BRAND HEALTH & INTEGRITY
STORY & MESSAGING: 2nd of a four-part series
Is Your Sustainability Agenda True and Clear?
What’s the essence of your company’s Sustainability Brand? Does the company’s historical performance, strategy and forward commitments provide clarity, consistency and confidence among stakeholders?
It’s not what stakeholders read; it’s what they know to be real and consistent through time. And how we designers and editors can best design and weave information and stories clearly and coherently.
Accessibility view 1st of a four-part series
Story & messaging
Navigation & flow
Compelling design
STORY & MESSAGING
Telling a coherent, consistent, compelling and credible story across sustainability communications and channels helps build trust and commitment among stakeholders.
It brings to light the company’s leadership, values, commitment and performance. Done to reflect the organization’s unique personality – in visuals, tone of voice and context, it becomes a relevant and functional piece of communication – a live document part of daily operations.
Key recommendations
Develop a clear, inspiring and company-specific message to drive the narrative of the report;
Ensure the messaging incorporates a clear call to action for stakeholders;
Frame content to support and reaffirm this overarching message throughout the report;
Showcase relevant, compelling and meaningful case studies to support the message and narrative; and
Use an engaging, interesting and readable tone of voice.
CASE STUDY
Security Bank Annual and Sustainability Report, 2019
From the bank’s brand essence to Ampersand creating a content framework/questionnaire for multi-users (business units) to shape the report’s narrative into the bank’s brand tone of voice under a key theme.
Part of our engagement is to shape the narrative of the annual and sustainability report visually and the bank’s tone of voice for its editorial content.
Defining the corporate or sustainability brand is an important part of our message to editorial design and publishing workflows.
In the context of annual, sustainability and integrated reports, historical, year-in-report and commitments are woven through the report’s narrative in the company’s unique personality through our Messaging Content, Structure and Form.
Applied Practices: DESIGN AND PUBLISHING Editorial Design, Development Editing and Writing