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.
We’re part way through this project and have todate defined a Positioning Statement and a draft set of behaviours. Next the Positioning Statement and the behaviours will be used to provide inspiration for a series of innovative brand activations to closed any gaps between the organisation’s newly articulated ambitions and reality for visitors and other stakeholders. This will take place in a workshop that will again involve all staff – and will also serve to give them a go at putting the tools into action.
