Tag Archives: Creative Direction

Creative Direction, Product-Service Design

Getting The Word Out Inside A Large Organization

highFidelity_v3

Challenge:

Kaiser Permanente (KP) is the world’s largest integrated health care organization. To the outside world, it’s one big company. To its 120,000+ employees and clinicians, it’s 21 companies with over 700 senior executives, spread across 7 regions. Each region is it’s own sovereign business unit. And, Kaiser Permanente is a health insurance company, a health care provider with exclusive physicians and nurses, a health IT organization, and so much more.

Though its leaders and employees are far flung, Kaiser Permanente’s culture is one of consensus and collaboration. Agreement and alignment are required before any new product/service, process, or model can be adopted by the enterprise. Prerequisite for agreement and alignment: Awareness.

Strategy:

We needed a way to grow awareness of key work happening within the organization in order to secure sponsors and grow adoption of new products/services. We didn’t want to add to the deluge of emails the top 700 leaders were already receiving. Nor did we want to add another new software solution that stakeholders would have to pay for and learn to use.

We designed a communications and engagement platform that provided accurate, consistent information about every product, project, and pilot happening across the organization–with a low learning curve, no license requirements, compatibility with popular systems in use, a simple and attractive interface, and a backend that facilitated communications planning and scheduling, and project team coordination.

My Role In The Solution:

I dreamed up the platform in response to 5 conditions I observed. I designed the platform–it’s initial look and feel, its interface, features and functionality. I also worked with architects to design an interconnected node-based system that would allow platform admins/owners to cross post and search other sites within the network.

I created the initial wireframes and “fat frames” and marketed the platform to Kaiser Permanente leaders throughout the organization to secure seed funding.

I developed the subscription model, and secured the funding and clients willing to pay.

And, I identified, recruited, briefed, and managed the team that is bringing the platform to life.

Results:

We’ve already got pre-orders for the platform set to launch on Janaury 21.

Content Strategy, Creative Direction

Securing Attendees For World’s Largest Security Conference

RSAC-2014-theme
Campaign to drive attendance as we had 3 years running
The campaign included email, outdoor, event, web and mobile ads, and AR postcards.

Challenge:

RSA Conference is the world’s largest IT security conference, bringing together computer security experts to network, share ideas, new products, and new ideas. The Conference takes place annually in San Francisco and in Singapore.

RSA Conference began in 1991 so keeping the conference new and interesting and growing and maintaining attendance year over year can be a challenge.

Strategy:

In my fourth year on the account, it was difficult to think of new ways to drive attendance. Email and search marketing continued to be effective channels, helping us do an excellent job of securing repeat attendees but were having less success with prospects. But we needed a way to grow attendance.

Our Approach: We needed to broaden our net, attract new audiences–younger IT practitioners, women, and those interested in IT security as part of their jobs/businesses in industries such as finance and health care.

To attract these audiences, we needed fresh marketing and marketing collateral.

Campaign included emails, banners, mobile and web ads.
Email campaign featuring cryptography and a mystery to be solved
Email campaign featuring speaker and social media game

My Role In The Solution:

I developed a marketing campaign that spanned email, direct mail, web, print, outdoor, and social channels. The campaign centered on multimedia content, images that reflected the audiences we wanted to attract, and infographics that educated and entertained.

I developed the Conference theme–Share. Learn. Secure. I served as creative director, leading visual designers and copywriters to design the Conference marketing collateral, venue signage, street signs, rich media ads, email templates, augmented reality mailers, and infographics.

Each info graphic targeted an audience segment and delivered key messaging on why attending RSA Conference was important in protecting their data, assets, and customers.

My mockup of infographic
Brainstorming new theme
Brainstorming new theme
Audience-Specific Email
Financial Services Industry Infographic

Results:

Year-over-year double-digit increase in attendance.

Content Strategy, Creative Direction, Experience-Design

Putting the X-Factor In XMatters

XMatters homepage
Why XMatters page
IT Communications page
Proactive Communications Solutions page
XMatters Community homepage

Challenge: 

XMatters creates “Relevance Engines” that deliver relevant information about business interruptions, disasters, ad community alerts to individuals and group audiences based on their geographic location, job group, availability, channel preferences, and other key factors.

Their Relevance Engines have myriad uses for organizations across industries. However, XMatters needed to clarify their offering in order to grow their customer base and increase value to existing customers.

Strategy: 

There are few industries and few professions that couldn’t put XMatters to use but we needed to start with their Super Fans and Early Adopters–groups for whom the use cases were apparent and the success metrics and stories were easy to share.

We also needed a simple way to share the learnings of XMatters’ existing customers, Super Fans, and Early Adopters–and to leverage this to grow value with new and existing customers.

This was the basis of our content strategy for the XMatters website and the online community.

We ultimately delivered…

  • A redesigned website with completely new messaging and content that was targeted to Super Fan/Early Adopters and easy for like audiences to understand;
  • An elegant UI, taxonomy, and ontology that made the information easy to discover–and “breadcrumbed” site visitors to contact XMatters; and
  • An integrated community that allowed current and prospective customers to share their XMatters knowledge and experience.

My Role In The Solution:

I was part of a great team of talented designers, developers, program and project managers. To this team and project I contributed…

  • Developing the initial design concepts (sketches) for the new visual design
  • Leading visual and UX designers to design a new visual design, information architecture and interface.
  • Developing the content strategy for the redesigned website and community
  • Writing copy and managing copywriters, designers, and HTML developers who produced content for the site
  • Providing creative direction for the website and community
  • Developing IA and UX for the website and community

Results: 

Increase in the percentage of website visitors who engage with video and other interactive content and who complete a lead form (demo, contact sales, request info). Growth in number and percentage of website visitors who join the XMatters community. Lower percentage of level one questions being escalated to higher level support.

Content Strategy, Experience-Design

Growing Customers And Value For American Express

American Express Corporate Cards homepage
“Fat Frame” AMEX Corporate Card homepage
AMEX Card Detail Page
“Fat Frame” for Card Detail page
American Express Solutions Finder

Challenge: 

American Express, a global financial services corporation and the world’s largest card issuer, needed to grow the number of qualified leads they acquired via their website corporate cards and services websites–and to grow the lifetime value of their existing customers.

“Selling” corporate credit and charge cards and commercial payment tools is a complicated business with a relatively long purchase path that requires multiple stakeholders and approvals and a complex account setup process–none of which can be completed online.

Strategy: 

Given that we were asked to sell a product online that can’t be sold online, we focused on what we could absolutely deliver–more traffic, more engagement, and more lead forms completed.

Our approach was simple: Target, measure, and optimize.

We identified the primary, secondary, and tertiary audiences for the sites, analyzed the data to understand how those audiences responded to existing website content, online ads, and micro sites driving to the website.

We discovered four insights about our audiences:

  • Virtually all had completed at least some, if not a significant amount of, research prior to visiting the AMEX website
  • The primary audiences visited the site to validate that AMEX products/services had features superior to their existing payment solution
  • While executives would make the final purchase decision, program administrators and managers reporting to those executives gathered the lion’s share of the information on the executives’ behalf
  • Executives were less likely to visit the website for general content but were more likely to read/watch/download more technical or expert content

My Role In The Solution: 

I was part of a great team of talented designers, developers, program and project managers that ultimately developed a new visual design for the website, revised the messaging, copy, and CTAs; identified and included relevant written and video content AMEX already owned; designed landing pages and lead forms; and defined and tagged paths within the website to understand traffic patterns and paths to conversion.

To this team and project I contributed…

  • Leading the creative strategy
  • Developing the content strategy for the redesigned website
  • Writing copy and managing copywriters, designers, and HTML developers who produced content for the site
  • Developing an interactive recommendation tool to help site visitors identify the right product/service
  • Devising a tagging strategy for Sitecore CMS

Results: 

Marked increase in qualified leads generated via sites’ landing pages. AMEX grew their business with us.