Positioning strategy
Thackray Medical Museum was seeking clarity – wanting all teams to have an instantly understandable and compelling positioning statement, that everyone involved was able to enact with pride and passion. It would be the basis for all plans, strategies, projects and communications. They want everyone in your organisation be leaders and recognise they’ll need the right tools to empower them – giving them confidence in making – using a clear agreed position, brand and values to fuel their own area of work.
We often see organisations doing ‘Values’ work and then doing ‘Marketing Positioning’ as a separate exercise. And there is a disconnect. Because the values work gives you a list of adjectives no one knows what to do with, and the marketing makes false promises. So we didn’t want to generate a list of values. Instead were working on defining values-led behaviours – things they can actually do and enact in their day to day roles.
Our approach has been to involve everyone. By consulting widely we hope to get buy-in for the final approach, teams have been in the heart of the process so the the tools should feel familiar and respond to their needs.
This project has resulted in a clearly defined Positioning Statement and a set of behaviours that will enable staff teams to bring about their agreed and desired intended outcomes.
A big workshop involving all staff, ensured the new Positioning Statement was supported and understood. And teams then used this and the behaviours (or ‘promises’) as inspiration for a series of innovative brand activations. This will mean everyone can contribute to closing any gaps between the organisation’s newly articulated ambitions and reality for visitors and other stakeholders.
This interactive workshop was a positive and galvanising experience designed to empower all staff at all levels to feel confident in making decisions – in the knowledge there’s no ambiguity around shared direction of travel. This was also an open and collaborative way for teams to have a go at putting the tools into action.
Now the Positioning Statement and ‘promises’ are at the heart of the business planning process, steering strategies, setting priorities and informing their NPO application.
