When you have 50,000 colleagues across 40 countries, sharing messages that unite and connect people can seem impossible. This is exactly why a multinational aerospace and defence leader needed our help.
We harnessed the power of storytelling; using a journalistic approach to give colleagues a voice. The result: a rich tapestry of stories on a plethora of subjects: from testing engines in an icy tundra to keeping mines running above and below ground.
These stories share snapshots of people’s lives, reinforcing strategic messages and bringing people together across distance and time – making a big world smaller.
When you’re a giant of the aerospace engineering industry, with more than 50,000 colleagues across 40 countries, and split across many different parts, it’s hard to reach people. To engage colleagues and share strategic messages, you need everyone to be on the same page.
We’re bombarded with news every day, so we needed to create stories that could cut through the noise and have meaning to more than just one team in order to connect a global business.
We harnessed the power of storytelling, collecting real stories from across the business. The stories had to shine and achieve a strategic aim, to tell colleagues about a part of the business or goal they may not know about.
Partnering with the IC team, we used a journalistic approach to unearth breaking news, big wins, people stories, innovative technologies and strategic messages. Why? People care about people –not high-level strategy messaging.
We told captivating stories in compelling ways, while marrying up with that all-important vision: think in-conversation pieces capturing genuine interactions between people, features amplifying the passionate people behind new products or even a fresh perspective from an underrepresented team that cuts through the noise.
Every story – even those focusing on the tiniest bolt – needed to resonate with colleagues and inspire change. It’s why we’re proud to say that one of our stories on technical costs became a go-to resource for colleagues to find out more.
By working closely with the contributors, IC team and brand team, we told stories from across the business in an engaging way using multiple content treatments. These stories shared personal details of colleagues’ daily lives; a snapshot of life, reinforcing messages and bringing their people together across distance and time. And the stories got appreciative feedback from the leadership teams and colleagues.
The real proof of success though comes from the ongoing nature of the project: we’re still doing it three years later. In that time we’ve built a strong relationship with the client and its people. They trust us to create an interview space where colleagues can share open and honest thoughts about what’s most important to them.
This process is how we create engaging content for their team, and we trust them to continue introducing us to inspiring people from across the business. The joy of working with a huge, global business is we’ll never run out of people to talk to, stories to share and news to break.
