S E R V I C E S

Saoirse Domestic Violence Services

Brand Positioning Workshop

Background

Saoirse Domestic Violence Services (Saoirse) is at a pivotal point in their journey. They are one of the larger providers of emergency accommodation and associated support services to women and children in crisis. They recently completed a strategic review and defined their vision and mission for the future. They had also just recruited their first digital marketing and fundraising officer (DMFO).​​​​​​​

Client need

InsideOut was approached initially to deliver a digital communications plan. In the course of the conversation however, it became clear that Saoirse needed to define both its core strategic audience and a brand positioning statement that would differentiate them, enable and support their vision and mission, and inform and lead future communications.

Pre-Workshop

InsideOut carried out a detailed review of the sector Saoirse operates in to identify where Saoirse was positioned operationally against its peers. The purpose of this exercise understand the sector and associated imperatives and constraints, but also to sanity-check positioning claims that might be generated during the workshop. We also reviewed Saoirse’s strategic plan – to ensure that workshop outputs would be aligned, and issued a pre-workshop ‘fun’ exercise to engage and energise participants before the workshop.

Workshop

We designed and delivered a structured brand positioning half-day workshop for 9 participants comprising staff, BOM members, the new DMFO and an external strategic advisor. The objectives for the workshop were to reach consensus if possible on a Brand Positioning Statement, and to agree the brand personality attributes.

Four tailored exercises were used to explore the four elements of the brand positioning statement. The exercises were designed to trigger conversation, and to ensure that everyone’s voice was heard. A fifth exercise was also carried out to explore Saoirse’s brand personality attributes.

The challenges

• To ensure that all participants understood the objectives of the workshop and the value of creating a brand positioning statement

• To bring together participants with different viewpoints and different ideas of Saoirse’s audiences and objectives

• To encourage and support participation and engagement from all attendees

• To ensure that everyone was ‘heard’ and that discussions were fair and transparent

• To deliver the required outputs within the workshop and to achieve consensus

The outcome

The structure of the workshop, the exercises used and the expert facilitation helped to bring clarity to the participants’ thinking – and also brought focus to their communications.

Engaging the participants in discussions around what the Saoirse brand meant reignited their pride in both Saoirse’s purpose and what they all agreed was Saoirse’s unique way of working. ‘Service users only have to tell their story once.’ ‘We see things differently.’ ‘We are led by the needs of our service users.’ ‘Our team shares an incredibly strong commitment to the women and children we help.’

The shared sense of purpose and rekindled belief in what they could achieve, brought the team closer together, and enabled them to agree on the brand positioning statement and brand attributes.

Outputs that create Impact

• consensus on Saoirse’s brand positioning statement

• consensus on Saoirse’s brand personality attributes

• brand communications guidelines to inform Saoirse’s communications activities and to support their long term objectives