When Nacro won the contract to run BASS, Bail and Accommodation Support Service, we had three busy months to prepare it for launch. As a nationwide housing service, it involved combining existing infrastructure with new housing and accommodation already used by Nacro. To be made available on a short-term basis to people on bail, and then to move them on, with the outcomes being tracked closely by the commissioner MoJ and Nacro.
I was part of a cross-organisational team brought together to plan and implement every aspect of this new service, which involved a 30% increase in the number of staff as well as new IT and finance systems – never a dull moment. After a great deal of scoping and discussion with the previous contractor, we created a communications role into which one of my team members was seconded. The initial work focused on creating a new brand which could be welcoming to people going through an unsettled period of life.
Marketing required physical materials as well as digital, as in many circumstances people and staff would not have digital access or capability. Internal communications was vital as staff were being brought in from the old service and local marketing plans were also required. We created:
A pocket-sized planner to advise people about the service and to give other useful information – we have previously introduced this format successfully to people in prisons and other secure settings
A service handbook to guide people coming into the service
With one of Nacro’s services facing closure, we are running a campaign to search for new funders but also to reach out to the local community and our national contacts for individual donations. Among various supporters, the local radio station, Radio Tees, has helped us by producing a strong video about the service, showing its positive impact and and implications for the community of its closure. This has been supplemented by further videos, distributed via our and other social media channels, which are re-edits of previous videos made about the service at low cost. These link to the campaign and donations pages.
A smarter and more central use of video content is proving to be the best way to boost this college’s profile. I have discovered and commissioned a re-edit of old footage which will be launched as a new feature on the home page. Previously more text-based, the new homepage’s video will take up most of the screen and run on a loop behind the college’s key message. Shorter gifs of the video will be used on social media platforms.
I contributed towards the winning of a new contract to run the Recovery Near You service which covers Wolverhampton, offering support and advice to members of the public on preventing drug and alcohol use. This required achieving and maintaining compliance with required standards at low cost, which we achieved. I also updated the website’s balance of content:
Increased use of videos to explain the service and video case studies
Endorsements and quotes from patients, partners, medical staff and the community
Stats and achievements highlight graphics
Improved accessibility and multi-language functionality
Simplified structure
Improved multilingual graphics and downloadable material, targeted at the local community.
Nacro’s 2017 website audit revealed an increasing use of video content so when my team was rebranding the Nacro website I commissioned our web company to improve its visual impact along these lines. It was important to highlight the mission statement clearly and this was placed into the centre of the screen – it hadn’t been previously appeared on the page at all. As a very “nuts and bolts” organisation, it was important to reflect Nacro’s practical approach in the visual brand by showing “what we do” as simply as possible. This proved to be an ideal opportunity to turn the home page into a video space to show our activities. To achieve this, I managed to repurpose several of Nacro’s old videos which were re-edited into a visual montage.
I’ve just launched a website for an arts centre. This was a project that emerged from a communications strategy that I’d developed for a vocational college which contained a number of small enterprises.
These had been developed partly to attract paying customers and partly to offer work-based training to students but historically they hadn’t operated to a high level marketing strategy of their own. It was clear that an investment needed to be made to market the arts centre as a separate business and no longer rely exclusively on the college’s communications channels if it was to compete with other similar cultural centres.
The objective has been to evolve it into a consistent, high quality brand with its own specific selling points. Although it runs a programme of events, such as theatre, film and music, it needs to push its commercial hiring capabilities too, particularly corporate events and weddings. This has become a key feature of the new website.
My latest task is to bring together a new communications team based in different locations to deliver a strategy to turn around a college that has been failing, as part of a new management team. It has required a big commitment to making a very quick improvement in the profile and impact of the college, in local media, corporate relations, social media and with staff at all levels.
An advertising strategy will accompany this as well as a brand refresh and a new website. I have been able to commission this very cost effectively based on pre-existing templates but also bringing in new expertise to help and advise on specific aspects of digital communications. Here is the new website, which contains all the mobile capability and ease of use that any student or potential employer might expect.
Nacro’s new corporate website is mobile first. I commissioned it this way as it’s the predominant method by which key audiences search for information.
Pre-development research showed that the people Nacro helps, many of whom are socially excluded, often only get online while in Nacro’s services and so are also likely to access its information through a tablet.
The format lends itself to tabs and icons, which also proved easy to use for all audiences during user consultation. There is a lot of work involved in honing the icons correctly.
These also prove very social media friendly as part of a multimedia approach to content sharing.
The launch of a new corporate strategy is the best time to bring in a fresh look to a brand. This was happening while I was mid-way through Nacro’s corporate website redevelopment earlier this year. The website specification called for a bold approach to the visual look of the new website, to set it apart from the competition. The UX designer in the agency I had hired, Moove, proposed a series of large images or photos on the home page and each main section that could ‘tell the story’ of a complex organisation simply.
This tied in very well with the strategic requirements, and our small in-house team developed a photoshoot that would encapsulate each area of work through a series of scenarios. To cut costs and involve the wider organisation more closely in the brand work, staff were coordinated to play the roles of various people that Nacro helps, and the staff who help them.
It was clear to the in-house designer and me that we would require an exceptional photographer to carry out the staging and get the best from the non-professional models. Due to our development of a precise vision for the look and feel through a series of storyboards and design mockups, we were able to interest a top photographer from the advertising world. By means of incredibly coordinated administration from within the organisation, the filming was compressed into a tight timescale.
The result was two great photoshoots in one: a series of side-on images that set the tone for the new website and overhead shots for printed strategy material. The team effort involved so many people that it helped sell in the new look to the organisation as a whole.
I’ve commissioned a corporate website redevelopment for Nacro, which will be mobile-first.
I’m running the development process along Agile principles. I’m an Agile project management practitioner and I find the process is appropriate to this project as it is geared towards prototyping and early testing, which I think will be vital in building a website that meets the diverse needs of its audiences. The strategic approach looks likely to be decided in-house, through workshops, rather than by involving an external agency. This is partly because, during the consultation phase, especially when talking to the senior team, it became clear that there was consensus on a particular approach to the structure so I felt it would be useful to build prototypes very early in the project to see how this could work in practice.
Audience research suggests that mobile and tablet formats will soon predominate, even for target groups who have no regular access to a computer because when they do go online, it is likely to be via tablets at one of the organisation’s centres. Funders and other key professional audiences will be on devices too, maybe multi-screening. Therefore prototyping and agreeing on a simple, mobile version is a priority. Prototyping came in again when I tested the website architecture with user groups.
The project has been defined with the chosen web development company who are bringing further innovation and great ideas from other sectors.
