A new story for a creative team
Helping a newly re-orged creative department forge a new reputatiion
The Challenge
After a department-wide reorganization, the creative team at a large mission-based org needed help shedding old narratives of who they used to be.
Under new leadership, and with renewed optimism, the team was ready to serve their organization, but needed a way to reclaim their reputation and tell the story of who they were now, and everything they could do for their internal clients.
The Solution
Research-First Approach
We began our work together with some insights gathering. I conducted one-on-one interviews with everyone on the team as well as a group of select leadership from the greater organization. We also surveyed the entire organization to get a more accurate reading of the current impressions, and create a baseline.
Unsurprisingly, the research phase turned up some process challenges that still needed to be addressed. (Who couldn’t improve their work/process? Really?)
Fortunately, the client was prepared to keep ironing out these process issues, allocating serious resources to it, even as we identified misconceptions and other image-based issues that could be remedied with strategic communication.
From insights to strategy
With research gathered, now it was time to start telling the story of who the creative team was.
What’s what
We met and discussed everything openly, and talked through who is the main audience they’re trying to reach? And what is it they want to say, both outright and more subtly?
Content Strategy
Next came a plan to roll out.
I delivered a complete, six-month-long content strategy based on their decisions about who they were, what people needed to know, and when. Everything tied back to the original research.
Messaging (what to express)
Creative (how to express it)
Platform (email, slide decks, sharepoint articles, etc)
Each piece came with a draft creative brief (including concept, the supporting research, and a proposed team to execute it), so the busy creatives could simply set a meeting and then show up to get it rolling.
Results
The clients decided to take a beat to focus on the process challenges revealed during our insights gathering phase, and it shows.
Anecodotal reports are that attitudes are already shifting, though there is work to be done. They’ve recently begun acting on the content and I’m excited to see how that goes.
