Comms Team Newsletter – 03
It’s our mission to make sure employees engage with Darwin and their benefits.
The Buzz tells you how we do it.
We hope you enjoy reading and let us know what you think!
Creating a brand
Some people say that selecting benefits isn’t the most interesting thing they do each year (we know…rude huh?). It may happen around December, just as you’re busting out the festive fanciness, but for many, it doesn’t create the same anticipation as waiting for the Christmas Coca Cola and John Lewis adverts. If our clients are looking for impact it’s simple, they need a great brand to support their campaigns. A strong brand plays an extremely important role in encouraging employees to log on and engage with their benefits.
A good brand will:
- clearly deliver a message
- emotionally connect employees with the product or service (Darwin)
- motivate the audience to engage with it
- and finally, help create user loyalty
We ask employees to log in time and time again to manage their benefits, whilst hoping they feel excited, empowered and satisfied at the same time! You know that sense of familiarity you get when you see the Coca Cola red, hold the uniquely shaped Coca Cola bottle, or take that first sip? That’s the kind of relationship we want employees to have with their benefits brand.
How we create brands
A lot of people struggle to sum up what exactly us ‘creative folk’ do for eight hours a day. You might think we just make things look pretty. And you’re not wrong. Making client work as attractive and interesting as possible is something we’re very passionate about. But this is just one part of a very long and often complicated process. In a nutshell, it’s our job to engage employees with their benefits on Darwin. We can do this in different ways, whether we use promotional items for a launch campaign, an animated video, posters, brochures or a combination of everything. The most important thing is that it all comes together to form a brand.
Here’s how we do it
- Research
Every good piece of design needs to start with a bit of research to support it. This involves meeting the client and finding out as much as we can about their employees. Are they young? Do they work in an office? How many sugars do they have in their tea? This kind of information helps us shape a target audience to work with.
- Brainstorm
This is when we think of as many random words and thoughts related to the client as possible to try and generate a brand name. It needs to be positive and it needs to be catchy. Some of our most successful brand names are MyChoice, Spark, Highlights, Boosters and Spring.
- Concept creation
We create a series of different visual options for the client to choose from, we call them identities. For each identity we use our research to build a library of colours, imagery, typography and tone of voice that’s suitable for the target audience.
- The moment of truth
Now it’s time to present our ideas to the client. Once we have their feedback we can develop and refine our ideas further. Usually we’ll focus on one concept, maybe combining it with elements of others, but in some cases it can be back to the drawing board.
The School of Life
Graphic design is the visual expression of an idea, message or concept. In our daily lives, we are bombarded by it. From the alarm clock that gets us out of bed, to the tube map on route to work, to Eastenders opening titles when we put our feet up in the evening. In a world that is saturated with visual noise it’s really easy to forget how much design impacts, moves and informs us.
A huge part of design is that it can be used to help tell a story, and when executed effectively, it can allow the most mundane subject to be communicated in an engaging way. An excellent example of this is demonstrated in the series of YouTube videos by The School of Life. When creating these they’ve taken into consideration how the visual effect of imagery and typography can reinforces information. By using different visual styles to illustrate provocative topics such as How to Find Meaningful Work and Who Am I? their beautifully crafted graphics support the accompanying narrative.
How to Find Fulfilling Work
The School of Life have used academic references in the form of old linocut graphics and an eighteen-century typeface to engage their audience, and by pairing this with concise messaging it makes the information easier to take in and understand.
Success at School vs Success in Life
In comparison to How to Find Fulling Work, this subject is illustrated in an informal cartoon style, that appeals to the audience. Using the same format as other videos made by The School of Life, the topic and tone is adjusted to support the content.
Cultural Mining
The video below, emphasises the contrast to the other video styles and provokes an emotional connection with the subject matter. The School of Life has conceptualised the current cultural landscape to a mine which they illustrate through a simple printed style.
Design trends
Great design is timeless. Whether you’re an expert or a novice, we all see design styles that never really go out of fashion (think Art Deco and its influence in movies and architecture, still resonating today in the UK and staying strong in the US). Similairly, there are typographies that never go out of fashion, and that you can’t go wrong in using. Helvetica jumps to mind. Created in 1957, it’s used through the whole underground system of New York City and has been the basis for some of the most well known logotypes like American Airlines, Post-it or McDonalds.
True to form, it’s Spring 2018 and some old trends are coming back to life. Colour gradients that back in the day were completely out of fashion, are now one of the most used visual trends of the year to date. We don’t want to bore you with buckets of design jargon, but, for the inquisitive, we’ve put together some links to design sites that are a feast for the eyes. A compilation of the most remarkable design trends we’re experiencing right now. Do you agree with them? Love them, hate them? Is the best trend being out of trend ? <<< deep eh? We’ll leave that up to you.
Hard to reach audiences
In the past Thomsons’ clients and their employees tended to fall into two categories: cash rich and desk based (finance and legal companies) or tech savvy and desk based (technology sector). Nowadays we’re just as likely to be communicating to an engineer up a telegraph pole or a foreman on a building site as someone sitting at a desk (go Darwin!).
So how do we reach these tricky, disconnected employee groups I hear you cry? Well as you’d expect us comms types have a few tricks up our sleeves.
Be smartphone savvy – most people have their own smartphone and people of all ages have a preference for getting their information this way. Mobile friendly guides, video, podcasts, augmented reality – there are loads of ways to use the phone to get messages across.
Don’t reinvent the wheel – how does the company reach out to hard to reach groups with business critical messages? We aren’t the first people who need to get their attention. Do they have a morning huddle, a strong manager cascade, regular conference calls? Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery.
Home is where the heart is – sometimes only a home mailer will do (see how Cadent Gas gave theirs a tech upgrade).
Comms with utility (geddit?)
The Challenge
Help Cadent employees understand the value of their benefits and the choices they have. Reach the people in vans and digging holes in roads in a measurable way that helps to make the case for more comms investment.
The Solution
A home mailer using a clean, typographical approach with direct and friendly messaging. Key benefits information presented in an easy to digest, unpretentious ‘snapshot’ format. A QR code with a link to Darwin helped us to track how many people engaged with the mailer.
The Result
By the end of their benefit selection window 1,329 people had followed the QR code link to the site.
What’s cooking
It seems like Christmas was yesterday (or maybe that was the snow…) anyway it’s nearly Summer time! Hurrah. 2018 seems to be flying by but we have a year full of plans and ideas here at Comms HQ. We’re not reinventing the wheel but we’re making the wheel more rounded (pun intended).
There’s literally no fun in revealing everything at once, so here’s a sneek peek at some of the things that’ll happen in Comms land during 2018:
Better, bigger animations
We have a new Digital Designer (if you haven’t met Ilze already, pop over and say ‘hi!’) and animation is her thing. So, we’ll be creating videos and animations that are more slick, whizzy and engaging than ever!
Client self service area
We’ve decided to make our website work harder, so we’re creating a space that’ll let our clients self serve with access to great content, campaign themes and updates. A snazzy ‘client only area’. We can’t reveal too much yet as it’s a work in progress, but if you want to know more, just pop over, have a coffee and a chat with us. The more biscuits you bring, the more we’ll share.
Improved Comms website
The Comms website is getting a content update, to make sure that everything you need to know about us stays on point and super useful.
That’ll include portfolio updates, so check our website soon to see the latest and greatest examples of client work.
Innovation
Will it be a talking poster? Probs not, we’ve already done that. Will it be a rocket to the moon?…the truth is, we’re not quite sure yet – but you never know! We’re working to create and explore new channels. Our aim is to make sure that the communications we produce remain effective, innovative, engaging and have a sprinkle of pink magic. Who knows, we may even trial new channels with you!
Thanks for reading! Remember, if you have any thoughts…
Love, The Comms Team 😉