Public notices – is there anything duller for a designer to get their teeth into? It’s just text on a plain background with, perhaps, a black & white Euro-standard symbol to add visual excitement – or more likely as an aid for particularly thick observers. Hand it over to the work experience kid. But that’s not the Positive Advertising way, is it? Tatty, home made notices, laminated and pinned to the wall, do nothing for your reputation. Customers will think it’s lazy and undervalues them. If the company can’t be bothered to produce something professional, then why should they bother to take any notice of the content?
Notices don’t need to be major works of art, but even the simplest should carry visual brand reinforcement, through the use brand colours, fonts and a consistent layout. That way it’s a piece of recognisable communication.
Take Sunbourne Leisure. As part of our client service we recommended replacing their widely ignored, drawing pin notices with properly designed and frame mounted notices.
Simple enough, but the corporate yellow backgrounds, simple but strong visuals and copy placement are hard to ignore. Together they form a template that can be used across the parks.
NHS Trusts are part of the NHS. Each NHS Trust is responsible for providing some of your local health services. For example, some NHS Trusts run hospitals, whilst others provide ambulance services. Recruiting capable and committed staff to work in these organisations is vital. So with a big drive on, to recruit Healthcare Assistants, The Shrewsbury and Telford Hospital NHS Trust turned to Positive Advertising for a fresh perspective. With some clients we don’t receive enough information. Others can throw an entire library at us. Fortunately the Trust has the balance right – enough for us to swim, but not enough for us to drown.
For the campaign, the Trust wanted radio advertising, posters/banners for recruitment events and a leaflet for people interested in becoming Healthcare Assistants. The brief and campaign theme, ‘Making a Difference’, were clear and the target demographic accurately defined.
That sounds easy enough then. But organizations, like the Trust, are very inclusive – which is good when it comes to defining best practice on the wards, but can be problematic when it comes to simplifying the communication process. Unless, as in this case, the Trust had a firm hand on the tiller. It’s in the nature of large organizations to invite comment and contribution – which means that a 30 second radio ad can easily balloon to 5 minutes, once every possible angle, piece of information and policy sub-clause has been added. That’s why they say that a giraffe is a horse designed by a committee and an elephant is a mouse built to government specifications. Fortunately, we had a good client side expert who was able to filter and refine, in order to avoid swamping us with information bloat.
As we saw it, our task was to strip away any extraneous detail, and avoid mixed messages, to get to the heart of the problem – what creative solution would persuade the right people to apply to become Healthcare Assistants, or visit the open days to learn more.
Our solution was to build a sense of worth into the campaign. To establish that Healthcare Assistants are a vital part of the NHS team; a caring profession, with prospects to go on to full nurse training. We would then contrast and compare with home life, or any dead-end jobs that candidates may find frustrating and unfulfilling. The benefits and duties were pared back to a minimum, as we felt that information overload would be counterproductive at this stage. The campaign was designed to spark interest and have a clear and simple call for action. All the detail would be made available at the next step. The most important elements were visual impact and tone of voice – sincere, simply phased, but not condescending.
The printed materials had to work in tandem with the PCT’s Annual Report and Website. Timescales were of the ‘can we have it last week’ variety as the road shows were already booked and the budget tight – which is why our designer, Christina, relaunched her modelling career.
‘I Love My Staff’ may not sound as grand as ‘I Love New York’, but it carries the same sentiment of caring, valuing and pride. So when Healthcare Cash Benefits Plan provider, Paycare, needed a strategy to market their B2B ‘4work’ plans we saw a natural match. Smart employers, or managers, love their staff for a very practical reason; it’s a humane response and a canny investment that pays dividends.
So now we had the idea. But how did we develop it and create a managed, integrated process to give brand value to the product, achieve that all important stand-out and reach the corporate decision makers? Firstly we sat down with the client to work out where the current communication blocks were and, between us, devise a structured 7-step approach plan.
1. Tangibles.
We started by emulating the original ‘I Love New York’ campaign. More than just a slogan, the campaign was tangible in that it appeared on objects – cups and T-shirts. We had ‘I Love My Staff’ badges that would be sent to company bosses and Human Resource Managers.
2. List
We recommended that the client commission a reputable telemarketing company manage an appointments system – putting a structure in place to manage the contact process. They started by selecting a careful chosen group of companies over a particular geographic area. Once this was done we could start to target those companies with Direct Mail.
3. Direct Mail
The chosen companies received a personalised letter, a mailer and attached badge that touched on the benefits to the employer of ‘loving their staff’ the productivity gains of a healthy workforce, the decrease in absenteeism and the unfairness of staff having to make hard choices – fix their teeth or buy new shoes for their kids. We simply asked them ‘could you wear this badge with pride’. The letter finished with a promise of a phone call within two days.
4. Telemarketing
The follow up call found out if the letter had been received, who the company decision maker actually was and, if there was an indication of interest, whether they would like an email presentation with more detail.
5. email
If they agreed to this a personalised six-page email presentation was sent, giving more details about the benefits to staff and company. The ‘I Love My Staff’ badge featured prominently. The final page had FAQ sections and the call for action was a simple make an appointment reply button – for a 15 minute face-to-face presentation.
6. Visit
A corporate policy specialist would then visit, deliver a 15 minute presentation and answer any questions.
7. Talking Head
If even more information was required, or the decision had to go to a group or Board level, then the Paycare rep would leave behind a branded USB Stick multi-page, interactive, ‘talking head’ presentation.
This YouTube video is the nearest we could get to the user-controlled, fully-interactive presentation we went to so much trouble to create. The YouTube version tends to run together, but at least it gives a flavour of the original presentation.
This might seem like an overly complicated procedure, but experience has shown that this softly-softly approach, of drip-feeding information into an organisation, is the best way to cut through the natural blocks that businesses erect to shield their decision makers.
We know, from email campaigns featuring the ‘I Love My Staff’ badges, that this is having an effect. The replies and comments tend to be along the lines of staff expecting their bosses to be ‘wearing the badge next time they see them’. We’ll keep you posted as the results come in, but I have a feeling that this dry subject could just become a little bit moist.
