May 2020 – Jeff Pfaller

Cloralen: Bringing bleach innovation to the US on social media

Alen’s signature bleach brand, Cloralen, was a hit in Mexico, but had no presence in the US. The social strategy generated awareness for their new, innovative product in a category that was stale and disengaged.

Project Objective
Launch an engaged community of fans and drive awareness of CLORALEN in the general market.

Strategy
Help consumers take back control of how they clean by making them feel like they are the boss of their home when they clean with Cloralen Splashless Bleach.

The Work
We leveraged MRI data and learnings from our existing social media presence to develop a social persona for our target. Then we evaluated our competitors in the social space to learn what was effective, and what kind of tone the competitive set was using.

Cloralen’s Splashless Bleach product was an innovation in a category that had been stagnant for years. Our product hook was that our bleach didn’t splash, creating lots of opportunities to show differentiation. We leaned into that and identified white space for our brand position. We developed a distinct tone of voice and attributes that would guide how we talked and behaved on social media.

Using that position and our personality, we developed content pillars that laddered back to the value proposition – splashless bleach helps you take back control of cleaning your home. We focused heavily on demonstrating the product benefit in fun and innovative ways, and also meme inspired content related to cleaning and bleach.

We created a unique approach for each channel we launched in based on how our target audience behaved in each channel. The result was a response that was overwhelmingly positive and rapidly saw fans sharing memes with other fans and advocating for the brand.

Deliverables

Audience Research
Competitive Audit
Social Strategy
Editorial Calendar
Content Playbook

Bel Brands: Social strategy with personality

Shifting the focus of Mini-Babybel, Boursin, and The Laughing Cow cheese brands from acquiring fans to driving engagement led to an increase in brand affinity and connections with higher quality fans.

Project Objective
Develop a new social strategy for all the brands that gives them a unique voice and helps them reach more fans.

Strategy
Shift to a content approach that inspires participation by developing a distinct personality and value proposition for each brand.

The Work
Our overall process was similar for each brand. We leveraged MRI data and learnings from our existing social media presence to develop social personas for our targets. Then we evaluated our competitors in the social space to learn what was effective and what kind of tone the competitive set was using.

We worked with the media team to recommend the client shift their brief from fan acquisition to engagement based on how social media platforms were evolving in 2015-2016.

With alignment on this new strategy, we developed content pillars for each brand that laddered up to each brand’s unique purpose and value proposition. For The Laughing Cow, it was helping fans savor more sensorial moments. For Boursin, it was taking entertaining to the next level. For Mini-Babybel, it was injecting a little more fun into snack time.

Each content framework included content that was product focused and demonstrated our value to consumers, as well as content that encouraged consumers to talk and play with the brand. Based on our personas, we created different content executions that were targeted to each of our segment’s interests and behaviors on social media.

Deliverables

Audience Research
Competitive Audit
Social Strategy
Editorial Calendar
Content Development

AT&T: Connected content experience for all customers

A unified content strategy across all of AT&T helped them consistently create content that solves people problems, streamlined daily operations, reduced cost, and optimized the use of technology.

Project Objective
Create a flexible design system that allows content to be developed by different teams that is on strategy, on brand, and appears as a seamless, delightful experience to AT&T customers.

Approach
Create a repeatable process for content creation, make standardized templates for atomized content across all digital channels, and support it with accountable individuals to manage a content playbook the whole organization can follow.

The Work
A discovery exercise that involved content audits and interviewing stakeholders helped reveal the unique challenges AT&T was facing, along with its strengths. The consumer experience was mapped out to identify different places AT&T customers engaged with content.

We developed a detailed playbook for AT&T to utilize in order to standardize the creation of content. It included guidance, best practices and standards around:

Auditing existing content
Managing digital assets
Documented process
Roles and responsibilities
Editorial guidelines
Target audience and segmentation
Strategic approach
Personalization guidelines
Internal deliverable templates for the content creation process
Publishing and distributing content
Measurement and optimization
Governance

To roll this new approach out to the organization, a collaborative workshop was planned and designed in order to share thinking with key stakeholders while helping them feel ownership and accountability with the new process.

Deliverables

Stakeholder Interviews
Content Audit
Unified Content Strategy
Content Playbook
Client Workshop

Allstate: Transforming how knowledge is managed

A major operational shift in how Allstate manages knowledge for its internal stakeholders and agents affected tens of thousands of documents, over a dozen departments, and set the stage for a new center of excellence in the organization.

Project Objective
Develop a new operating model to bring together the decentralized knowledge in the organization.

Strategy
Implement a hybrid operating model that lets decentralized experts create their own content to a common set of standards, monitored by a center of excellence, and housed in a centralized content management system.

The Work
A thorough exploratory was performed, interviewing stakeholders and reviewing examples of knowledge documents over the course of several weeks. Given Allstate’s unique culture, constraints, and objectives, we aligned to a hybrid model that leveraged key aspects of decentralization and centralization.

We developed a detailed plan for migrating knowledge from several legacy systems into a standardized, single source of truth. A new taxonomy was created for this system which would house tens of thousands of documents at any given moment. A repeatable migration method would guide decisions about how to migrate, update, and archive in compliance with stringent insurance requirements.

Once the content was migrated, a governance system to manage the knowledge was needed. In-depth workflows were created for each type of content, showing each step of the process for multiple types of content. Decision trees and approvals were mapped out from the initial request for content updates to the moment it was published in the system.

To manage the massive migration and management effort, Allstate’s current org chart and staffing was evaluated. We identified the necessary roles and responsibilities, the effort required, and mapped that to actual personnel within Allstate. A proposal to reorganize staff, shift responsibilities, and tap into temporary resources for the surge needed during migration was outlined.

A two year roadmap and change management plan was created in collaboration with Allstate in order to set this massive project and cultural shift up for success. An initial communication plan and key checkpoints were established in order to ensure new learnings and challenges were quickly incorporated or addressed as the plan progressed.

Deliverables

Stakeholder Interviews
Content Audit
Governance Strategy
Content Architecture
Process Design
Roles and Responsibilities
Change Management Plan

Chicago Booth School of Business: Empowering students to use resources

After reorganizing the wealth of student resources on Chicago Booth Career Services, student satisfaction and engagement with tools and content increased.

Project Objective
Develop a new taxonomy for the Chicago Booth Career Services intranet.

Approach
Identify categories and nomenclature that allow students to accomplish key tasks.

The Work
The first project phase involved discovery – auditing the content to reveal over fifty potential topics and stakeholder interviews to understand content constraints, challenges, goals, and the most common tasks students seek to accomplish.

Next, we performed a card sorting exercise to brainstorm different approaches to reorganizing the content in a meaningful way for students. Navigation labels were created to help gain initial alignment on nomenclature.

These cards were reviewed with a focus group in a clickable document that prompted actual students to attempt to accomplish a task using only the category and topic names as a guide.

After learning what resonated and what didn’t, we updated our nomenclature and organization. This final taxonomy was implemented on the intranet within the existing design templates and website. Some content rewrites were kicked off as there were several opportunities for content consolidation identified.

Deliverables

Stakeholder Interviews
Card Sort
Taxonomy & Nomenclature Matrix
Focus Group Testing

US Cellular: Helping rural customers get the most out of mobile

People who visit US Cellular’s eCommerce site after visiting their content marketing hub visit 4x as many pages and spend over 5x as many minutes shopping.

Project Objective
Consistently create content that drives readership and engagement among US Cellular’s priority audience segments.

Strategy
Provide the edge our segment needs to be in-the-know and maximize their mobile usage, while overcoming category pain points.

The Work
Using segmentation research and stakeholder interviews, we honed in on the content marketing sweet spot – where what customers seek and US Cellular’s unique offering intersect. With a new brand position focused on fairness, and a mission to bring technology to typically overlooked areas, we helped US Cellular carve out space in the minds of their consumers.

Our new strategy focused on four content types:

Getting the most out of mobile
How US Cellular fights for fairness
Examples of how the company’s technology impacts people
Future forward looks at new innovations right around the corner.

Every quarter, we generated topic ideas. We also looked for opportunities to plan for unplanned content based on what we knew about industry launches, category trends, search data, and company initiatives. Each article included a brief that helped creatives focus on the unique hook, what the main consumer takeaway should be, and how we could organically tie it back to a US Cellular product or offering.

Some examples of actual content pieces included long-form articles about how people with disabilities can use tech to overcome challenges, video about how VR has more applications than just gaming, and infographics about how mobile tech has evolved over the years.

Examples:

Phone Accessibility for People with Disabilities

Boost Your Productivity with Organizational Apps

The Evolution of Cell Phones: How They Got Smart

Deliverables

Editorial Calendar
Content Strategy

The Money Source: Marrying company culture and mortgage industry disruption

A re-imagined set of tools and resources for the modern mortgage shopper from a company with an industry disrupting model and best-in-class customer service.

Project Objective
Design an end-to-end experience for home buyers that brings The Money Source’s people focused approach together with innovative technology.

Strategy
Create a holistic personalized experience that leverages technology to make things simple and people to make it delightful.

The Work
The Money Source is a unique lender in that it has services and products the help people find, finance, and protect their home. The current site had only the most basic information, and almost no tools to help consumers.

We started by digging deep into the mindset of the TMS customer – frustrated with a confusing, complicated, and daunting prospect of buying a home. We developed detailed personas and user journeys that covered the entire process, from the initial trigger all the way to the experience of living in it.

Using these artifacts, we brainstormed tools, content, technology solutions, and customer service touch points. Each would address frustrating pain points and needs with the customer’s mindset in mind. These were prioritized and evaluated using a matrix that aligned the potential impact, the effort required, and what the effect on TMS business objectives would be.

From there we developed a content strategy, mapped out a feature set that established the roadmap for the next two years, and developed a site map that would become the aspirational future state of the new experiential website.

Deliverables

Communications Audit
Personas
Consumer Journey
Content Strategy
Site Map
Future Roadmap

Blue Cross Blue Shield Tennessee: Streamlining the online health insurance shopping process

A unified site experience focused on the health insurance shopper journey led to less shopper frustration and increased enrollment.

Project Objective
Audit and evaluate content across over five different websites and design a simplified shopping experience for members, healthcare professionals, and employers.

Strategy
Utilize user research and stakeholder interviews to identify must-have content and reduce the number of pages by over 80%.

The Work
Our initial content audit uncovered an inconsistent shopping experience across the main BCBST website, Medicare / Medicaid websites, and a sprawling providers website. We methodically captured meta data like content topic and taxonomy, and evaluated each page for audience relevance, page organization, how well it delivered on user and business objectives, if the page was redundant, outdated, etc.

With this information, we identified patterns and developed a strategy that defined what content would be critical for a shopper on BCBST’s website. Our content pillars were health care 101, the BCBST difference, plan information, and high volume help topics. With that in mind, we identified key pages on the current site that met those needs most effectively.

Using our shopper journey and consumer insights, we also identified what gaps existed in the proposed content. Pages not marked for migration to the unified site were mined as source material to help us tell a complete story more efficiently. Any page without useful information was earmarked for removal.

We developed a proposed site inventory and site map that brought over 500 pages on five different sites together into a single site experience with under a 100 pages. Each page was mapped to a proposed design template. Content hierarchies were built for each template to inform wireframes, prototypes, and eventually final designs.

Examples:

https://www.bcbst.com/

Deliverables

Content Audit
Content Strategy
Site Map
Content Inventory
Content Hierarchy

Mozilla Firefox: UX content strategy for a product with passionate users

Design and copy enhancements to critical moments in the Firefox user journey generated an uplift in the number of new account holders, a critical business metric for the company.

Project Objective
Increase the number of new Firefox account holders, plus drive enrollment in new and existing Firefox products.

Strategy
Conduct user research, rapid prototyping, and use iterative design principles to re-shape the Firefox on-boarding experience, browser, and services.

The Work
The first step in transforming Firefox’s business model was rethinking the concept and purpose of an account to a user. We identified three key value propositions, and then streamlined the on-boarding process to make it simple. We also treated account creation as a low-touch first step, which then led into the gradual discovery of other products and features as users got more familiar with the browser. These design and content decisions were rolled out across desktop, iOS, and Android versions of the browser.

To diversify revenue, the introduction of paid services was a priority. Up until this point, Firefox had no way of collecting payments. We identified the product and the entry points and built a payment flow from the ground up, which had to take into consideration the collection and management of one-time payments and subscriptions.

Additionally, several projects were prioritized to help the company rethink the approach to how the browser serves users messages, from security alerts to cross promotion. The browser interface for the logged in experience and mobile was also audited and reorganized based on user research and studies.