R.Bruer emphasizes the strategic in communications. In more basic terms, this means seeing the forest for the trees. The big picture starts with your mission and goals, leads to your brand, feeds into your messages, guides your planning and finally results in individual marketing projects infused with the larger purpose of your organization or business.
How you engage us is up to you:
- Hire us to lead a comprehensive branding project
- Retain us for targeted assistance in areas such as message creation and marketing planning
- Use our experienced counsel as important marketing and communications issues arise
- Appoint us to supervise and execute individual marketing projects
Mission to Brand™
R.Bruer offers a systematic approach to strategic communications we call Mission to Brand. This package of services, which can be easily adapted and scaled to your organization’s size, goals and resources, consists of four primary phases:
- Mission review
- Brand definition
- Message creation
- Plan development
I. Mission Review
Your mission gives purpose to your business and organization. We stress clarity of mission because it is the fundamental starting point for all branding and marketing that follows. We will lead a review of your existing mission statement and, if needed, help you revise it.
II. Brand Definition
This phase includes:
- analysis of your existing branding and marketing activity and materials
- research to gauge your image or reputation
- analysis and profiling of stakeholders and competitors
- brainstorming sessions to define your brand attributes
This phase culminates in a written brand identity statement that is both relevant to your stakeholders and distinct from your competitors. The statement becomes the basis for message creation as well as brand graphics, such as logos, signage, website and collateral.
III. Message Creation
We'll help you produce a framework of key messages based on your mission, goals, and brand and tailored to each stakeholder group.
IV. Plan Development
With your mission, brand and messages clearly defined, we’ll help you construct a strategic plan for rolling out your brand and for ongoing marketing and communications.
Outcomes
Through our work together in Mission to Brand™ you’ll resolve:
- what and who your business or organization is
- how you are relevant to your stakeholders
- how you are favorably differentiated from your competitors
- what you want your stakeholders to experience from and know about you
- what marketing and communications strategies best support your mission and brand
Strategic Counsel
R.Bruer offers ongoing communications counsel to owners, board directors, senior executives and managers. Our aim is to build trust through shared values, commitment to your mission, independence, big-picture perspective, deep listening and curiosity, integrity and good judgment.
You can engage us as communications advisors periodically, as needed, or in an ongoing relationship. We’ll assist you with overall business strategy, an individual project or a sensitive communications matter. In our work together, we’ll identify specific issues or needs, clarify where and how communications can play a role and design recommended solutions.
No matter the nature of our engagement, you’ll feel confident in having an expert partner who ensures your communications consistently produce the results you seek.
Project Supervision
R.Bruer has considerable experience in supervising public relations, advertising, direct marketing, Web marketing, collateral development and other marketing programs and projects. Depending on the project or your needs, we will assemble and oversee a stellar team of experts in PR, creative, research and more. Or we will gladly manage projects involving your existing internal staff or external partners.
Change Writing
“Writing to connect is change writing, which, like good therapy, creates the conditions that allow people to be transformed,” author and therapist Mary Pipher says in her book, “Writing to Change the World.”
Every organization desires a connection with its stakeholders. But businesses or nonprofits pursuing missions of social, environmental or economic change — in the face of pressure to preserve the status quo — must rise above the self-serving appeals of conventional marketing.
“Socially conscious writers,” Pipher says, “want authenticity and transparency to saturate every page of their work. They strive to teach readers how to think, not what to think. They connect readers to ideas and experiences that readers would not have on their own.”
That’s the power and purpose of change writing. And it’s what we strive for in every piece of writing for our clients. Our goal is to draw stakeholders to your larger vision and to the ideas, products and services that emanate from it. We’ll identify and tell stories that stir the imaginations of those who matter to you most. And connect them to you in ways that are genuine and transparent.