A childcare brand is more than just a logo or the colour of the practitioners’ polo shirts – it is the nursery's ethos, values, vision and reputation. Many nursery brands have taken years to build up, and practitioners and parents alike develop a strong emotional attachment to them. When a smaller setting is acquired by a larger organisation, the new owner needs to approach questions of rebranding with tact and sensitivity, says Sarah Fromageot, sales and marketing manager at Kindred.
‘Before you go into an acquisition, you can never tell what emotional attachment staff have to the brand,’ she says. ‘We have to tread carefully because they are often very attached to something that they’ve been helping to build. It is important to go into an acquisition understanding the reputation, the strength and the value of the brand in the local community.’
Individual branding
Some acquisitive nursery groups bring new buys under the existing group brand while those who own a number of brands consider where a new acquisition might best fit. Some might choose to retain local brands within the corporate umbrella.
The nursery group ICP Education, for example, had a corporate rebrand to Bright Stars in June this year. The corporate rebrand came after ICP Education, which was formed from the merger of ICP Nurseries and Cresswell Nurseries, sold its interests in the business to Oakley Capital last year.
However, the group will continue to retain the individuality of each setting in its local communities. The Bright Stars name was plucked from one of the group's 68 settings. ‘The little boy and girl in our corporate logo represent the children that we care for and support to learn, reaching for the stars,’ says Stephen Booty, Bright Stars executive chairman. ‘The stars represent each of the five years that most children are with us, growing from a little star into the biggest and brightest star.’
The rebrand has been communicated to nurseries via email as part of a companywide announcement, with the message that Bright Stars is a corporate brand and not for use by individual nurseries, which will continue to use their own individual branding.
One name
On the other hand, Kindred Education believes it is important to build a consistent brand across all settings. ‘It is worth that time and investment as a growing group, because if you can articulate a consistent brand, then you’re going to attract staff more easily, and you are going to build higher-quality provision,’ says chief executive Ruth Pimentel.
On acquisition, teams attend a presentation where they learn how the Kindred brand was developed in consultation with parents, children and staff. ‘It came from a patchwork of all their passions and ideas, and we tell them we hope they are going to help us extend it, through their own vision and values,’ says Fromageot. ‘That gets lots of people really excited, and starts to pull them away from that emotional attachment to their existing brand.’ New acquisitions often feed their ethos, strengths and values into the group brand.
Sixteen to four
Thrive Childcare and Education decided to consolidate its 16 existing brands into four in 2021: Happitots, Holyrood, Corner House and Nature Kindergartens. Happitots, Holyrood and Corner House draw on strong local reputations for quality childcare and stress their provision of a ‘home from home’, while Nature Kindergartens promotes the importance of nature and outdoor learning, highlighting how enriched outdoor learning environments can support children's development.
‘We will always liaise with the managers of new acquisitions and discuss the strengths and qualities and aspirations of the nursery, and where we see the setting sitting across the four brands,’ says Michael Forrester, head of nursery acquisitions at Thrive Childcare. ‘Corner House has a city-centre, residential, town-house feeling, for example, while Nature Kindergarten is a more rural, outdoors brand.’
For Thrive's new acquisitions, rebranding is a long-term process. No acquisitions in the past 18 months have been rebranded, including The Village Nursery Group, which was bought earlier this year, and Smarties, bought in 2021.
In the past, nursery group Grandir UK has integrated new settings into the Kiddi Caru brand, which it has owned since 2017. However, South West London acquisition Dicky Birds retained its own branding.
‘We wanted to keep their local brand – they were so strong in their local community, there was no reason to brand them Kiddi Caru,’ says Caron Moseley, sales and marketing director at Grandir UK. Going forward, the group plans to keep local brands in place. Grandir UK's mission, vision and values, as well as policies and practices such as staff benefits and the group's early years curriculum, will be consistent across all settings.
This means recent acquisitions Daydream, Pippins and the Rushcliffe Day Nurseries group will all keep their branding. In fact, as Woking-based Daydream did not have a brand identity apart from its name, Grandir UK has created a specific logo and other materials for the setting.
‘Our strategy now is to keep the local brands as part of the acquisition process, with the Grandir UK brand as the glue that sticks them all together,’ says Moseley.
‘The first question from staff after an acquisition is always “What are we going to be called?”. It is very important for employees and families to feel that stability.’
The company is building a new website which will host multiple brands. ‘We had to rethink the digital channel because we could end up in a few years’ time with 20-plus brands, and if the marketing department has to run all the digital channels separately, there are no economies of scale.’
Communication is key, says Moseley, so staff receive knowledge-based training three to nine months after acquisition introducing them to Grandir UK's values and ethos as well as its pedagogical approach. An annual leadership conference provides another platformto communicate brand values to nursery managers.
The organisation's HR system, PeopleHR, enables direct line communication with all employees, for example to promote GrandCentral, a platform which allows staff to access discounts and benefits. ‘
Before it was a case of emailing every nursery manager or deputy manager, and they would trickle it down to 40 people, but now we are going straight to every single employee,’ says Moseley
The brand and reputation of a group or setting can be difficult to measure but have a real financial value. In challenging times, childcare groups need to bring managers and teams of new settings on board with brand values, without alienating them – and that may take some time.
CASE STUDY: Paint Pots/Launchpad Social Enterprise
Southampton-based Paint Pots was launched by Anna and David Wright in their home in 1993, and developed into a strong, child-focused local brand of nine settings with the ethos ‘love, laughter and learning’. Earlier this year, Launchpad Social Enterprise, which runs three pre-schools in Winchester, bought Paint Pots as a wholly owned subsidiary.
‘We have a strong brand in Paint Pots in Southampton and there is absolutely no intention of changing that – why mess up a well-known name?’ says the Reverend Canon Nick Ralph, director of Launchpad Social Enterprise, a charity run by the Diocese of Westminster.
The original intention was to keep the Paint Pots brand in Southampton – a new setting under that brand name will launch in September – and retain the Launchpad brand elsewhere in Hampshire, but no final decision has been taken. ‘That will come when and if we open a new setting in Hampshire,’ says Ralph. ‘Big chains make a lot of the fact their name is widely known, but we are a small family-feel organisation, we want to be more local, welcoming and friendly.’
Launchpad and Paint Pots have similar brand values. ‘For Launchpad, we have always said we have got values around joy, care and friendship within a broad Christian ethos,’ says Ralph. ‘Paint Pots’ ethos is love, laughter and learning, and we are keeping that. There is an ongoing relationship between the two brands, they are feeding into each other.’
Anna and David Wright worked closely with Launchpad during the first three months after the acquisition and continue to share their expertise as consultants. The Launchpad and Paint Pots teams have joined together for a training day, and there are plans to visit each other's settings from September.
‘When we were first told Anna and David were retiring, it was quite emotional, not knowing what was going to happen,’ says Becky Neale, manager at Paint Pots 9. ‘But the transition has been good, the team on the ground has not really noticed a difference. Launchpad has some slightly different policies which we have incorporated, but we have also had our say. I know Anna and David looked for a long time to find an organisation with the same ethos; we are still child-focused, where some private settings are more business-focused.’
The only thing that has changed, says Neale, is the logo to incorporate some of the Launchpad colours and wording.
