Teach First's A/B rebrand made you answer whether education is unfair

Reposition the educational charity that trains graduates for schools facing tough challenges, with one adaptable identity that could speak to teachers, graduates and career-changers — its first multi-audience campaign.

Frame every message as an A/B question — 'Education is unfair. A. Just the way it is. B. Adjust the way it is.' — so the audience has to pick a side.

Johnson Banks cut a stencilled two-letter monogram that keeps both letters legible and balanced, evolved the navy-and-cyan palette into a screen-friendly blue plus yellow, rewrote the tone of voice to ten words where thirty would do, and rolled out the A/B press and social campaign with merchandise from mugs to sew-on patches in autumn 2019.

The source reports no figures; the identity launched with taglines such as 'potential unlocked' (poster), 'demand the best' (internal report) and 'fill in the blanks' (notebook).

Teach First takes graduates and trains them in teaching at schools facing tough challenges; it works with thousands of schools and is one of the UK's biggest graduate recruiters. Founder of Johnson Banks Michael Johnson said the charity 'hadn't really looked hard at their brand for a decade and it had started to fall apart' — sub-brands had developed without a coherent identity, muddying the charity's purpose.

The bigger problem was emotional: the charity wanted its educational inequality message to land harder, and the old corporate style couldn't deliver it with impact. Johnson Banks answered with a simple monogram in a stencilled typeface, chosen so both letters stay legible while remaining balanced, and an evolution of the dark-blue-and-cyan scheme — the blue updated for screens, a yellow added after auditions.

The studio also sharpened the voice: 'The teaching profession seems to be expert at using 30 words when ten would do,' Johnson said, describing work on messaging and copy for greater impact. New taglines — 'potential unlocked', 'demand the best', 'fill in the blanks' — ran on posters, reports and merchandise.

The public face of the rebrand was an A/B advertising format built for dozens of audiences across billboards and social: a statement such as 'Education is unfair' with two options beneath — 'A. Just the way it is' and 'B. Adjust the way it is' — replacing the neutrality and blandness of previous communications. The campaign rolled out in autumn 2019.

The A/B format turns a passive reader into a respondent, which is exactly what a recruitment charity needs.

One stencilled mark and a two-colour palette stretch from a report cover to a sew-on patch without diluting.

Cutting copy from thirty words to ten gave the inequality message the punch the corporate style never had.

A rebrand lands harder when the system itself argues the mission — here every ad is a multiple-choice question about fairness.

The campaign and merchandise rolled out through autumn 2019; the source reports no follow-up figures.