The Well Collaborative

The Well Collaborative is a partnership between the WA Department of Health, WA Primary Health Alliance and Health Consumers Council that culminated in a statewide resource centre for both people living with overweight and obesity, and clinicians. Unlike public, consumer-facing campaigns, The Well Collaborative is intended to facilitate healthier, more informed conversations for consumers and clinicians alike as they navigate overweight and obesity together.

The Well Collaborative (formerly “WA Obesity Collaborative”) is a collection of organisations in the overweight and obesity category led by the Australian Government’s Department of Health. On the eve of its launch, the organisation approached us to position and reframe the initiative with the intent of destigmatising the conversation around overweight and obesity through its inaugural website.

Critical to this challenge was creating a brand, strategy and name which could be used confidently when launching the site. Tackling obesity in the community is multi-faceted and historically has been polarised between blame vs acceptance and downplaying the risk to health.

The new brand had to create space for health care providers, people impacted by obesity and overweight as well as community organisations to actively participate in self-motivated behaviors to create positive change.

We brought a handful of leaders from our three participating organisations together to facilitate virtual one-on-one interviews, brand workshops, and strategy briefing sessions. Knowing that government-funded projects require end-to-end consultations, virtual briefings and brainstorming sessions became a defining part of our work on The Well Collaborative, including the challenge of aligning on a new name everyone could endorse.

Part of these discussions involved learning, unlearning, and zeroing in on cultural insights related to the subject matter, alongside two strategists on the team who had direct, lived experience.

We created a brand strategy and name for the initiative—The Well Collaborative—anchored in brand values that spoke to the nuance of the stigma, from exercising wisdom, to accommodating space for dialogue, and being undaunted in embracing tough conversations.

As part of this, we created a logo and extensive brand assets to be utilised on brand collateral and the website. This included an appraisal of suitable imagery that would be seen as positive, maintaining dignity and respect and allowing for diversity and inclusion.

The brand's colour choices of neutral ivory and off-white give people the open space needed to breathe and take in the resources without being overwhelmed. Accent colours bring a sense of empowerment, adding hints of different colours to represent the diverse journeys people have with overweight and obesity.

This thinking was similarly applied to the brand devices, where imperfect lines symbolised people’s journeys, coupled with masked images to humanise those behind the journeys.