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What are their main brands?

The 'corporate brand' is Meningitis Research Foundation itself.

The purpose of a brand is to represent an identity and an image and for a charity this is as important as for a profit making business. The brand image for a charity has to represent trust and integrity - the Foundation are asking people to give up their money - not in return for a product or service which they might benefit from directly as is the case with most profit making businesses - but to provide benefits to others who the giver is unlikely to know or ever meet. As such, the Foundation must ensure that the public as a whole trusts the organisation to use the money they receive wisely and to ensure that as much of it as possible is used to carry out the Foundation's stated aims.

Elements of the Foundation's brand are the name, the use of the corporate colours, the logo - a stylised microscope, the distinctive icon of the little boy used in symptoms materials, the meningococcal bacteria design, and the charity's typeface. The whole aims to represent the caring aspect of the charity as well as its research focus.

In addition to the main brand, the Foundation has sought to develop a range of 'brands' associated with particular programmes of their work - again the aim is to provide some means of helping people to recognise the Foundation and the message it is trying to put across.

For example, one enduring message has been the strapline 'Race Against Time'. The message has been used on a variety of media and is designed to get across the message about how important time is in not only recognising the symptoms but also in treating patients to prevent fatalities and serious disabilities as a result of contracting the condition. If the public come to associate the phrase 'Race Against Time' with meningitis or Meningitis Research Foundation, then the 'branding' has been successful.

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