Finalists revealed in West Midlands business’s £10k charity SOS appeal

Hundreds of charities and organisations across the region entered the competition, which will see Embello carry out a complete rebrand for the winners in an exciting 48-hour challenge.

Of the many applicants, five chosen finalists were invited to Embello HQ in Tamworth to pitch for the £10,000 prize pot, which could include the creation of logos, signage, printed promotional materials, vehicle graphics and branded clothing.

For Kyle Raffo, entrepreneur and owner of Embello, giving back to the community and supporting good causes is a key element of business.

Kyle said: “I’m always in awe of the amount of great work that is carried out by the voluntary sector, and I try to support that wherever I can, both personally and as a business. While we regularly run charitable events and initiatives, Brum:SOS is our biggest charity campaign so far.

“We’ve had a great 12 months, including recently moving to brand new larger premises, and I think it’s important to share that success by giving back to the local community.

“Having a professional looking brand and identity, supported by things like signage and uniforms, is integral to raising your profile, but it’s not something many charities or community organisations can afford, so we wanted to use our expertise to give a local good cause that opportunity.

“The added ‘SOS’ element will help us to raise the profile of the winning charity even further as we’ll be filming a short documentary of the branding transformation.

“I always knew there was an incredible amount of good work going on in and around Birmingham, but we were totally bowled over by the amount and quality of the applications. It was hard enough choosing five finalists - and their pitches were all amazing – selecting the overall winner is going to be really tough.”

The five shortlisted charities are Birmingham and Black Country Wildlife Trusts, Tamworth Wellbeing & Cancer Support Centre, Queen Alexandra College, Number Eight Tamworth and Help Harry Help Others.

Kyle, together with project team member, Alicia Hulland, and the rest of the Embello team, now have the difficult task of deciding on a winner, which will be announced very soon.

Alicia added: “The pitches were a great way to find out about some of our fantastic local charities, we’d love to help them all if we could. We heard about their work and talked about how we might be able to help. We’ve brought all that back to the team and will be revealing the winner on our social channels very soon.

“That’s when the fun will really start, with the 48-hour challenge to design and print new branded materials, as well as installing any new signage. This will all be done by our talented team of branding specialists.”