We don't just generate smart ideas. Our extensive first-hand experience of all the key communications disciplines enables us to transform our concepts into practical solutions that strike a chord with the right stakeholders at the right time.

Stakeholder Analyses

Strategic Positioning

Storyline Development

Communications Strategies

Monitoring & Evaluation

Capacity Building

  • Understanding your stakeholders’ preferences, perceptions of your organisation and their potential roles as enablers or blockers is critical to knowing how to approach them.
  • Depending on the situation, we use structured interviews, surveys, ‘crowd sourcing’ and other techniques to build up a detailed profile of the key players, including their tangible expectations, points of acceptance and resistance, potential to act and influence, and preferred communication channels.
  • These insights also enable organisations to align their services more closely with their stakeholders’ requirements.
  • What differentiates your organisation from other players in your field? How do you practically add value, and what distinguishes your style of delivery, including how you interact with your stakeholders?
  • Also, do your claims and aspirations reflect the reality on the ground and your true long-term capability? Is your current strategic positioning credible?
  • We research these issues and then, together with insights from your stakeholders, develop, test and create a core proposition that resonates positively with your target audiences, including an appropriate creative approach and stakeholder-specific calls to action.
  • Stakeholders need a storyline, with a beginning, middle and end – a problem, solution and outcome, in order to appreciate the practical relevance of your strategic position and how you bring it to life in reality. This also enables them to put individual actions in context, minimising the risk of misinterpretation.
  • We not only develop ‘big picture’ strategic storylines for organisations, as well as tactical variations for particular stakeholder groups, we bring them to life with grassroots examples that demonstrate your organisation’s tangible, human impact.
  • We also have the practical skills to transform storylines into a variety of communications tools, ensuring coherent, consistent messaging across all communication platforms.
  • Communications strategies are only effective if they have clear measurable objectives that are aligned with your organisation’s strategic and tactical targets. The challenge is identifying how different stakeholders influence these objectives (and each other), and then developing a prioritized, phased strategy and plan that triggers the right responses from each group at the right time.
  • Our extensive experience of different stakeholder groups, sectors, cultures and communication channels enables us to do this, as well as address potential risks.
  • Moreover, our deep practical knowledge of all the key communication disciplines, from advertising and media relations to audio-visual techniques and event management, enables us to implement our strategies – and to recognize what works and what doesn’t in different situations.
  • No strategy is perfect, although pre-testing concepts and tools with stakeholders increases the likelihood of success.
  • At different stages of any campaign, often at the start and then at six-monthly intervals, we use independent monitoring and evaluation specialists to assess a strategy’s impact and, especially, the relative strengths and weaknesses of its different components.
  • Our primary aim is not simply to monitor progress but to use the evaluation insights to sharpen and refresh the strategy so that it hits or even exceeds its targets.
  • Our ultimate goal is to enable our clients to successfully manage their marketing and communications without us.
  • To achieve this, we provide training in all facets of marketing and communications, from branding and storyline development to media relations and managing external suppliers, underpinned by advice on how to establish the most appropriate organisational structures, systems and processes.
  • We also conduct long-term, occasional 'pulse checks' of our clients' communications strategies, plans and capabilities, including simple, practical and independent advice on how they can sharpen the impact of their communication initiatives.