Please browse our specialisms.
This isn’t all we do, but it is what we excel at.
CRISIS COMMUNICATIONS
& REPUTATION MANAGEMENT
This can be one of the most worrying times for any organisation. Ignoring the situation won’t make it go away. Our services are geared to stopping a crisis getting out of hand and being played out across conventional, online and social media. Our expertise is such that we act as your voice, we manage the conversation and work to minimise the damage to your reputation and your brand. We won’t shy away from the difficult conversations day or night – we will be responsive, proactive and robust in equal measure.
- Product Quality Issues
- Staff / Legal Issues
- Disaster Recovery
- Reputation Support
- Loss of Business
COMMUNICATIONS FOR
MANAGING & EMBEDDING
CHANGE
Managing and embedding change can be amongst the most critical activities that any organisation can undertake. Communicating change is messy, complicated and requires content focused more on emotions than rational thought.
The most common response to any change is to resist and obstruct; it’s human nature. A well designed strategic approach to communicating change will lead to it reaching individuals on an emotive and individual level. Getting it right, will help embed change and create ownership at all levels. Change communications must start at the top of the organisation, it is a leadership task, not a functional activity, without effective communications nothing can change.
We will work with the senior team to develop a strategic plan that takes account of the organisation, and we will work tirelessly to ensure that we understand the underlying issues so that your message delivery has maximum effect.
COMMUNICATIONS
& STRATEGIC
DIALOGUE
For strategic success, organisations have to understand the essence of the context, the essence of the content and the essence of the process.
Strategy is a process of developing your future. While organisations acknowledge the importance of strategy creation and execution, all too often, they don’t get the required results.
One of the critical determinants of strategic success is to see strategy not just as planning but also as a process that involves dialogues with multiple stakeholders, both within and outside the company.
Van den Berg & Pietersma (2014)
The concept of dialogue is at the heart of the effectiveness in creating a strategy that delivers in practice. Of equal importance is the way in which the process if organised and the results are communicated to all stakeholders.
We work on identifying the key stakeholder relationships, their communication needs and how your dialogue with them can be made to work for you.
RESEARCH FOR
BRAND & AUDIENCE
UNDERSTANDING
A brand is much more than a logo or a strapline, it is the very essence of what you are and what you stand for. Your brand is everything you do, and everything you say, it is where you came from and what makes you great. Brand reputation is consolidated over time, eroding it can take years to recover. Effective brand communications build your brand’s reputation with your audience(s), but only if you understand what they are open to hearing.
That is why research is so important in your brand communication strategy. Understanding your target audience, what they aspire too, their motivations and what they need or want from your brand is essential. There is no set formula for arriving at a researched audience profile. Sometimes it is obvious to you, at other times we need to work to establish it. Our approach uses a mix of techniques including surveys, focus groups, observation of behaviour and analysis to capture and understand the behaviours experienced. We look at both quantitative and qualitative attributes to gain insights and reflect the experience delivered to your audiences.
Our know-how is used to deliver the best possible value, and that means that we can deliver meaningful market research even on a tight budget.
DIGITAL
& SOCIAL
DIALOGUE
Like or not, we live in a connected digital world that is ever changing. The use of digital & social media in your dialogue isn’t an option, it’s a must.
We can also help to strategically integrate a digital approach within your wider marketing and communications dialogue. We can support your team through training, developing skills in digital and social as needed or even become your digital and social team if that is applicable.
We believe in developing digital strategies that stand alongside conventional communication and marketing dialogue creating a joined-up approach that is both cost-effective and scalable.
Our reasons for using WordPress as the CMS of choice is because it is quick to develop, allows for a clean design, easy to use, off the shelf, developed by millions of users and is cost-effective.
WordPress is opensource where the only costs associated is for hosting and development. For charities and not for profit clients this is an essential consideration. Cost of development is typically 50% less than the nearest equivalent opensource platform such as Drupal or Joomla.
MARKETING &
CAMPAIGNING
One definition of marketing says that it is: The management process responsible for identifying, anticipating and satisfying customer requirements profitably.
Chartered Institute of Marketing (2017)
Certainly, marketing is central to any organisation’s performance, both large and small, for profit or not. This is because it addresses the most important aspects of understanding the marketplace or environment that you operate in. It is about ensuring you can tap into key trends, and reach your customers with the right product/service at the right price, place and time.
Campaigning is the mechanism used to deliver a marketing proposition in such a way that your customer/audience is most likely to engage and take up your offering.
We have extensive experience supporting organisations to deliver successful marketing campaigns, from identifying and researching target audiences/profiles to developing propositions and delivering highly successful targeted content.
We work with you to understand what makes your proposition unique and then together, we work to deliver compelling content to your target audience.
Research based on your needs and budget.
Strategic thinking that helps you decide on better campaigns and outcomes.
Developing a marketing mix that works for you: Product; Price; Place; Promotion; People; Process and Physical Evidence.
Read more from the Chartered Institute of Marketing
Creating content that appeals and motivates.