COVID-19 has realised some of the most challenging times in recent memory. Across the globe, the pandemic is proving to be a ‘sink or swim’ event as entire economies are placed under increasing pressure, while brands and businesses scramble to find new ways of working.
This ‘sink or swim’ verdict rings especially true for B2B brands who traditionally rely on face-to-face relationships to do business – if they can’t find ways to work digitally, they won’t survive.
Digital touchpoints across the customer journey are no longer optional. They’re imperative.
This quote from a retail CEO in a recent article by McKinsey sums up the thinking we’ve seen in those of our clients who seem to be thriving:
“Every business is now a technology business, and what matters most is a deep understanding of the customer, which is enabled by technology.”
It’s tempting to focus on the word ‘technology’ here. You may think those who are succeeding had an advantage if they already had a digital marketing infrastructure in place. And yes, some of them may have had a head-start, but we think it goes deeper than this.
We’ve already seen successes born out of necessity. And rather than having any one technological solution to thank, it’s most often been a specific mindset which has proven invaluable to these prosperous businesses.
Here are some of the common attributes we’ve seen shared among the brands who are thriving:
1. RESPONSIVENESS: Adapting to changing customer needs has always been critical to a brand’s survival. But not even technology companies, who have always set the pace of change, will have experienced such a rapid, radical shift in society as recent times have presented. Among our clients who are successfully navigating these uncharted waters, most have re-evaluated their brand’s purpose and re-calibrated it to connect with a new set of customer needs.
2. SPEED: Small teams with an entrepreneurial mindset have been making quick decisions. In many cases, where it took months for plans to be approved, decisions have been made in days.
3. EXPERIMENTATION: Spotting shifts in customer buying patterns has been useful, but often decisions have been made with imperfect data and a higher than usual level of uncertainty. The role of data has shifted from being the facilitator of protracted, detailed planning and decision making, to the radar for testing, learning and iterating quickly.
4 CREATIVITY: Connecting with customers in an authentic, positive way has been a creative challenge. Those who have succeeded went beyond stock “we’re here for you” platitudes. They re-enforced their brand purpose by adding genuine value to their customer’s lives.
5. AGILITY: In the past, marketing digital transformation was often treated as a big-ticket, slow moving investment, often driven by expensive consultants. COVID-19 has accelerated the adoption of digital systems for many, and most systems are largely interoperable, so bolting together solutions is entirely possible. Again, clients have been making quick decisions about what they need, launching and refining as they go.
6. COLLABORATION: In the past, one of the classic barriers to marketing digital transformation adoption was cultural. Creating the ultimate digital customer journey needed collaboration between a diverse set of departments in the organisation, many of whom hadn’t had to work together before. Times of crisis often bring people together though, and in recent months everybody’s survival has relied on us all working together.
These attributes have always been typical of most successful technology companies, and are certainly evident in the marketing operations of our successful clients – no matter their sector.
What drives them is a mindset which focuses on:
· Satisfying changing customer needs
· Optimising the customer experience throughout their journey
· Launching quickly with a minimum-viable-product (MVP)
· Continuously improving commercial returns
It’s an approach to marketing technology that even Panasonic, our most digitally evolved client, has always taken. The sophisticated ecosystem they enjoy today has evolved over many years, always driven by this exact mindset.
So, as we all begin to look to the future, it’s becoming more and more apparent that things won’t go back to how they were. We’re all technology companies now. To succeed, we need to think and act like technology entrepreneurs: Creative. Responsive. Agile. Collaborative.
As Tom Peters said at the beginning of the dotcom revolution, winners have a common go-to-market strategy: READY, FIRE, AIM.
It’s still possible to integrate evidence-driven digital tools with your current business operations and deliver powerful results for your customer experience. Whether you want to maximise your brand awareness, or reassure your existing clients during these challenging circumstances, it’s possible to make changes which are as quick and calculated as they are impactful.
To find out more about we can transform your digital strategy, get in touch with us at [email protected].
With an estimated 3.6 billion people using social media worldwide, by now you’re probably aware that maintaining your brand’s presence on social media is critical if you want to compete in this ever-progressing digital landscape.
A strong social media presence not only offers new opportunities for leads and sales, but also strengthens customer loyalty, enhances your networking, and opens the door for more partnerships and customer feedback – all the while driving traffic to your website and raising awareness of your brand.
However, the steps needed to assert or improve your presence on socials may feel unclear. Many businesses assume that social media management is easy to take on at first, due to the deceptively simple user experience on most platforms. But in actual fact, it’s a very different, more intricate experience than managing a personal account, and if handled incorrectly, it can even have a detrimental impact on your brand.
So here are seven steps that any modern business can take to ensure their brand is making the most out of social media in the digital age.
By monitoring the performance data of your competitors, you can gain insights into what works and what doesn’t, for smarter decision-making and a better strategy. Researching and analysing competitor behaviour means you can stay one step ahead, and be inspired by new ideas while avoiding their mistakes – and you can outline any threats to your business and identify gaps in your strategy.
After all, why reinvent when you can circumvent?
There are a number of social competitor analysis tools you can use to do this, including FanPage Karma, Awario, Unmetric, and Iconosquare. You then need to decide which audience, engagement, and content metrics are useful to you.
Some of those metrics might be percentage of engagement per media, followers gained, follower growth, comments, likes, the most used hashtags, average posts per day and so on – it’s what’s important to your business.
If you don’t know who your audience is, how can you give them what they want? It’s important to learn your audience’s needs and motivations, as well as their behaviours. What social media platforms do they use? When do they use them? And what are they looking for? With the answers, you can tailor your content to ensure you are serving the right message, at the right time, in the right place.
Different audience demographics behave differently online. So knowing who’s on what platform aids your researching, advertising and marketing decisions, and ensures you’re providing the most relevant content to achieve your business goals.
Once you have an understanding of your audience’s needs and preferences, as well as those of your competitors, it’s time to select which social media channels are most suited to your audience and products/services.
Each social network provides unique delivery opportunities for you to entice your audience. For example, Instagram is a highly visual, creative platform. It can be a great place to showcase your products and services in a more imaginative or artistic manner. It’s also considered to be less formal than other platforms – perfect for showing off your brand personality and company culture.
Twitter, on the other hand, is most often used for consumer care. It’s an effective platform for engaging with your audience, ripe for quick feedback and offering speedy responses. Whereas, LinkedIn is arguably the most useful platform for B2B marketing or targeting a professional demographic.
Consider your channel selection carefully to ensure your messaging is broadcast in the most effective way, reaching the right prospects and generating leads.
It’s common for marketers to spread themselves too thin, so bear in mind your staff resources as part of the selection process. If you have only one team member, attempting to establish a brand presence across six different social media channels may be unrealistic.
Your presence on social media is an extension of your brand, and should, therefore, align with your other forms of brand messaging. Maintaining a consistent voice helps your brand strengthening its trust and reliability, creating a distinct personality among your competitors.
To help you adhere to this, developing brand guidelines can be a helpful tool when maintaining consistency in your Tone of Voice. Consider why your brand exists, what its values are, and how you want customers to feel when interacting with your brand.
The overuse of internet terms or trendy slang can actually damage your reputation, making you seen out of touch or ‘cheap’, and subsequently hurting engagement. In your guidelines, you may consider outlining limitations for hashtag use to avoid being penalised by certain platforms and creating an emoji palette to regulate your messaging. Without such consistency, there’s a lot of room for errors in communication between your brand and your customers.
Arguably the most important social media best practise is your willingness to engage with your audience.
Posting regularly and capitalising on customer interest is a necessity in today’s social climate if you want to keep your followers invested in your brand – and it’s crucial for the growth of your business.
No one wants to receive an automated message or talk to a robot. So, interacting with customers and responding to them quickly is essential if you want to humanise your brand, nurture relationships and increase customer loyalty.
Ensure your account looks active with real-time updates, through Instagram stories or live tweeting for example. Avoid cheesy iStock imagery, and instead opt for authentic, original content that reinforces your brand personality and culture.
In order to remain active and engage, you’ll need to monitor your channels as often as possible, at least daily, and post regularly. There are plenty of social media management tools that can help you do just this. Pre-scheduling social posts is a huge time-saver, rescuing you from posting manually at all hours of the day.
It’s also good practise to keep your ear to the ground, through social listening. Social listening is the process of monitoring social media channels for mentions of your brand, product, competitors, and more, providing the opportunity to track, analyse and respond to conversations. Understanding how people feel about your brand helps you keep your marketing and product/service development efforts on track.
Without social listening, you might be missing out on a big piece of insight about your brand or industry that people are talking about. It also allows you to outline pain points, and better your crisis management tactics by responding right away to negative posts (should there be any!). It can also help you identify social influencers, providing opportunities for partnerships and advertising.
The final step in any digital marketing campaign is measurement. As with your initial data-gathering exercises, measuring the effectiveness of your social media marketing activity will help you to optimise your approach and guarantee ongoing success. And luckily, there are a range of analytics tools you can use to gain these insights.
Social media is a vital tool that all businesses should take advantage of in order to maintain optimum brand loyalty, reach, and engagement.
If you would like to fine-tune your business’s social media activity, boost your reach and get noticed, get in touch with us today at [email protected].
“Don’t wait for opportunity. Create it.”
Never has this oft-cited pearl of business wisdom been more pertinent than it is now. Times are tough, and the companies likely to ride the waves, moving from ‘surviving’ to ‘thriving’ quicker than the rest, will be those who are proactive and positive in pursuit of opportunity.
They will be those with a switched-on, sharpened-up approach to lead generation.
So what does it take to keep those leads flowing in through the door? We’ve broken it down into five critical areas.
Traditional strategies and models would have lead generation sectioned off as an isolated channel. That approach doesn’t hold water today. Leads can and should come from everywhere and everything you do. Your website, your social media marketing, your advertising, your events and exhibitions, your brand strategy, even your conversations with suppliers, contacts and existing customers – they’re all opportunities to be generating new leads and should be factored into your overall strategy.
The key is to approach each with the right mindset, keeping eyes and ears open for avenues of new business, and having the systems in place to capture and capitalise on opportunity as it presents itself.
Marketing generates leads, sales closes them, right? Wrong. Successful lead generation today relies on two-way collaboration between your marketing and sales teams. Both need to be involved at every stage of the design, development and delivery of your lead-generation planning.
Sales can help marketing understand exactly who you should be targeted and offer coal-face insight into what messages and media are likely to work. Equally, marketing can help sales build and nurture the one-to-one personal relationships that become profitable leads.
Now, more than ever, general marketing messages are going to disappear without a trace. If you can’t give people direct answers to specific problems, or if you don’t have a razor-sharp proposition that makes them sit up and take notice, you’ll become just another voice in an already overcrowded market.
It is possible to stand out though. At Proctors, for example, we’ve had great success recently in building a lead-generation campaign around direct, specific and single-minded offers to a targeted group of companies in the logistics industry. By doing our homework upfront – in conjunction with our client’s sales and marketing teams – we’ve been able to cut through the noise and talk to prospective customers about what actually matters to them.
Prospects will become leads far more quickly if you can establish a relationship with them. So a single postcard or impersonal email just won’t cut it. You need to make meaningful connections, based on the quality of your offer and message, and your understanding of who you’re talking to.
We’ve spent the past couple of years working on this area in particular, developing an approach that draws together web analytics, personalised content, social outreach, direct marketing and automation platforms to make the right connections for you – and turn them into high-value leads.
Because opportunities for lead generation permeate every aspect of your business, you need the systems in place to measure its effectiveness and capture the ongoing creation and cultivation of leads. There’s a plethora of tools out there to do just that, so choosing the right one can seem daunting.
The truth is, things can be far simpler than you might believe. It’s all a question of co-ordination and consolidation of technology. And then having the mechanisms in place to take appropriate action as you measure ongoing lead-generation work. That might mean modifying your messaging, showering more love on certain sections of your target audiences, or adjusting the media mix as time goes on.
As with most things in marketing, lead generation works best when you’ve got the fundamentals absolutely right. And that’s where we always start at Proctors, swiftly turning robust plans into hands-on, accountable action.
So, if you want to have a chat about the lead generation opportunities available to you, or if you have a specific project in mind, we’d love to hear from you. Get in touch with us today at [email protected].
Lawless and Inspired have combined to bring together the UK’s best emerging street-artists and their influencer networks, allowing agencies and brands to tap into visual culture. Artists include Jody Thomas who created the 15m high Greta Thunberg wall mura, which highlighted issues of climate change and was featured on the BBC, across national press and went viral on social media.
The Lawless Inspired partnership aims to harness the power of today’s creative pioneers, to deliver physical/digital projects that excite and inspire. Alex Kopfli, Director at Inspired notes ‘by joining forces, we essentially offer agencies and brands a turn key solution, delivering creativity through artistic talent, brought to life by impactful real-life productions merged with digital creativity. The concepts are then distributed to an authentic and sizable audience online through our network.’
Since Lawless launched during the Covid Pandemic, the niche influencer agency has started working with brands to deliver artist-led creative solutions, adding a stamp of cool and credibility to brand campaigns and executions. Lawless Studio has already built up an impressive roster of artists, with the likes of Jody Thomas, Jack Watts, Nerone, Bond Truluv and Shay Casanova, reaching a significantly growing audience of 760k followers as a combined network, quality audiences loyal to each artist they follow, and trend setters in their own right.
Josh Moore of Lawless Studio calls out Inspired’s ‘exceptional track record in delivering first-class brand experiences for the likes of Wavemaker, Mediacom, M&C Saatchi and Fuse’ is the missing piece to the puzzle of delivering stand out creative solutions.
‘We now have the production capacity and logistical know-how to give brands access to creative pioneers and allow them to create amazing content, to give credibility and authenticity to brands through their output, and also reach huge dedicated followings through their social channels.’
After the pandemic, simple practices can make the difference between an agile and innovative company and one which becomes distracted and irrelevant, says Ann Hiatt. This is what separates the disruptive from the disrupted in competitive industries.
Nothing is as damaging to our mental health and productivity than feeling a lack of control. 2020 has proved a difficult environment in which to make informed decisions for economic survival. With no one knowing where this crisis’ finish line lies, it’s hard to budget our time, resources and energy and this can lead to exhaustion and overwhelm.
Sprints are pervasive practice at tech companies for moments when survival is on the line; such as a product launch to beat a competitor to market. A repeated series of timeboxed, focused work for developing, delivering and sustaining complex goals within a short amount of time, there has never been a greater global need for coordinated sprints.
I have been through many formal sprint exercises at both Amazon and Google over the last two decades. They are a key part of what keeps these companies agile, innovative and cutting edge in addition to their long-term strategy planning. This Silicon Valley secret deserves its spotlight.
My five steps for sprint success:
Define success
There is a good chance that your organisation has had a major strategy pivot since the beginning of the pandemic. If that’s true, you are in a sprint whether you knew it or not.
Has that pivot been effectively communicated and applied at every level? It is essential that you and everyone who reports to you has the same definition of what success looks like, to help people prioritise how they spend their increasingly limited time and resources. This definition may differ from your long-term plans.
An analogy popularised by Steven Covey, the author of The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People illustrates this well. Covey talks about filling a jar with as many rocks, pebbles and sand as possible. It turns out that the order of execution is an essential part of its formula for success. Put the rocks in the jar first, followed by pebbles and finally with sand, which fills in any remaining gaps. The rocks represent your major milestone goals. These are the non-negotiable tasks and deliverables which will keep your company competitive and winning. The pebbles are the tasks surrounding the shorter-term goals and the sand are the minor tasks which don’t individually drive success. If you put the sand in the jar first there is no room for the rocks.
Many employees feel like they are already stretched too thin with family commitments, inefficient setup for working from home and overall stress about the state of the world. In this environment it is very tempting for workers to check off a long list of ‘sand’ tasks in order to feel like they have been productive. They also might think they are working on ‘rock’ tasks based on what was asked of them in the former business model. You need to be clear which tasks are now considered core and which have now been re-categorised as non-essential.
Set the time frame
Help your team see that the current sprint effort will come to an end even when you aren’t yet sure when that will be. You need to give them a controlled finish line for today before you build them up for their next big effort.
Back in pre-Covid life, I attended a spin class. Our usual instructor, Rebecca, consistently gave the class a clear overview of the challenges she had planned. At the beginning of a new track she might tell us that we were going to do three thirty second standing springs with thirty seconds of rest between. That helped me pace myself and push myself harder during the sprints, allowing for recovery time.
Erik took over when she was on holiday. He ran similar workouts but he didn’t have the same habit of telling us in advance what we could expect. I noticed that my calorie burn after Erik’s class was significantly lower even than my average with Rebecca, even with the same activities. Turns out that with Erik’s approach, I was subconsciously conserving energy and not pushing as hard as I was otherwise capable of doing.
The pandemic challenge was strangely similar to Erik’s workouts. Because no one knows when or if things will return to normal, many usually high performing people have found themselves in a state of passivity or productivity paralysis with a subconscious need to ensure self-preservation.
Leaders need to create expectations of short sprints which are essential to basic company survival within the context of the long marathon effort for pivoting to new business models for strength and market security post-crisis. These can be a single week of outreach to your core customers to save existing contracts, or a month-long challenge to create a new product delivery pipeline.
Make sure your message is absolutely clear and that your teams understand what is expected of them and when.
Plan for pivots
Every single one of my global consulting clients found themselves in a huge pivot moment during Covid where they needed to adjust their business strategies, company policies, expenses and work environments just to survive. This remains essential as we attempt to create a new normal. Leaders need to set up systems to not only stay connected and present with their employees while working remotely, but also on how to be seen as a confident leader despite the lingering feeling of making things up on the fly.
Employees need to hear an acknowledgement that things are hard and messy and frustrating. When leaders try to be too perfect or confident amid global uncertainty, it has the opposite effect to that intended. What brings teams together is acknowledging the shared hardship and human side of the situation.
Measure the impact
What you measure and reward is what your team will focus on producing. Once you have directed your team to what they need to focus on, you need to connect that to how they will be rewarded accordingly.
This is where it is vital to commit what is being referred to as random acts of leadership. Reach out to your managers at lower levels and/or set up a free form Office Hours session where anyone in the company can bring their questions, concerns and observations to your attention and quick action. The teams will be grateful for the additional leadership contact and you will benefit from instant response to your strategy vision.
Examine your company goal setting and tracking system. If you don’t already have one, I highly recommend the Objectives and Key Results (or OKRs) which are used by both Amazon and Google for aggressive goal setting and clear, measurable, actionable tasks to accomplish them. Measure your progress consistently and clearly across your organisation and immediately reward those who have contributed effectively. This is not a time to wait for a year-end review.
Repeat
This will not be a one-and-done process. Even after the pandemic these practices can make the difference between an agile and innovative company and one which becomes distracted and irrelevant. This is what separates the disruptive from the disrupted in competitive industries.
Remember, the best ideas often come from the lower levels of the organisation rather than the senior executives.
Despite all this ambiguity, there are specific things that can help you as a leader regain a sense of control. Establishing clear sprints for your teams will be the key factor to creating a framework for focus, productivity and measurable success for your company now and in the future.
Article by Ann Hiatt, NED at Armadillo, originally published in AMBITION
When you’ve been looking at the same four walls for the past however many weeks, writer’s block becomes frustratingly real. If you’ve been typing frantically and getting nowhere, we hear you.
But now that we’re all settling into our new desk setups, we’re finding our own tricks for staying motivated during the lockdown. We can’t all create a writer’s studio at the bottom of our gardens where the tweeting robins and growing roses will inspire us. But we can all do these mind-revving tricks from our kitchen tables.
Have a KitKat
Okay, I’m only a few lines into this blog and I’m already thinking about taking a break. But give it a couple of hours and it will be needed.
When you’re working from home, it’s more tempting than ever to make a quick sarnie and type while you eat rather than taking a lunch break. However, your writing will suffer. Your brain needs a rest. So, go for a walk, read your book, do a wordy puzzle or get your dinner prepped. Or if 15-mins of shuteye gives you a buzz of energy when you wake up, go for it – you might not be able to when you’re back in the office.
Set a no-phone timer
Sorry to sound like your teacher, but there’s a reason why phones are banned in the classroom. It’s just way too tempting to have a quick check of this and that, which only distracts you from your writing. Set yourself a timer, during which you can’t look at your phone (unless it rings). Yes, it’s boring, but it does work, especially if you want to get something written quickly.
Pick up the phone
That sounds a bit contrary, but let me be clear, what we’re saying here is call your colleagues. If you’re feeling a bit demotivated or something’s on your mind, talking to someone else facing the same challenges can help.
We also try to do as many briefings as possible over the phone. It helps to clarify our thinking and keep the social aspect of our days alive. Turns out, tittle-tattle in the office gave us a lift when we needed it (but luckily we’re still sharing funny memes).
Keep a notepad handy
Anyone else finding the shopping list is all that enters your mind when you’re trying to write a chunky piece of content? If you’re the same, keep a notepad and pen next to you. Jotting down these thoughts helps clear your mind so you can concentrate on the task at hand.
Moping in your PJs?
Jeans on lockdown might have you wincing, but if you’re feeling a bit down in the doldrums then putting on something nice can help you feel back in the game. Something as simple as putting a brush through your hair can make you feel more ‘ready for the day’ as it were.
Just call it a day
If it’s passed 6pm and you’re still trying to write something, it’s probably time to close the laptop. Perhaps it’s better to park it for the night and get up a bit earlier to finish it off when you have fresh eyes.
If you’ve got some motivation tips of your own, please share them – the more the merrier. Just leave a comment below.
Steve is no stranger to complex, data-led customer journeys. He’s built them for the last 15 years – working both client and agency-side to deliver multi-channel media campaigns for the likes of Unilever, Samsung and Bosch.
He was instrumental in building the clothing brand Finisterre into a well-established High Street name with a presence throughout Europe. He’s also headed up the Chemical Records marketing department; driven international marketing strategy and customer acquisition campaigns for Vodafone; and picked up a host of industry awards along the way.
Now back at Flourish for a second stint (he previously headed up the media department), Steve re-joins as the Head of Strategy & Insights, at a time when stocks in data and insight couldn’t be higher. Stands to reason. As more businesses ramp up their digital activity, they generate more data. The ability to read, understand and utilise that information is where the real value lies.
Managing Partner Ian Reeves hopes Steve’s impressive analytical ability will help to provide clients with the kind of insight that will optimise current campaigns – and create successful new ones.
“It’s great to welcome Steve back to the team,” said Ian. “He has a unique skillset combining media planning, digital strategy and practical commercial experience, giving clients the insight and intelligence to define who, where and how to target.”
Steve will be the bridge between the client brief and a data-led solution. Responsible for uncovering the insights behind every client challenge, then working with the wider team to find the perfect solution.
Every business has data, but not many can translate it into intelligence. Get in touch with Steve for a free audit, insider tips, and the fundamental dos and don’ts of data strategy.
Stephen Davis, Head of Strategy & Insights
0117 317 7635
In this session, you will get an overview of some of the ‘golden rules’ of marketing, the evidence behind them, and why they’re not restrictive but launchpads for great creativity. It turns out that marketing isn’t always complicated, just hard.
The talk will be followed by a 30-minute Q&A so come prepared with your questions. Book here
The session takes place from 3 – 4.30pm on Tuesday 21st January at Zone, The Brewhouse, Bristol. Tickets are £20+VAT for Bristol Media members and £30+VAT for non-members.
Nick has spent the last 12 years helping brands navigate the choppy waters of creating effective marketing with a rigorous evidence-based approach. He’s won numerous awards including the coveted DMA Grand Prix, judges on several awards panels and has been published in leading journals such as Admap.
Margaret was among the 30 speakers who spoke at Bristol Media’s 2016 Vision conference, and we’re thrilled to welcome her back for another insightful event. Whether you’re an aspiring leader, an ambitious manager, or have directed teams for decades, join us and Margaret Heffernan for the Vision Keynote: Why is Leadership so Difficult?
Leadership in today’s age is becoming increasingly difficult due a range of causes from the rate of change, generational differences and a shift in social mores to name but a few. The reality is more subtle. The environment in which we operate is now full of ineradicable uncertainties, which in turn, has caused the traditional 3-legged stool of management – forecast, plan, execute – to lose its first leg. Forecasters are now wary of anything more than 400 days out, so kiss goodbye to your 5-year plan and embrace modern leadership.
So, in an age replete with ambiguity and uncertainty, is leadership even possible? If so, what does it look like?
These questions will be explored during Heffernan’s keynote, where she will share her invaluable knowledge on modern leadership in a session not to be missed.
Join Bristol Media and Margaret Heffernan on Tuesday 22nd October (12.30 – 14.15) at Foot Anstey, 2 Glass Wharf, Bristol BS2 0FR.
Tickets are £40 for Bristol Media members, £60 for non-members and include a networking lunch. A limited number of £10 tickets are available for Bristol Media freelance members.
Dr. Margaret Heffernan produced programmes for the BBC for 13 years. She moved to the US where she spearheaded multimedia productions for Intuit, The Learning Company and Standard&Poors. She was Chief Executive of InfoMation Corporation, ZineZone Corporation and then iCast Corporation, was named one of the “Top 25” by Streaming Media magazine and one of the “Top 100 Media Executives” by The Hollywood Reporter.
The author of five books, Margaret’s third book, Wilful Blindness: Why We Ignore the Obvious at our Peril was named one of the most important business books of the decade by the Financial Times. Her TED talks have been seen by over nine million people and in 2015 TED published Beyond Measure: The Big Impact of Small Changes. She is Lead Faculty for the Forward Institute’s Responsible Leadership Programme and, through Merryck & Co., mentors CEOs and senior executives of major global organisations. She holds an honorary doctorate from the University of Bath and continues to write for the Financial Times and the Huffington Post.
Synergy is tasked with helping DFS to communicate their wide-scale business transformation to colleagues across the organisation.
DFS, Britain’s biggest sofa retailer, has appointed employee engagement specialists Synergy Creative as its strategic partner to help communicate the organisation’s transformation programme.
Synergy Creative will use its experience in large-scale transformation comms to help DFS communicate key changes to the business as it looks to lead sofa retailing in the digital age. The programme will engage with over 5,000 employees across the DFS group, including DFS, Dwell, Sofa Workshop and Sofology.
Lee McNamara, Group Head of Internal Communications and Engagement at DFS, said: “How our customers are shopping with us is changing, so we’re evolving with them. A huge part of that success will be in continuing to deliver an exceptional customer experience, driven by our people.
“We were looking for a partner who could support us fully through this transformation and Synergy Creative showed an excellent level of understanding and expertise in change communications. We’re excited to be working with them on this and sharing our big ambitions with our people.”
Gary Walder, Account Director at Synergy Creative, said: “We’re thrilled to be working with DFS. It’s a brilliant brand and household name and we can’t wait to get stuck in.”
The news comes as part of a brilliant year for Synergy Creative, following a host of award wins, a growing client list and several key hires into the team.
About Synergy Creative:
At Synergy, we believe in the power of people; to imagine, excite and inspire. Ambitious brands trust us to help their people take action, delight customers, transform cultures and create change.
We engage people with impact through insight-driven creative comms and experiences that connect with employees and change behaviours.
As specialists in internal comms and employee engagement, we think, write and gather some brilliant resources to help guide and inform your employee communications. For more information, visit: https://www.synergycreative.co.uk/
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