Public Sector Rebrand · Surrey County Council · 2018 — 2022

Twelve15 —
a public service
turned into a brand

A complete rebrand for Surrey County Council's school catering service — built to restore pride internally, create meaning externally, and turn a seventy-year-old operation into something people could finally believe in.

70

Years of history honoured

1000+

Employees given a
brand to be proud of

300+

Sites transformed
across Surrey

40,000

Children fed
every day

400+

Catering managers at new brand launch

0

Stock images —
every face was real

A public sector rebrand with real operational scale.

Twelve15 was not a logo exercise. It was a strategic rebrand for a large, legacy service feeding 40,000 children a day across 300+ sites. The work had to function internally, emotionally and operationally at the same time.

My role covered strategy, naming, brand direction, rollout thinking, photography, film, launch storytelling, communications and sales enablement. The objective was simple: make the service feel valuable, distinctive and worth backing internally, while giving the team stronger tools for pitches, tenders, client retention and new client acquisition.

Client

Surrey County Council school catering service

Problem

A large service with weak perception, low brand equity and fragmented pride

What I led

Strategy, naming, content, photography, film, launch, rollout and sales enablement assets

The Brief

The Name

Twelve15

The name did strategic heavy lifting. It gave the service a memorable identity, tied it to place and purpose, and turned an operational function into something ownable, distinctive and discussable.

12:15

Lunchtime

Quarter past twelve anchors the brand in its core moment of relevance: lunchtime. It makes the service instantly legible without sounding generic.

1215

Magna Carta

1215 links directly to Surrey through Runnymede and the Magna Carta. It gave the name local meaning and a stronger story than a purely functional label ever could.

12-15%

Health & performance

Beyond time, 12–15 opens up a connection to energy, strength and performance; what good nutrition makes possible every day.

→

Momentum

12:15 is more than a time: it’s a cue for action. A moment that says: enough talking, let’s move.

The Challenge

A legacy service.
No real brand equity.

Surrey County Council's school catering service had been feeding children for seventy years under the name Commercial Services. Operationally, it worked. Perceptually, it did not. The people behind it had history, effort and pride, but almost none of that was visible in the brand.

The brief was four words: "Make us look competitive." The real challenge was deeper. This was about giving a fragmented public service a coherent identity, restoring pride internally, and creating a brand children, schools and parents could respond to positively.

Before any design work started, we ran a Brand Sprint with senior leadership to define purpose, values and positioning. The strategic work mattered. Without it, this would have been a cosmetic refresh. With it, the rebrand had a point of view.

Out of that process came the name. Twelve15. I then directed the identity with the internal design team and took ownership of how the brand was expressed in the real world: content, photography, film, launch communications, rollout assets, campaign execution and sales materials used to support pitches, tenders and wider commercial conversations.

This was not a surface-level rebrand. It was a repositioning exercise designed to make an overlooked service feel valuable, modern and worth backing.

Scope of Work

Strategy to rollout.
Built end to end.

Brand Direction & Rollout

Led the brand direction with the internal design team, then took ownership of how the identity was applied across 300+ sites and touchpoints

Photography

Planned, shot and edited brand photography using real staff and real environments. No stock imagery, no staged corporate shortcuts.

Video

Concept, scripting and production of launch and campaign films, including brand, seasonal and corporate content

The Twelve15 Song

Original campaign song written and produced as part of the launch experience

Print & Digital

Menus, posters, newsletters, activity sheets and campaign assets for rollout across 300+ sites

Uniforms & Signage

Uniforms, signage and physical brand rollout at scale

Upcycled Objects

Upcycled installation pieces created from kitchen tools to make the launch tactile, memorable and emotionally resonant

Sales Enablement

Pitch, tender and supporting brand materials designed to strengthen retention conversations and help win new business

Children's Engagement

Creative competitions and engagement campaigns designed to involve children and extend the brand beyond the serving line

The Brief

Real people. Real kitchens.
A brand with texture.

One early decision shaped the entire brand: no stock images. Everything had to come from the real world of Twelve15 — the staff, the food, the kitchens, the energy. That made the brand more credible, more ownable and far less disposable.

The defining shoot brought staff and their own children together in a school for a day. No sterile studio setup. No fake corporate performance. Just genuine interaction, colour, movement and food. The result was a visual language that felt joyful and specific to the brand instead of borrowed from somewhere else.

We also ran creative competitions and engagement campaigns with children across Surrey schools, extending the brand beyond catering operations and into the everyday experience of the families it served.

All visuals on this page were creatively led, directed and produced by me, with the majority also shot and edited by me.

Launch eperience

Not a deck.
Not a memo.
A launch people felt.

Most public sector launches die as soon as the email lands. This one was designed to do the opposite. The goal was not just to announce a new name, but to create a moment of belief for the people expected to carry the brand out into the world, and a stronger platform the team could use in pitches, tenders and client conversations afterwards.

The cinema

400+ managers in a cinema, not a conference room. The launch was positioned as an event, not an internal update.

The upcycled objects

Broken whisks became designer lamps. Spoons and forks became brooches and bracelets. The everyday tools of the kitchens were reframed as objects of pride.

The film

A cinematic film turned the rebrand journey into a story people could feel, not just a process they were told had happened.

The song

An original campaign song written and produced for the launch. Unexpected, distinctive and impossible to mistake for a standard rollout.

The catwalk

A live reveal and catwalk in the new uniforms. Not abstract brand guidelines, but people embodying the identity in real time.

The managers went wild

People left energised, proud and clear on what the brand now stood for. That is what a launch is supposed to achieve.

The launch translated strategy into emotion. The sales enablement work translated it into practical value. That is when the brand stopped being a concept and started becoming real.

Impact

The work was delivered at a time when the business was losing momentum and required renewed clarity and confidence.

The repositioning and rollout helped stabilise the brand, strengthen client perception and reintroduce a clear, credible narrative across all touchpoints.

Key contributions included:

Supporting the retention of clients at highest risk through clearer communication and a more confident brand presence
Re-establishing trust and clarity in how the business presented itself, both internally and externally
Creating a coherent foundation that brought consistency across messaging, marketing and client engagement
Delivering a full suite of assets actively used across pitches, tenders and day-to-day client interactions
Providing the structure and materials needed for more effective and consistent new business conversations

Twelve15 — a public service turned into a brand

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