West Midlands Safari Park
Creating wild memories.
Best Branding Winner 2025
The client –
West Midlands Safari Park (WMSP) is an award-winning visitor attraction—located in the heart of England.
It’s home to a variety of all-weather attractions, including four miles of drive-through safari, the largest animatronic dinosaur exhibit in the UK and a theme park. The Park has seen a huge amount of change over the 50 years it has been open and felt that it was the right time to overhaul their brand to reflect the modern-day West Midland Safari Park. As part of this overhaul WMSP even wanted to consider a name change too!
The project included the research, concepts, brand guidelines and application.
Workshop—
The first stage of this project was immersing ourselves into customer perceptions and where the brand sat in the market. We conducted strategy workshops with the internal creative and marketing teams at West Midlands Safari Park. It was important to look at where the brand sat from the perspective of both the end consumer and internal teams to identify any trends or discrepancies that needed bridging as part of the rebrand. We also ran a tone of voice workshop to help understand the personality of the new brand.
Customer Research—
During the customer research a strong theme was identified across all of the WMSP customer segments, which was that they enjoyed going to WMSP because they could interact with the animals.
We identified an attractive position in the market for West Midland Safari Park to be an attraction that families will leave having enjoyed a memorable experience, which was one of the driving factors that came out of the research as to why families would choose an attraction. All of these factors helped to inform the rebrand and to steer the emotive feel the brand deserved.
Findings—
During the consumer research WMSP spontaneous consideration was low at 8% meaning they had low unprompted brand awareness however the prompted consideration was 78% which is very strong.
These metrics insinuated that people did know about WMSP but their old brand did not stick in forefront of the target audiences’ minds. We suggested a slight tweak to the name, rather than a complete change. By correcting ‘West Midland’ to ‘West Midlands’ and removing ‘Leisure’, the brand name would deliver more impact creatively, digitally and on merchandise.
Gerald the Giraffe—
The making of an icon
We developed an icon to be used as part of the logo but also give WMSP more flexibility with how they used their brand that is future proofed, iconic, and versatile for use across the park, online and in merchandise. The giraffe character (or Gerald as we affectionately named him) gave them the opportunity to turn the icon into their very own Mickey Mouse style mascot.
Getting the brand out in the wild—
West Midlands Safari Park were provided with four unique concepts based on our research and workshops. The ‘Create Wild Memories’ concept was a firm favourite and resonated with all of their team. We developed full brand guidelines including logo, font and colour usage, tone of voice, photography and brand application.
Careful consideration was taken during this stage of the project when looking at roll out, to ensure that the brand position of being able to be in close proximity to animals was portrayed. This helped position the brand as a memorable experience, helping validate the medium to high price point in the market.
The rebrand was launched to the public on Thursday 8th February 2024.
Safari Guidebook—
Designing the ultimate companion to a West Midlands Safari Park adventure.
We were perfectly positioned to support West Midlands Safari Park with their new Safari Guidebook after completing work on their brand guidelines. This meant the rebrand could make an immediate and consistent impact by giving guests a physical product to take home and really absorb the new brand.
Our creative team worked closely with West Midlands Safari Park to ensure the Guidebook met the needs of all guests, including engaging activities for children, and detailed information for wildlife enthusiasts.
Harrison Carloss stood out to us as an agency who had a lot of experience. Having interviewed quite a few agencies we knew that Harrison Carloss was the one for us because of how they fit in with our own creative team. We’d absolutely recommend Harrison Carloss, they’re great to work with and produced some great results for us.
Results
The West Midlands Safari Park rebrand was praised by staff, visitors and peers, receiving an overwhelming amount or positive PR from the BBC, to press offices all over the Midlands. We were delighted to win ‘Best Branding or Identity Design of the Year’ at the We Are Creative Awards in 2025 in recognition for our work in bringing the new brand to life.
Interested in working with our award-winning branding team?
