SERVICES
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Our objective is to design and apply the best communications
solution to achieve the business outcomes desired.
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Our four-step process directs the right message, through the right channel, to make the right impact.
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Your communications strategy is intrinsically linked to your business plan, and that's where we like to start.
Understanding your audiences will determine the message, and getting under the skin of your brand will ensure we convey the right emotional connections in the right context.
Our process ensures your employee engagement programmes, corporate and customer communications, PR, community and marketing activities are all aligned for the greatest impact.
Our 4-step process helps define the comms opportunity
Communications Strategy
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An effective communications strategy makes the right connections between what your organisation wants to achieve and what your audience cares about. Our four-step strategic planning process ensures communication becomes one of your most powerful and valuable assets, fully aligned with your objectives and stakeholder needs.
We’ll ensure your strategy is fully optimised to address the three Rs:
Relevance: Does what you say matter to who you’re saying it too?
Repetition: Is your clear message being used across all channels without being fogged by unnecessary and unfocussed communication?
Resonance: Is what you’re saying to an audience consistent with all other interactions?
Messaging and Narrative Development
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Developing a clear set of messages that support and build your brand, speak to your audience, and align with your objectives, will form the backbone of all your communications activities. We can help with a message refresh, or with the development of a deeper narrative that creates a compelling and relevant story that percolates across all your communication activities.
We can use a number of approaches to arrive at the most effective message set for your organisation, in combination or as single, focussed activities. These include leadership interviews, employee workshops, materials audits and stakeholder insights. The resulting messaging framework - matching messages to stakeholders (and channels), will deliver consistency and relevance, and will inform and enrich all future communications across all channels.
Employee engagement and change communications
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Whether you are looking for some creative input to help communicate an internal project or policy update; support an employee education programme, or a communications partner for your HR team to support change, transformation or culture and behaviour in your business, we can help.
With extensive experience of working within large and small organisations (including National Grid plc., Linde, Addison Lee) we can support your internal communications and marketing teams and help deliver levels of employee engagement that have a tangible impact on business success.
Community, public and media relations
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We are often asked if the press release and ‘media relations’ are dead; we say it goes without saying that public relations in 2018 is more complicated than it used to be. The familiar, trusted establishment media channels, long regarded as the place to be seen, are competing with a much broader-church of writers, bloggers, influencers, thinkers and opinion-makers, who are becoming increasingly important in an ever-fragmenting and evolving media landscape.
Developing editorially sound, flexible content to draw attention to issues and the nuance surrounding your brand, idea, product or start-up is key. We can help clients to apply multiple channels and facilitate collaborative working necessary to develop ‘critical friends’ from the broader sphere of influence.
Moving fast is normal; but this doesn’t mean tried and tested techniques are extinct. Getting results relies on strong creative ideas, excellent communication skills and a sharp strategic eye on the news agenda. We adapt those tried and tested techniques to deliver the messages and content that matter to a writer or community, and deliver projects in the media, public relations and community space which are exciting, topical and rewarding.
Brand and visual identity
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Having a consistent, noticeable and professional look to your materials and assets is a crucial part of your communication mix, and a valuable marketing tool. Through our graphic design partner, we can help you create or refresh your visual brand, and then manage its application across all your channels and branded environments. In the case of National Grid, that included the entire road fleet, street works branding and signage, and even the company’s helicopters.
How your brand looks should be an extension of your brand idea, expressed in a brand narrative that’s used and interpreted by all parts of your organisation. Your audiences’ idea of your brand is formed out of consideration for many different factors. Here are just a few:
Behaviour
Responsibility
Alignment
Noticeability
Dependability
Your brand narrative is a way to inspire your employees, engage with your external stakeholders, and to connect emotionally with customers and others whose behaviour could affect outcomes for your business. We can help develop your narrative and produce a story on a page that establishes why you are in business, where you’ve come from, what you can achieve for customers, and why that matters to society.
Once your narrative is established, we can review and audit all of your communications and marketing materials to ensure they are consistent and in line with what your narrative sets out.
Marketing communications
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Marketing effectively to any audience – internal or external – can be a real challenge. Cutting through the congested airwaves requires creativity, focus and content that really matters to your audience.
With our focus on stakeholder, we can design and execute a marcoms plan that aligns with your business need to deliver the measurable change you want. Our experience working with a broad range of marcoms activities, including research, events, gamification, print and digital channels, environmental branding, video and animation… will ensure your plan is creative, integrated and fully aligned with your goals.
Channel strategy
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We can help you identify and optimise the most effective and efficient way to reach your audience. And we can review your current communication channels to improve efficiency, effectiveness, relevance and control. Above all, we can help to ensure that each of your channels is fully integrated with all other touch points, so that your audience or stakeholder group receive a consistent message no matter where they see or hear it.
We can design and put in place a simple but effective oversight or governance capability. That will give you the control you need to optimise available budget, and retain visibility of how you are communicating to all of your important stakeholders.