We are announcing this news with a trilogy of articles to share with you:
(1) the reason of the change, (2) the methodology we used and (3) the organisational best practices learnt from our fascinating collective rebranding journey!
This first article tells you the reasons why we felt the need to evolve the brand evolve and where our re-invigorated brand is taking us!
The joys and the pitfalls of our successful organic growth
In 2010, Christian Vanizette wanted to “challenge people for social business”. Quickly, a bunch of young people joined him. They all wanted to put their skills to work wherever they could to help social entrepreneurs make a difference. Very soon, these citizens started to connect to other citizens around the world. They all shared the same desire to help innovative entrepreneurs solve social and environmental issues by sharing their knowledge and by continuing to learn along the way. makesense was born!
And with thousands of citizens and social entrepreneurs engaged across the world to build local solutions for the most pressing issues of our times, a community was born!
Collaborations with companies, local authorities and institutions were important ingredients of the recipe. This allowed us to engage them in the transformation of society, scale up the best solutions, and build a sustainable business model.
End of 2017, makesense is run by a team of +60 people based in 8 cities:
Paris, Mexico, Dakar, Manila, Beirut, Lima, Delhi and Abidjan.
This growth has been organic, following the ideas, requests, and dreams of the community, employees, partners and clients along the way.
This successful growth of makesense added layers of complexity to the way we communicate, both internally and externally. Indeed, as we were addressing new audiences and expanding our areas of expertise, new brands were created. Useful at first, they have become a source of confusion as we have expanded further. Such confusion prevents us from increasing our impact.
A revamping of makesense’s brand identity has been identified as a strategic workstream in order to better define what the organisation stands for, today and tomorrow.
One single global brand: a stronger and more inclusive vision
makesense will now be the single global brand addressing all audiences, all over the world.
With this single brand, we, as makesense, reinforce our belief that everything is interconnected: to solve today’s social and environmental issues, everyone in society has a role to play.
This is the belief at the heart of the makesense adventure. We want to link up enthusiastic people from all walks of life, regions from across the world, and organisations of every variety.
makesense exists to be the catalyst so all players can make a positive impact.
What do we mean by “positive impact”? “positive impact”: changes which make the world a more meaningful and human-centred place. Positive impact means developing more conscious and more effective organisations and systems so as to make a greater social and environmental impact.
Everyday, everywhere in the world, makesense unlocks potential and provides support to all these players to collectively solve the issues they care about.
makesense helps people to realize that they have the capacity to make a change and shows them that this collective adventure is possible.
makesense aims to inspire, enable and accelerate positive impact through tailor made journeys for each stakeholder we engage with: makesense for citizens, makesense for entrepreneurs, makesense for organisations.
This unique brand offers a playground for different stakeholders to meet and collaborate, more and better. Everything we do is about the power of the collective.
Our tools and methods are not set in stone but rather flexible, reactive, and adaptive. They can be adapted to best meet challenges of all kinds. And all of this is possible thanks to the blend of individuals who all bring their backgrounds, ideas and unique, fresh perspectives to the table.
No matter the specific social cause and no matter the individual or organisation, makesense offers a pool of ideas, tools and resources with one single goal in mind: to keep on multiplying and magnifying positive impact on the world around us.
We are driven by the values of Collaboration, Openness, Creativity, Life-long Learning, Commitment. We do our best to embody them in everything we do and use them as a compass and framework to make our decisions.
Bye bye blue heads!
The blue heads have played an essential role in building the makesense community by creating such a strong sense of belonging among members. Yet, our visual identity needed to evolve to better encapsulate our role as a catalyst, at a global level.
Please welcome the new makesense logo and visual identity!
A “cool bean” connects “make” and “sense”. This enthusiastic cool bean links people to initiatives, actions to positive impact. This cool bean is the start of a chain, of a network and of a community .
This colorful visual identity reflects our endless enthusiasm and the diversity of people, locations and causes. It is even more playful and hackable that the previous one, while being more inclusive.
We hope you will like it as much as we do!
Take action and enjoy the ride
If you share our vision, come join us on www.makesense.org and get in touch with your local makesense chapter!
This rebranding is a time for celebration. We thank and celebrate all the citizens, entrepreneurs, organisations and employees who have been part of this adventure. We welcome those who are going to build the future with us!
Join us to celebrate in Delhi, Bangalore, Amsterdam, Lima, Beirut, Madrid, Paris, Mexico City, Manila, Arequipa, Chimbote!
In just a few weeks, on April 14th, Paris is hosting the very first makesense festival mixing culture and innovation, to help you go from ideas and intentions to actions! Discover the program and the line-up of artists!
See you soon,
The makesense team
