Creating a multi-channel campaign that maximises your budget.
As we reach the back-end of 2021, chances are you might be facing a few end of year company meetings and presentations - whether it’s looking back at the year’s success stories, or looking forward to promoting new products, addressing upcoming challenges and focussing the team on new objectives. It can be a great opportunity to bring the team together and give clarity and insight to your customers.
However, creating exceptional corporate communications can often be a bit of a challenge that pose the following questions:
– How do you maximise engagement from employees and customers?
– How do you get your message to stand out?
– How do you reach the widest audience across multiple touchpoints?
In this short article we'll aim to answer those questions referencing a recent multi-channel campaign we completed for the English Institute of Sport. (See a preview of the animation, digital assets and print design shown in the video below)
The recent EIS campaign included unique, bespoke illustration, animated summary video, tailored social media content and printed literature. Our answers below illustrate how we maximised this campaign's reach.
How do you maximise engagement from employees and customers?
Maximising engagement can often begin most powerfully by including your audience in the document's creation. Either overtly, through support with content production (from key stakeholders) or more collaboratively through research and discussion groups.
The EIS connected with their key audience members (coaches, athletes, sports teams, medical support, external suppliers etc) to gather research and feedback that would inform this document's creation. The process of reaching out to your intended audience - either through workshops, social media, email, phone or online questionnaire for example, not only informs the creation of your corporate content but also begins the process of 'buying in' your audience to the upcoming communications.
There is also a sense of ownership from your audience that they helped inform this upcoming document/video/animation, and so they are much more likely to share its content.
Another key element in engaging your audience is to speak in the professional language they understand and thereby positions you as an authority in this field. Use the correct terminology, be specific and where possible, use a professional copywriter.
Visual language is also critical to audience engagement. It is important to both use visual references they understand and connect with quickly, but are also presented in a fresh new way that doesn't look tired or clichéd. For this EIS project we created a series of illustrations (working with the uber-talented Benjamin Jones).
We also created diagrams and information graphics in this illustrative style so they would convey critical, technical information but in a fresh and contemporary way that was pertinent to the overall look and feel.
How do you get your message to stand out?
Corporate communication is often awash with stock imagery and familiar looking templated design. There is a safety in creating 'me-too' looking documents. But if you want to stand out and be noticed, you'll need to approach your corporate communications with more creativity and innovation.
Company documents can be, by their nature, pretty long and intense. But one thing we pride ourselves on being is good at is taking in-depth knowledge and finding creative methods and media channels to convert it into engaging and approachable content. One technique we employed in this document was the use of bespoke illustrations and engaging visual metaphors.
By using witty, bespoke illustrations both in the Animation, print design and social media content we were able to create a unique and 'stand out' design that was both memorable, original and creative. Whatever platform these these on-brand illustrations were seen, the viewer would be continually reminded of the EIS Mission 2025 strategy document.
Ensuring your corporate communications have stand out, remain on-brand, yet continually feel innovative (rather than becoming stale and derivitive) is a challenging tight-rope to walk. At Turbine Creative our staff have worked with some of the biggest global organisations from BP, The Walt Disney Company, BBC, Thermo Fisher Scientific to name a few. We understand corporate culture and the restrictions there often are. But we also understand where the freedom and flexibility can often be found to fully harness your brand, be creative and yet uphold the brand's integrity.
How do you reach the widest audience across multiple touchpoints?
With corporate strategy, it’s essential to go for a multi-channel approach. This allows for greater impact across multiple platforms, higher visibility, a unified message and perhaps above all, greater value for money.
As part of your corporate communications there should be some sort of creative hook, a story, an ongoing visual metaphor or a theme that runs throughout to engage your audience. Having done the hard work and invested that time, money and consideration into this creative (both written and visual) it is really important to spread that creative across all your target audience touchpoints. These might be:
• Website • Printed collateral • Events-based materials • Social media (fomatted in a way that maximises each platform) • Live Action Video • Animation • E-shot campaign • Newsletters • On-site graphics • App-based content
The list goes on. But hopefully you can see there are MANY ways your target audience might prefer to consumer your corporate communication content. A younger demographic might prefer to watch a video of your content, whereas a more mature audience might prefer to read a physically printed document. Once you have created the central assets, it massively increases your ROI and campaign visibility if you then deliver the message across those platforms that your audience are most active in. Know your audience and know how they prefer to consumer content.
EIS intially approached us to create an animation that would summarise their Mission 2025 document. Working in partnership with the expert EIS team we narrated their corporate story, taking viewers on a journey through the challenges that were being faced, the objectives that EIS are championing, and ending on a rallying cry for the whole team to join EIS on their mission. We created the script, storyboard, illustrations, subsequent animations and final video production. We then used these assets to create social media content. You can watch the full animation below.
Final Summary
To create memorable and impactful corporate communications there must be a unique combination of values; a boldness to try new things and a creativity that intelligently walks the line between established brand identity and fresh innovation.
At Turbine Creative we relish the challenge of making complex, sophisticated and indepth materials digestible. Whether that is within Health, Life Science, Sport or other sectors.
It was great to bring Mission 2025 to life – especially considering the impact we know it will have on our athletes and their support teams at the Paris Olympics. We’re genuinely looking forward to hearing how the Mission 2025 strategy works over the upcoming months and into future.
We will leave you with the following 4 tips for creating excellent corporate communications:
1) Involve your audience in the campaign's creation.
2) Work hard to make your particular message stand out in a sea of corporate white noise.
3) Have a distinctive creative approach: Be bold + Be smart + Be consistent.
4) Deliver your message across multiple channels to cater for all preferred styles of communication.
If you'd like to chat about how we could help your organisation with your corporate communications drop us an email on hello@turbinecreative or contact us here
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