Students Supporting Street Kids (SSSK)

Introduction

Students Supporting Street Kids (SSSK) is a nonprofit organization based in the United Kingdom which seeks to 1) raise funds for international organizations that provide humanitarian aid to children in difficult circumstances, and 2) raise awareness about the plight of the millions of children all over the world who are struggling to survive a difficult and dangerous life on the streets. The organization has a number of branches at universities in the United Kingdom: Bristol University, Cambridge University, Durham University, Edinburgh University, and University of Oxford.  SSSK works with NGOs in developing countries such as Ecuador, India, Ethiopia, Columbia, and Serbia.

Overview

This case demonstrates the potential of logo design and alternate branding strategies to enhance an organization's capacity for fundraising and, ultimately, the distribution of aid.

Brand/Domain Names

The organization’s name is Students Supporting Street Kids, commonly abbreviated by the organization as “SSSK.” The domain name used is www.SSSK.org.uk. Although the brand is not composed of common key words, it is short and meaningful as an acronym. However, the domain name has only average mnemonic qualities. The effectiveness of the organization’s branding strategy can be maximized though the use of an “alternate” domain name strategy. That is, a more memorable domain name could be used in addition to the current domain name for use in any advertising, public relations, or word-of-mouth communication as a way to more effectively drive traffic to their website.  We therefore recommended that the organization use the very memorable StreetKid.org.uk. While the ideal StreetKids.org.uk was not available, StreetKid.org.uk is highly mnemonic, very meaningful, easily communicable, composed of very common keywords, and – importantly – currently unregistered.

Organization Logo

SSSK’s logo is good in concept, but would benefit from a professional redesign to better represent the organization.  The organization’s current logo is as follows:

Our redesign of the logo similarly advances a theme of hope for children living on the street:

The logo uses 1) an uncommon but meaningful font, 2) the substitution of a graphic image for a letter ("K") in the name, and 3) supplementary graphic images (the sun) which associate positive meaning with the brand. The following major brands use some of the same logo design techniques:

          

                             

                                         

Website Design

The current design of SSSK website is simple and effective. However, we recommended a number of changes to the design of SSSK.org.uk which would work to improve the appearance of the site and correspondingly, the interest, popularity, and success of the site. The current homepage appears as follows:

The organization could implement some simple and effective modifications to the website which would boost the legitimacy and authority of the site. The elements of this new design strategy are as follows:

• Use the new logo provided above on the site.
• Increase the use of digital images on the site. Currently there is only one image of a street child which is used throughout the site. The organization could perhaps increase awareness of the difficulties of living and working as a street child with more high-resolution photographs illustrating the children’s living and working conditions.
• Use a professional graphic image for the "welcome to the SSSK site" home page header;  Re-word it as "Welcome to SSSK".
• Make the “Awareness” and “NGOs” pages easier to navigate by implementing header links to content further down on the page, or links to separate pages.
• Update the color scheme to the brighter shade of blue used in the new logo.