Navigating effectively involves knowing both where you are and where you are heading. Imagine the North Star – a bright beacon of consistency in a world undergoing rapid transformation, which can keep you aligned with a long-term vision, allowing you to define your priorities and channel your energy toward meaningful goals.

It’s also about making sure you are perfectly placed in relevant fields – from market segments to technologies and overarching trends. Positioning transforms your company’s strengths into competitive advantages, sharply delineates your USPs and value propositions and provides a solid foundation for an impactful communication strategy. We can help you to create a positioning strategy that’s fit for the future and makes your company distinctive and attractive to stakeholders.

• Conduct field analysis to identify key focus areas for your positioning strategy
• Fine-tune positioning fundamentals such as your values, vision and core value proposition
• Refresh how you present your products and services to make them more compelling for the market
• Craft powerful metaphors and visual language that tell your positioning story in an unforgettable way
• Develop a core narrative that encapsulates your strategic aspirations and vision for the future

Companies have to adapt to new conditions and unforeseen events, often under considerable pressure. This process of adjustment frequently involves a great deal of uncertainty and ambiguity when it comes to implementation, objectives and outcomes. This can result in a company’s efforts being resisted and misinterpreted – possibly unsettling the very stakeholders on which a company is most reliant.

Maintaining a proper balance between solid organization design and strategically focused communication is a key factor in any successful change process. We help companies implement critical changes that rely on the understanding, acceptance and engagement of stakeholders. We take an integrated approach combining corporate development with strong messaging and consistent enabling.

• Develop scenarios to describe and evaluate possible futures and the desired role of the company in these scenarios
• Define a strategic roadmap to allow the company to fulfill this role
• Create a detailed change vision and a clear, motivating change story that provides direction to employees, customers and other stakeholders while highlighting the need for change
• Empower leaders to serve as interpreters, provide feedback and resonance, supported by training and coaching
• Operationally lead, design and moderate all communication topics and projects involved in the change process

Communication strategies define which stories need to be told, to whom and how, in order to achieve corporate or departmental objectives, strengthen positioning and ensure the consistency of operational measures. This requires companies to perform an integrated assessment of market structures, risks and opportunities from their perspective and in terms of the groups they want to communicate with.

Developing a strategy is all about asking nontrivial questions. Getting to the heart of the matter is the only way to identify and address relevant opportunities. We combine creativity and communications know-how with methodological expertise and a deep understanding of specialized areas to develop effective communication strategies and ensure they are implemented smoothly.

• Analyze and assess opportunities, risks and adjustments in marketing and communication to help your company achieve its goals
• Segment internal and external stakeholders and develop roadmaps for specific target groups (narrative arcs, topics, formats, channels)
• Analyze themes and trends; evaluate competitors’ communication strategies and role models
• Develop an action-oriented communication strategy (strategy playbook)
• Create foundational storylines, slogans and key messages

To be effective, communication strategies need content that resonates with target audiences and influences their decision-making processes, views and priorities in line with your corporate objectives. Successful storytelling tailors this content in terms of style and educational strategy to suit the characteristics and specific decision-making contexts of your target groups and delivers it using appropriate formats and channels. We breathe life into communication strategies by creating high-quality and distinctive content that makes companies campaign-ready.

• Identify and elaborate key topics
• Design thought leadership and lead generation campaigns
• Produce books, studies, magazines, articles, interviews and presentations
• Create websites, videos, podcasts, infographics and social media postings
• Facilitate PR initiatives and cultivate connections with media, influencers and experts

Potential and current customers, partners, employees and applicants are constantly making decisions that have an impact on the success of your company at various levels. They decide whether or not they want to get involved with a business relationship or project, or accept an employment contract. They can choose to actively engage or passively step back.

These decision-making processes are inherently complex and based on a number of rational and emotional factors, conscious and subconscious elements, habits, biases, psychological heuristics, rules of thumb and frames, data and risk assessments.

These “decision journeys” always involve multiple stages— for instance, a graduate might decide on a certain work style long before they decide who they want to work for. This means that stakeholders can make decisions that have a significant impact on your company long before any direct interaction occurs.

To influence the choices made by your target groups, you need to be present at critical junctures in their decision-making processes with the right content, channels and formats. We make it easy to understand the decision journey of your stakeholders and develop effective tactics and tools to drive engagement.

• Analyze the decision-making processes of relevant stakeholders
• Create decision-maker personas
• Identify critical junctures in decision-making processes and describe decision-making situations
• Define and develop suitable channels, formats and content allowing you to influence relevant decision-making situations
• Offer coaching for executives and marketing and sales teams