The
Catholic Marriage Advisory Council's main service is relationship counselling. It is
provided free to the whole community regardless of religion or marital status. Spot the
problem?
Some 12 years ago the charity, whose original purpose had been to serve the Catholic
community, changed the goals of the organisation to reflect the reality that their gift
was equally applicable to the whole community. But in those 12 years the proportion of non
Catholic clients did not increase appreciably.
CCM was chosen in competition with other marketing consultancies to find out why their
objectives had not been met, and to offer a solution. Together CMAC and CCM devised and
implemented a fact finding programme to discover:
1. Clients' opinions of CMAC
2. The profile of its clientele
3. How clients had found CMAC
4. What referrers (Doctors, Citizens Advice Bureaux etc) knew about CMAC
5. Public reaction to the name Catholic Marriage Advisory Council
We found that clients rated CMAC very highly indeed, regardless of their religious
beliefs. Some 45% of clients were non Catholic; a high proportion of these had found out
about CMAC from Doctors and other independent referrers, whereas priests were the
principal referrers of Catholic clients. Yet knowledge of CMAC amongst independent
referrers was very poor.
We concluded that an important element of the new marketing plan would to communicate
effectively to these the nature of CMAC's services and their applicability to the whole
community. We gauged public reaction to the name through three questions in the MORI
Omnibus poll. Answers to these showed that the name would be more likely to deter than to
attract by a factor of 10 to 1! To broaden its clientele from "phone book"
enquiries, a change of name would be essential. Hence the new name, Marriage Care.
It was chosen for its clear identification with the service provided, and the promise of a
supportive, listening counselling organisation. A new logo was created by design
consultant Jane Ayton to reinforce these messages. The combination of a new name and a
structured marketing plan provides the means by which Marriage Care can make its valuable
service available throughout the whole community.
The strength of a voluntary organisation lies of course in its volunteers, and so the
success of the plan's implementation depends on Marriage Care's volunteer branch officers
and counsellors. Therefore the consultation and involvement of the whole organisation has
been a central part of the process of developing a new image. Success also depends upon a
clear vision for the future and a determination to change. For that Marriage Care can
count on their Chief Executive Mary Corbett, whom we thank for the opportunity to have
assisted in this project.
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