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WAVELENGTH CASE STUDY
SUMMARY
Sector:
Charity (for homeless and housebound)
Brand type: Charitable organisation
Primary Client: Tim Leech
Partner Client: Sarah Roberts, Brand Mirror
Trademark territories: 1 jurisdiction
Trademark classes: Total 2
Countries: 1 country
Languages: 1 languages
Validation types: Trademark identical, UK Charity Register, Google, URL.
BACKGROUND
In 1938, St Pancras (London) Rotary Club member Charles Stonebridge took a journey to Manchester, where he met with fellow Rotarians over lunch to discuss a service offered by the club. The club gave free radios to those who were poor and bedridden within the city. As Stonebridge travelled back home, he mulled over the prospect of setting up a similar initiative in London. However, the war intervened and it wasn’t until 1946 that ‘The Greater London Society for Providing Wireless for the Bedridden’ was founded, later abbreviating its name to Wireless for the Bedridden.
In Spring of 2005, Sarah Roberts of brand communications company Brand Mirror called us with a need to re-name W4B as it had recently also become known, following a request from Tim Leech, the charity’s CEO, who still leads the organisation in 2023. The current name had become, clearly, outdated.
PROJECT
We looked at a number of names, especially around the idea of ‘community’ and ‘communication’. WAVEBAND soon yielded WAVELENGTH which we were delighted to find was available in the charity sector. Trademark clearance revealed further issues needing to be resolved. The significant division both in terms of societal attitudes to and respect for charities and trademark classification, in addition to some deft legal work by Tom Hope of our trademark department, enabled www.Wavelength.org.uk to launch and prosper still nearly 20 years after this re-branding which Sarah Roberts and Brand Mirror completed.
