Branding / Messaging
I’ve supported corporate branding initiatives, written brand voice guidelines, and created product messaging guides from scratch. Many of the messaging guides I’ve written are now used across entire companies.
I created this template and have used versions of it throughout my career in education. The template has very specific directions for writing messaging in terms of customer benefits, as opposed to the “feature = what it does” approach. (I haven’t included a link to the full template but if you would like to talk about it, please feel free to message me.)
When the time came to rebrand and relaunch the Curriculum Associates blog, priority #1 was a coming up with a new name. I dug into the audience research and led many brainstorming sessions but, in the end, the perfect name came to me (as sometimes happens) while I was doing something completely unrelated to work. “Context” hit me . . . while I was swimming laps at the gym preparing for a triathlon. The name fit the research and perfectly encapsulates the goals of the blog. I wrote this page for the site as well.
When Houghton Mifflin Harcourt (HMH) was being rebranded as The Learning Company, I was asked to create a new corporate presentation. I wrote a story that tied the new branding to the company’s incredible 186-year history to show how HMH continues to “lead the way.”
I wanted a strong close for this presentation for Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, one that would keep the students and teachers in the “Learning Company” messaging front and center.
I worked with many different teams at Curriculum Associates to write and produce this guide. It is six very focused slides that clearly explain the company’s mission and values, voice and tone, writing goals and principles, writing best practices, and how Curriculum Associates should be perceived. One of the key pieces of advice is the universal guidance of, “Always tell the right story, not the whole story.”
