Bridging the gap between internal and external messaging

Traditionally customer-facing messages are very different to those a business uses internally to motivate their team and build their corporate culture. For Kingston City Council, aligning their inside and outside brand communications is proving to be a positive and easy-to-implement strategy.

Located within 15km of Melbourne’s CBD, the City of Kingston boasts a population of around 135,000 and is renowned for its beaches, thriving industrial sector, vibrant village shopping centres and waterfront living.

In 2008, Kingston City Council (in conjunction with a third party) undertook an exercise to develop an internal campaign seeking to push attitudinal and cultural change. The process identified a strong values proposition based on the statement “community-inspired leadership”.

Subsequently, DDG entered into a competitive pitch to develop an external marketing campaign. After reviewing the brief, the internal campaign, the existing materials and the data from the 2008 Local Government Community Satisfaction Survey, DDG presented concepts based on a recommendation to align the external marketing messages to the same values framework which underpinned the internal campaign. The proposal included putting “community inspired leadership” into double-duty as the market-facing positioning statement.

According to Louise Barren, Kingston’s Performance Planning Officer, “DDG presented concepts that we really felt we could work with. In particular we believed their recommendation on language development was something we could apply right across our organisation.”

“Very often, organisations develop two sets of messages – one for internal use and one for external use,” explained Fred Thompson, DDG’s Creative Director. “In this case, we recognised that the internal values proposition was equally relevant to the external stakeholders, and that aligning the two would be a powerful approach in terms of achieving consistency, clarity, purpose and inclusiveness. Externalising the values actually reinforces and affirms them.”

“With that treatment in mind, it was critical to translate the values and language of the internal campaign into phrasing and words that would be easily understood by the community and stakeholder groups. Around 23% of the Kingston community speak a language other than English at home, so keeping the messaging clear and simple was crucial. ”

Kingston is now bridging the gap between internal and external branding with all communications linking back to the original six key values: future-orientated, accountable, expert, dynamic, community-centric and celebrate. DDG has provided the copywriting expertise to deconstruct these values and re-purpose them into simple, connective words/phrasing that offer understanding and invite participation, so that Kingston has a ready-resource for authoring of communications.

The DDG design team also developed a visual style to interpret the people-focussed proposition into the marketing collateral.

“We retained the Kingston corporate colours, because there was a very strong rationale for their use,” said Fred. “Blue for the seaside location, green for the environmental spaces and ochre for the sandbelt areas. We combined these with peopled imagery, a curved graphic and simple, clean lines to reflect the certainty of the identified values. We have translated these visual elements faithfully across the marketing collateral to reinforce the sense of purpose.”

“To date, deliverables include employment advertisement templates, PowerPoint presentation templates, promotional banners, the community directory, certificates and event invitations.”



Testimonial

“DDG presented us with initial concepts that we felt we could apply across our organisation. The language development made it very real for us – it gave us a sense of our community looking in on us as a business and also the tools to help us sell our proposition on an everyday level.

With DDG’s assistance, we have since been applying the visual and language elements to our marketing materials - product by product - and are pleased with the commonality across the products, yet the subtle differences that define each of them.

We have established a very easy working relationship with DDG. Their quick turnarounds on both big and small briefs are impressive and we benefit from their professional advice.

Our Councillors and the Kingston team in general have been very accepting of the new approach and we anticipate a positive response when we shortly introduce the fresh look to our community via our new Community Directory.”

Louise Barren, Performance Planning, Kingston City Council