Sometimes history gets taken for granted.
Not because it isn’t valuable, but because when something has always been there, you stop noticing the work, the stories and the people that built it. The years of shared experience. The conversations. The lessons passed down. The quiet influence an organisation can have on an entire community.
That’s what legacy really is. And it’s what allows people to feel a sense of belonging.
Cardiff Business Club is steeped in that legacy. Decades in existence. A long list of speakers that most young, eager business people would have been lucky to learn from. It has played a role in shaping the commercial and civic life of the city for generations.
And yet, if I’m honest, for a long time it didn’t quite land for me.
I knew the Club. I’d attended events, and friends and peers had too. I understood what it stood for, but not necessarily how it felt. Somewhere along the way I’d formed an impression that it was a little tired and a bit old-school – not quite reflective of the Cardiff I recognise today.
Unfair assumptions, as it turns out, and ones that had far more to do with perception than reality.
So when the opportunity came to work with Cardiff Business Club on its rebrand, it felt like a chance to scratch an itch that had been there for a while. Not to rip anything up, but to properly understand it, and to look beneath the surface and ask some honest questions.
The real risk for any organisation with history isn’t change. It’s standing still.
Over the last 23 years at Toward, we’ve worked with hundreds of organisations, from small, ambitious start-ups to national institutions. And if there’s one thing we’ve learned, it’s that a brand is never just a logo.
In the early days, particularly here in South Wales, branding was often reduced to visuals. A new mark, a colour palette, a quick refresh, as if that alone could transform how an organisation was perceived. But brands don’t work like that.
They’re built on behaviour, on tone, on culture, on clarity of purpose, on how confidently an organisation understands who it’s for, and how clearly it communicates that to the outside world.
That understanding shaped our approach with Cardiff Business Club.
We didn’t start with design. We started with listening.
We brought the board and stakeholders into the room and created the space to talk openly, not just about what the Club is, but what it wants to become. We asked difficult but necessary questions.
Who are you really here for?
What role should the Club play in modern Cardiff?
What needs to stay, and what needs to evolve?
What stood out was the depth of care and ambition in the room. Chair Phil Jardine and the board weren’t passive participants in the process. They drove it. Some conversations challenged long-held assumptions. Others revealed a hunger to make the Club more open, more relevant, and more reflective of the city it serves.
That’s where the real work happens.
When people are genuinely involved in shaping a brand, the outcome feels authentic because it is authentic. The brand becomes a mirror, recognisable to those who helped create it, and inviting to those who didn’t.
Cardiff itself is changing. It’s more diverse, more creative, more confident than ever. And Cardiff Business Club has a role to play in that future. Not by abandoning its past, but by expressing it through a more contemporary lens.
The refreshed brand doesn’t erase history. It carries it forward. It keeps the credibility, the gravitas and the purpose, but presents them in a way that feels relevant to today’s business community and accessible to the next generation.
For me, this project was a reminder of something important.
Sometimes organisations don’t need reinventing. They need clarity. A sharper voice. A platform that matches their ambition. And the confidence to evolve without losing who they are.
Cardiff Business Club already had the substance. Our role was simply to help it show up more clearly.
And I’m genuinely excited to see where the next chapter takes it.
Mike Jordan talks about this and more in the Cardiff Business Club podcast episode: Rebranding a Legacy: How Cardiff Business Club is Shaping a New Era. Listen to the podcast here.
