‘With more customer segmentation, more media, and more distribution channels, organizations are waging a battle with complexity.’ McKinsey
It was supposed to be easy.
Outsource your day-to-day public relations, advertising, design, digital and other communications while you sit back and count the savings. Nice in theory but what’s happened is pretty much the exact opposite. Instead of unity, you’ve got civil wars between specialties increasingly encroaching on each other’s turf. Silos are popping up and locking down everywhere. Campaign elements are often conflicted or negated between media and mediums. Brand values have never been more fractured. What a pain in the ass.
You’re spending all your time trying to put out fires between suppliers instead of having the space and time to think long-term. Everything is short-term and becoming shorter. You’ve never been more frustrated.
Your suppliers aren’t driven by your purpose or your standards. They’re legally bound to act in their own self-interest, not yours. Which starts to explain all those hidden costs you never expected. All those changes you keep having to pay for.
Even worse, you lose control of your brand. Your public relations firm writes a brief according to their needs, your advertising agency does the same. As does your design studio, digital shop, event company, place maker and website bureau.
Not surprisingly, what people end up seeing is a garbled mess of broken promises and misaligned creative.
That’s not what I do. I take a new approach to communications.
As a highly experienced purpose-driven creative consultant, I weave all your communications together to streamline, strengthen and compound reach. To deepen engagement and effectiveness. Why? So you can concentrate on long-term planning and delivering more value. So you can increase margins and lift profits.
How do I do that? How do I give you more space to do what you’re great at and what you love doing? How do I give you more opportunities to be more successful?
I take away the complexity, strip away the confusion. I help you define, develop and deliver your brand’s true purpose like no one else can. Not pretty mission statements no one cares about, not vision blurbs that can apply to any competitor.
Your brand’s enduring purpose is what sets it apart from competitors. It’s what allows all the people in your organization to understand and get behind a single inspiring direction and bring it to life from the inside out. Less waste, more productivity and greater alignment as they channel the purpose through every aspect of the organization.
Nothing affects your success more than maintaining the value and pricing integrity of your brand. A study by McKinsey shows that reducing communications costs may marginally improve a company’s profits, but increasing a brand’s price can boost profits through the roof. A 5% improvement in price can result in as much as a 50% increase in profits. (Stick that in your CFO pipe and smoke it!)
Not just any old purpose. Not a few fluffy soon-to-be-forgotten words mentioned in the values page of the annual report. Not just ‘something something superior returns to shareholders’ rhetoric. Money and profit are not a purpose, they’re results. (Quick tip. The higher the purpose, the higher the profit.)
An authentic and compelling purpose defines an ambition beyond commercial aspirations and drives action throughout any enterprise. An engaging purpose (with subsequent stories, triggers, and actions) draws people in. A living, breathing purpose lets everyone know where they’re heading. And why.
As a creative consultant, I’ve refined a unique and proven 3D process to define, develop and deliver purpose-driven communications and outcomes like no one else can.
Step 1. Define
Sign off business problem, scope of value and creative strategy. Audit, explore, research, analyze and review existing mission, vision, values, guiding principles, brand proposition, brand personality, organizational purpose, themes and proposed statements. Define, explore, research, analyze and review competitors’ purpose statements.
Interview senior executives and stakeholders for deeper insights, overall cultural program, business ambitions, project ambitions, and success metrics. Store visits and informal employee research. Audit advertising, collateral, environments, events, publicity, and website.
Update and review research, analysis, interviews, insights, strategy, and narrative direction. Present purpose findings that clarify an ambition beyond commercial aspirations, and recommendations. Produce report.
Step 2. Develop
Develop, analyze and review multiple draft purpose statements. Develop a clear enemy to facilitate change. Research select draft purpose statements.
Refine and review purpose statements and create sample expressions in advertising, collateral, environments, events, publicity, website and internal communications. Develop purpose-driven messaging that leverages across media and mediums.
Update and review purpose statements and sample expressions. Present purpose statements, ideal purpose statement, sample expressions, and recommendations. Produce report.
Step 3. Deliver
Deliver unified creative brief based on approved creative strategy that amplifies ideal purpose statement across all creative and media suppliers. Use the purpose statement to drive action throughout enterprise.
Decide on three iconic transformative actions to focus on that reinforce the purpose statement. Strategy to share purpose internally. Strategy to share and spread purpose externally with people and stakeholders. Present ideal purpose statement, unified creative brief, transformative actions, internal share strategy, external share strategy, and recommendations. Produce report.
Outcomes
Measure metrics against scope of value. Top-line growth, and bottom-line efficiency. You can expect up to 75% reduction in turn-around times, and up to 50% reduction in costs with increased sales, margins and profits.
How long will it take?
Depending on the project and the scope of value created, this process takes between three weeks and three months.
You’ll have three successive purpose-driven communications presentations and comprehensive reports that clearly show where your brand has come from, where it is now and where it will go in the future. This is invaluable. Priceless. (It’s like a 3D treasure map.)
You’ll have a clearly delineated and clearly compelling purpose statement that’s profoundly true. Not just authentic, but aspirational. Short, sweet, and true. It will guide everyone and everything.
I can help oversee its activation and implementation across all your day-to-day communications internally and externally, across all media, platforms, and channels with a simple set of digital tools that easily streamline and strengthen communications.
A single online style guide, pattern library and approval workflow to upload, manage, and share all brand elements across disciplines to unify communications for maximum consistency. No more chasing up text, logos, colors, typography, icons, photography, illustrations, video, audio. No more wasting time hunting down files, no more disorganized digital assets. No more budget overruns, expensive double handling, and busted deadlines.
All your communications suppliers will be in sync, so no more frantically trying to balance a dozen spinning plates in the air. No more stress and worry.
It’s a different way of working, a new way of thriving. You can kiss complexity goodbye and start planning for the future you want.