Why should I listen to Community Radio?

Our Client

Winchester Radio, an entirely volunteer-led charity has been operating as a well-loved hospital radio station in some form for over 50 years, initially from studios in Southampton and more recently from Royal Hampshire County Hospital in Winchester. Previously known as Winchester Hospital Radio, the station enabled patients to listen to comforting and uplifting music programmes 24 hours a day and make requests for their favourite songs when the radio station’s volunteers visited the wards.


Why a rebrand?

In July 2016 the Trustees of the Charity were granted a licence from Ofcom enabling them to broadcast to the wider community in Winchester and surrounding villages as well as to hospital patients. The aim, with the support of the local NHS Trust, was to promote positive ageing to the over 50s in the area, encouraging older residents to engage in an active lifestyle and join in with community activities to reduce loneliness and isolation and to help to prevent or slow down some of the reasons for going into hospital in the first place.

Although patients and their families were familiar with, and very supportive of, the hospital radio station, the wider community was not so familiar with it. Therefore, before the launch in March 2019, a rebrand was necessary. The aims of a rebrand were to:

  • Establish Winchester Radio as a community radio station, with a wider audience than the hospital patients
  • Create a new logo and identity that would stand out as something new to represent the expansion of the audience reach while retaining the values of the charity

How and What we created

Carl Lamerton was the Creative Designer focusing on imagery, and Trustees and volunteers for the radio station, worked on copy and language. We worked together to employ a customer-centric approach to brand development which involves getting under the skin of a brand and what it means to their customers so that brand images, and marketing copy and collateral resonate with the audience of Winchester Radio.

Our process included:

  • A lively workshop with Trustees and other volunteers to distil the values of the charity and its broadened remit, to enable the creation of the new brand identity and key messages that captured the ethos of what the organisation was about, to help to engage a wider audience of residents and local businesses and organisations aimed at the over 50s in the area.
  • Client interaction as images and language was developed
  • The creation of new logo image to represent the radio station’s identity in warm yet professional colours that evoked a sense of community, broadcasting and the city’s royal history that really summed up everything from the team in the workshop
  • Branding the website with the new imagery
  • Development of messaging for language and copy for marketing collateral, which worked with the logo to crystallise the key words that described Winchester Radio: community, entertainment, belonging and loving life!

Impact of the rebrand

Winchester Radio hit the airwaves in March 2019 on 94.7FM - and digitally online from the newly branded website: www.winchester.radio, with a launch party attended by the charity’s volunteers, supporters, the Mayor of Winchester and local businesses, including Lamerton Creative.

According to the Trustees:

 ‘Since then, the station has gone from strength to strength and has had a key role to play in keeping people informed, engaged and connected during the pandemic. Through a team of dedicated volunteers, it broadcasts weekly church services for those unable to attend in person, does interviews with local charities and individuals, covers Winchester activities, and provides local news as well as plenty of great music. The small charity relies on and is always grateful for financial support from the community and businesses, be it through donations or via paid advertising….

Volunteer numbers have trebled in recent years and the station won ‘Innovative Radio Station of the Year’ and ‘Best Female Presenter’ in the Hospital Broadcasting Association’s annual awards in 2021. All these activities, plus the station’s social media presence, requests for donations and volunteer recruitment drives are done in line with the charitable objectives of the organisation, and all have been helped by the guiding principles of the brand which Lamerton Creative helped to bring to life.’


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