Case Study
Our Place
Over 10 years of reshaping communities with Our Place
An inspiring vision
A long-standing client of ours is a non-profit organisation called Our Place. They support disadvantaged communities by supporting the education, health, and development of children who may not have access to all the resources they need.
They have an inspiring vision. Helping the children reshapes whole communities, shifting the structural causes of disadvantage from the ground up. So you can imagine we care quite a lot about the graphic and print work we do for them.
The Challenge
As you can imagine, and as with most non-profit organisations, the challenge lies around resourcing. They have limited funding which they have to use to both keep their organisation running as well as raise awareness.
Our Place also faces a more specific challenge. The nature of their work means they have to do a lot of education around what they do, which often leaves them with text-heavy marketing materials that people struggle to read. And of course, they need their resources to maintain a consistent brand that connects with their audience.
Our work is a complex model. It helps for us to communicate in layman's terms. If we don’t achieve that, the risk is that people won’t understand the work that we do and therefore they won’t partner with us. We need the organisations we work with to work in partnership with us. Without that understanding and collaboration, our work won’t get done.
Daniel Petrillo, Director of Communications
The Solution
Over the years, we’ve done extensive work with Our Place. The first port of call - streamlining the brand. We set up the look and feel for their assets and diagrams, making sure they could maintain consistency moving forward without it looking tired or repetitive.
Since then, we’ve helped them get their message out by developing thought leadership content and taking their text-dense assets and turning them into visually appealing assets that they can use across multiple platforms.
They give us the words or message, and we turn it into something visually appealing that they can use across multiple platforms.
We had a very long and detailed publication. Gail went through it, pulled out a series of infographics that we used across LinkedIn and fb to communicate the whole publication in an easier way. We’ve also used them in our presentations and website.
When it comes to creating infographics, the design will vary for each item, however the key considerations are constant. We always aim for:
- Readability
- Content placement and flow
- Good photography
- Palatable and accessible language
As a non-profit organisation, we also are careful to consider their needs and budgets, and create strategic assets that can be repurposed so as to maximise the impact of everything we produce. Brochures are distributed in print to stakeholders, and also made available as digital downloads. Topics are researched and written about in print material– and also broken down to use as thought leadership content online. Graphics are used across print, website, and socials.
Gail’s fantastic in regards to our online and digital communication. There’s been a tendency for us to rely on verbal communication and more traditional print materials, but the work Gail’s done on our website and infographics and visual representation has really lifted our thinking, challenges us to look at how we’re communicating.
Focus Areas
As a values-driven agency, we actively look to partner with organisations that have similar values. We believe that while non profit organisations need to market themselves, the bulk of their funding should be going back into their services. That’s why we take such a strong focus on being efficient in our services for them, and in helping them become more efficient in how they partner with us. Our focus on building supportive and sustainable relationships has played a large part in our decade-long relationship with Our Place.
Gail really wants to understand the work that we do and always puts forward suggestions for how to improve the work that we’re doing. We feel supported and understood - Gail definitely has a focus on relationship building. She’s always checking in to make sure things are on track.
As Australia moves into a recession, there are lessons here that are valid for both NFP and B2B organisations. Consider your topic, purpose, and audience. You’ve already produced the content. How can you give it as much exposure as possible?