For any business, communicating effectively what it does and why it does what it does is critical to being understood by its target audiences. It’s also vital in conveying its market distinctiveness. Many organizations get it horribly wrong and either do not articulate what they’re about or just sound like every other company in their marketplace.
At JBP we have just been through the process of refreshing our positioning. We wanted to be seen as an organisation that was much more than expert in media, political and wider stakeholder communications and engagement. First and foremost we wanted to express our value to those organisations who procured our services and to new and existing colleagues who are vital to the sustainable growth of our company.
Whilst we regularly advise our clients on how best to position themselves, we felt too close to our own business to self-guide ourselves. Instead we decided to turn to PR industry stalwart Crispin Manners who has carved out a niche advising PR agencies on how to differentiate themselves in an industry where the landscape is changing rapidly. We also conducted our own research of rival communications specialists to see how they positioned themselves.
This revealed three different types of positioning – firstly consultancies that were very service oriented and didn’t really talk much about the outcomes their offer generated; secondly those who described themselves as providing impact and commercial advantage, without really explaining what this looked like; and thirdly those who combined what they did with the real tangible difference that their services made. The latter was where we wanted to be.
All we needed to do was unlock the golden nugget of what we really bring to the table which worked across our business and provided a high value proposition to clients and colleagues alike.
The defining moment was when Crispin asked us to talk through our most successful client stories to extract a common denominator. As we all started to tell our stories there was one reoccurring theme – the power of communications and engagement in the decision making process. This was borne out by the fact that we develop PR, political affairs and stakeholder relationship programmes that influence a variety of decisions – planning approvals, policy making, funding, behavioural change and purchasing.
For colleagues it’s about the decisions that they make on their future personal development within our business; whilst for recruits it’s all about the decision to embark on a career at JBP. Again the way we communicate and engage with existing and new employees is critical to their decision making in respect to working with us.
So what does this all mean? In all our conversations going forward we start at the business end in terms of what are the decisions that will make difference to our clients and our people, whilst our skills in all things communications and stakeholder engagement is the means to this end.
That’s why we see ourselves as decision navigators – charting a course to secure the breakthrough decisions that really matter for our clients and colleagues. We do this through drawing on our strategic communications nous, highly influential stakeholder networks, political know how and lateral big thinking.