The Secret to a Brighter Future? Psych4Change

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“To accomplish something your organisation has never achieved before, your people need to do things they’ve never done before.”

It’s an obvious truism: if you want transformation, you need to bring your people along with you. And it’s an equally obvious truism: people don’t like change. Yet we spend a lot more time thinking about brand strategy, than employee psychology. At 2050 we know that if you want to change your future fast, you need to get everyone behind your vision. In short, you need to Psych4Change. To help unpack what this can look like in practice I asked marketing leaders for their learnings on how they overcame barriers to get their people to embrace a brave new world. Here’s what they said…

Mark Cripps

Then CMO at global current-affairs newspaper, The Economist.

What was your Idea4Change? Centralise marketing globally 

What resistance did you overcome? Local markets didn’t want to give up their budgets, control and relationships

What was the PsyKey? Burn bridges to the past

Explain how you Psyched4Change

I needed to centralise our marketing structure to achieve economies of scale, learnings and focus. Local markets naturally didn’t want to give up their budgets, control and relationships. I could see resistance unless people accepted the past wasn’t an option. So I commissioned an independent audit to define the business case for the new structure and take the emotion out of the decision. And then, more importantly, distilled this into a simple chart with three columns: From, To and Why. This was ‘the case for change’. It made it obvious. I constantly shared throughout the organisation to ingrain it into culture and conversations. This helped burn the bridges to the past and so opened hearts and minds to the future.

Calum Fitzgerald

Founder of tech consultancy, Daemon 

What was your Idea4Change? Define Daemon’s brand by core behaviours

What resistance did you overcome? Culture is slippery to define and definitions too often sound like ‘top-down’ platitudes that can alienate staff

What was the PsyKey? Tell a simple culture story

Explain how you Psyched4Change

Culture is Daemon’s superpower, but we struggled to communicate it as we scaled. Our values were a bit too abstract for communications and perhaps too complex to help people in everyday work. 2050 sees ‘strategy as a conversation’, something people can say, ‘get’ and therefore own. In working with them to define our brand we realised our difference lies in how we bring people together to work as an energising ‘movement’. And we do this through three behaviours (one) Unite behind one vision (two) Empower people to realise potential (three) Inspire a one team spirit. This was a simple culture story the business could communicate and rally behind.

For more on telling a culture stories, check out: Like Any Good Criminal, a Successful Brand Needs a Clear Modus Operandi

For more on Cal’s Daemon work, check out: 2050 London Develops Rebrand for Technology Consultancy Daemon 

Gina Outram

Neonatal Network Manager at NHSE Thames Valley Wessex Neonatal Network 

What was your Idea4Change? Raise awareness of Neonatal Nursing

What resistance did you overcome? Lack of confidence amongst internal stakeholders in their ability to reach a wider audience within and outside the NHS

What was the PsyKey? Grassroots collaboration inspires grassroots belief

Explain how you Psyched4Change

Neonatal care is one of the most interesting areas of nursing, but its relatively low profile within the NHS made recruitment difficult. I needed to raise its stature to attract staff, but our nurses and stakeholders struggled to believe we could truly change perceptions. I brought 2050 onto the wards to work with frontline staff finding inspiring stories we could use in our recruitment drive. This grassroots creative collaboration opened eyes to what was possible, made nurses realise neonatal had a story worth telling and gave all stakeholders a strong sense of ownership of the work that was developed. The result was a department that got fully behind the campaign because they fully believed in it.

For more on Laura’s NHS work check out: 2050 London Helps NHS Recruit Neonatal Nurses in Touching Campaign

Adam Ryan

Then CEO of money transfer App, Azimo

What was your Idea4Change? Accelerate growth through disruptive branding 

What resistance did you overcome? Staff scepticism because marketing had previously ‘imposed’ several cosmetic rebrands on the business and nothing had stuck

What was the PsyKey? Brand is owned by employees

Explain how you Psyched4Change?

The company had undertaken several rebrands in recent years, with marketing enforcing cosmetic changes to our ‘look’ with little impact. The brand was seen as owned by marketing and unconnected to the ‘real’ business. I needed to turn this on its head. For brand to make a difference, it needed to be grounded in a truth that the whole team could get behind and feel ownership, to galvanise the ‘real’ business to deliver great things which marketing could then sell. With 2050's help, we uncovered the disruptive truth that Azimo ‘championed migrants’. Employees were my first audience. The first ‘brand’ activity was to rally the business; by first energising and focusing our people, we ensured this rebrand stuck and enabled a step change in our marketing activity and wider business performance.

For more on the Adam’s Azimo work check out: 2050 Champions the Hard Work of Migrants in Campaign for Money Transfer Service Azimo

Catherine Cahn

Then CEO of market-leading US education publisher, Twig Education.

What was your Idea4Change? Create a distinctive brand personality 

What resistance did you overcome? Concern amongst senior management that we’d lose credibility if we weren’t ‘corporate’

What was the PsyKey? See audiences as people not roles

Explain how you Psyched4Change 

We were a challenger shaking up the US education publishing establishment. I needed a brand with the personality to convey this, but senior management were concerned we’d lose credibility if we weren’t ‘corporate’. They saw customers through the narrow lens of job descriptions, so only interested in rational product benefits. I needed them to see customers as ‘people’ - people who enjoy fun inspiring stuff too. We had an inspiration session to discuss our favourite brands and remind us all of what inspires us. This gave us the ‘people’ perspective to view our brand work. We went on to become market-leader with the confidence and swagger that came from ‘inspiring people’ not ‘selling to roles’.

Alex Boyce

Co-founder of SME customer comms platform Fuzey 

What was your Idea4Change? Sell customer impact, not product 

What resistance did you overcome? The team liked selling ‘hard’ value stories, e.g. “campaign X delivered ROI Y”, and were unconvinced by ‘softer’ stories about wider impact

What was the PsyKey? Use customers to sell strategy

Explain how you Psyched4Change

The Fuzey hub helps SMEs simplify customer communication. The whole is far greater than the sum of its parts, but broadly, we were better at selling the parts than the whole. I recorded customers telling me about Fuzey's impact on their business and heard some incredible stories. For one struggling business, the owner told me, ‘I can now take my family on holiday’; with another family business, a son told me, ‘My dad is proud of me for bringing this in…’ The emotional impact of seeing customers talking passionately about what Fuzey really meant to them not only convinced staff to change our sales approach but also redoubled their commitment to delivering for these amazing people.

Nimisha Desai

Design and marketing manager at Viritopia 

What was your Idea4Change? Change our name

What resistance did you overcome? A new name seemed simple, but opened up so many issues and subjective points to view it became hard to manage

What was the PsyKey? Breakdown the steps to simplify

Explain how you Psyched4Change

Our ambition meant we had outgrown our name. Our instinct was to jump to brainstorming names with the founders, but this opened up so many issues and subjective points of view we struggled to get a grip on the discussion, far less agree. I brought in an agency who broke down the process into baby steps: define the brand, define our values / tone of voice and align on creative expectations. By unpacking the foundations, we were able to discuss the things that mattered and build consensus in stages. It meant that at the end of the journey, Viritopia was unanimously liked by all and we had a clear understanding of what it stood for.