Case Studies

Overview: A mid-sized company was experiencing significant growth and needed to introduce a new function: corporate communications. It was becoming increasingly difficult for each division and department to manage their customer and employee communications. Executive leaders wanted to ensure quality, consistent messaging that was aligned with the organization’s brand standards and values. I was recruited to a small team that stood-up a new communications department. 

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Challenge: The primary challenge was gaining visibility into the various efforts already occurring across the company. The team needed to forge new partnerships, gain stakeholder trust, and minimize disruption. 

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My role 

• Strategic planning facilitator: I led strategic planning sessions with three departments. The sessions were designed to determine work-in-progress, identify key priorities (short and long-term), gain insights on team dynamics and start building trust with stakeholders. 

• Content strategy: I built annual communication plans for my assigned teams, helped create and implement the content (articles, newsletters, videos, training, etc.), and monitored progress. As the lead content strategist on the team, I maintained oversight of company-wide efforts and helped teams unify messaging. 

• Style guide and templates: I heavily contributed to and socialized a new corporate style guide. I also led the development of corporate templates for email, memos, press releases, media pitches and more. These assets were part of the foundational work towards creating a centralized, hub-and-spoke communications model. 

 

The outcome: Within 6 months, the corporate communications team was fully functioning and engaged with 75% of identified stakeholders. A message hierarchy of importance was established and shared, which led to improved cross-team collaboration and minimized conflict due to competing priorities. Our team identified multiple opportunities to leverage services available through existing vendor contracts (like agency partners and HR platforms) to streamline communication practices for multiple teams. 

Overview: A large, global company needed to quickly establish a new business office focused on an IT modernization priority. The highly-visible initiative needed to centralize communication to ensure clear understanding of the initiative’s intent, including short- and long-term goals, MBOs, funding prioritization, training and change management. This work required agility without sacrificing quality, and collaboration at all levels of the organization. 

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Challenge: The primary challenge was centralizing critical information about the modernization initiative. Over the years, similar efforts had been attempted and deprioritized, so information was dispersed across many internal channels. Another challenge was getting leadership and stakeholder buy-in on the overall communications plan. 

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My role 

• Stakeholder alignment: As the lead communications consultant for the business office, I started by identifying key stakeholders who needed to provide input on the communications plan. I created an informal communications committee with these stakeholders to develop and iterate the plan until we had a cohesive approach developed. Most stakeholders were seasoned IT professionals who had little experience with communication planning. I used the opportunity to coach and advise these leaders on best practices and strategies that promote transparency, authenticity and empathy. 

• Communication plan: I created the communications plan which included audience segmentation, persona development, key message development, and channel strategy. As a living document, I periodically revisited the plan to ensure consistent alignment with the initiative goals and revised or reprioritized messaging. 

• Content centralization: I developed and maintained two SharePoint sites to begin the centralization process: one focused on general information for any employee, one focused on business office activities (limited access). These sites became the information hub for all initiative-related content. 

 

The outcome: Within 3 months, the business office was launched. The communications plan proved to be a critical artifact that kept teams across the organization aligned. The concerted effort to ensure that consistent, accurate information was available minimized confusion and established a trusted, primary source of truth for all program-related information.

Overview: When an organization made the commitment to onboard a new enterprise resource planning (ERP) software, it was clear that an effective employee communication and change management plan was needed. The new system rollout was expected to impact nearly all employees - from distribution center to senior corporate executives. 

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Challenge: The primary challenge was overcoming employee resistance to adopting a new ERP. This would be the first major infrastructure shift that would impact the majority of employees, and initial feedback and pushback indicated the need for a compassionate, empathetic and energetic approach to communication. The communication plan would span multiple years and need to engage employees at all levels of the organization.

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My role:

• Audience segmentation and messaging: One of my key roles was to research the company’s workforce to understand how to segment our various audiences. I then created personas for each segment and created a custom messaging matrix to address the unique needs and concerns of each audience.

• Content development: I developed the content for many tactics, including video series scripts, regional office event kits, Town Hall presentations, print and digital signage, newsletter articles, internal company news articles, and more.

• KPI monitoring: I conducted one-to-one interviews to gather qualitative feedback about the ERP rollout effectiveness. I also helped launch a periodic employee survey to benchmark NPS, and used these and other data points to create a leadership dashboard.

• Change management: I partnered with our HR training team to develop customized learning paths for each of the personas. I served as a copywriter and researcher for this part of the project.

 

The outcome: Though the rollout got off to a rocky start, within the first year we started to see improvements in employee sentiment and greater adoption of the new ERP. The communications program helped uncover key power users across the organization, which led to the development of a successful ambassador training program.

Overview: A mid-sized legal technologies company was launching a new SaaS product and the marketing team was on point for developing a multi-channel pre- and post-launch marketing plan. The goals were to establish product awareness, build a sales funnel prior to launch, and develop a thought leadership program to support marketing tactics. 

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Challenge: The primary challenges were time (the team only had six months to ideate, develop and execute the marketing plan) and balancing competing priorities. The small marketing team needed to conduct careful budget and resource planning to ensure consistent marketing and sales enablement support throughout the duration of the product launch. 

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My role 

• Email marketing lead: I developed a pre-launch drip email campaign to initially gauge interest among our existing customer base, then generate warm leads based on key trigger events (like thought leadership content downloads, event sign-ups, etc.). I used A/B testing for headlines and creative, and made adjustments that resulted in improved open and click-thru rate.

• Content strategy: I partnered with internal and industry thought leaders to create various content pieces related to the technology powering the SaaS product. I helped develop a gated-content strategy that was integral to the success of the email drip campaign and helped build the sales pipeline. 

• Tradeshow launch: I helped design and develop the company’s tradeshow presence for the product launch, including sponsorships, marketing collateral, video reels, education track promotions, and more. I partnered with industry publications and key vendors to host launch and thought-leadership events that were well attended.

 

The outcome: The marketing team further established itself as a key partner of sales by building a healthy pre-sales pipeline. Launching the product at a major national tradeshow garnered industry media mentions and some interviews with our product experts. Many of the launch thought leadership and marketing materials were repurposed for evergreen marketing campaigns, helping keep overall marketing costs low.