with a fantastic older novelist who spent time in our homes observing and talking to staff and residents and understood the sensitivity.

GALVANISING INTERNAL TEAMS
Attraction and retention of staff in care is the hardest part to get right. When you do it’s life-changing for residents. We provided carers with name badges that included unexpected facts about them to encourage more meaningful interactions with residents.
‘Rachel, Champion Knitter’ was stopped so often to discuss her knitting that she started to carry some with her to show people during their chats. It was a simple idea that really helped to galvanise Colleagues behind the idea of kindness.
Many of the brand’s carers were younger, so we added a tag to the door to give information that allowed them to see beyond age to the people the residents used to be.


REDEFINING THE BRAND EXPERIENCE
With kindness as our simple guide we designed a new brand experience bringing that to life in every touchpoint, from the choice of music playing in homes to the books available in receptions, even the soap in the toilets and the names of the communal rooms.
Visit an HC-One care home today and you will find they get the little things right like the welcome experience, and bright, fresh flowers in reception.



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Sector-leading brand with increase in applicants and staff retention
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Wellbeing Club rolled out across 300 homes and reinvigorated staff and residents
REINVENTING WELLBEING IN CARE
We continued working with HC-One to examine what meaningful lives look like in a care home, initiating a cultural shift that focused on the promotion of individual wellbeing through a range of activities that genuinely enhanced mind, body and soul.
To succeed it needed to work for residents will all needs and interests and be easily on-boarded and implemented. We ran workshops with leading dementia care experts and interviewed over 20+ Activities Co-ordinators for insight into the challenges they faced and to understand the logistics and constraints.


A POSITIVE HAPPY CLUB EXPERIENCE
First we reframed the role of ‘activities co-ordinators’ and worked with HC-One to change the role and job description to Wellbeing Club Leaders as this was pivotal in creating the change we wanted to see.
Then we created a full toolkit to re-engage Wellbeing Colleagues with the role and inspire them to see the potential impact of their role in the lives of the Residents living in the home.

Each home has one or two Wellbeing Club Leaders but they rarely get the opportunity to meet each other for advice and sharing. To help create a thriving wellbeing community we created a closed Facebook page and invited Wellbeing Club Leaders to share ideas and experiences. It’s now a thriving engaged community of over 400 people nationwide.

I was a bit nervous about taking a completely new culture to an established group of hard-pressed people who’d been doing their jobs for years without intervention — but the most experienced people haven’t felt talked down to, they feel we’ve given them a new way of thinking. I’m really passionate about what ODA have done for us — they did a remarkable job
Emma Charlton Marketing Director HC-One