OVERVIEW
I was brought in to help design and deliver a major internal communications campaign for a global brand that would align colleagues across the organisation around a refreshed strategy and set of priorities. My role combined strategic consultancy, message shaping, storytelling, and facilitation, ensuring the campaign not only informed people about what was changing but also inspired connection, ownership and pride in the organisation’s direction. Working closely with the internal comms team, senior leaders and selected employee representatives, we built a cohesive narrative and a multichannel engagement plan that reached every part of the business. The campaign has since been recognised internally as one of the most engaging and unifying communications initiatives the company has run in recent years.
The challenge
The organisation was entering a period of strategic refresh, with bold new priorities and a desire to reenergise internal engagement after significant change. While much of the strategic thinking was clear at the top, there was no consistent story linking it to colleagues’ daytoday reality. Messages were being shared through disconnected channels and teams were interpreting priorities differently depending on their function and location. Leadership wanted to create a unified narrative that everyone could see themselves in, one that would reconnect people with purpose, clarify what success looked like and encourage twoway communication rather than simple broadcast.
The intervention
Partnering with the Head of Internal Communications, I worked across three key areas: message creation, campaign design, and leadership enablement.
- Strategic narrative and messaging framework: We began by distilling the strategy into a clear, human narrative, articulating the ‘why, what and how’ in language that made sense to everyone, not just senior leaders. I facilitated working sessions with the leadership team to shape key messages and proofpoints that would be both truthful and inspiring, bringing clarity to complex business goals.
- Campaign structure and creative concept: Working with the internal comms and design teams, we transformed the narrative into a unifying campaign that could live across multiple channels: videos, town halls, internal social posts, newsletters and teamlevel conversations. Every element was designed to ladder up to the same core story while being flexible enough to resonate with different audiences.
- Leadership and manager toolkits: To ensure the campaign landed consistently beyond head office, we developed practical conversation guides and resources to help managers share messages in their own voice. I ran short virtual and in-person sessions with senior leaders to build storytelling confidence, aligning tone, presence and message delivery.
What I am doing
Throughout the campaign design and rollout, I acted as both creative partner and critical ally, sensechecking materials for tone and clarity, facilitating message testing with employee groups, and advising on sequencing and rhythm so that communication built momentum rather than feeling like a oneoff announcement. I also supported the internal comms team to build their own capability, designing reusable templates and tools for narrative development so that future campaigns could apply the same principles with independence.
Emerging impact and next steps
The campaign achieved high levels of engagement across all internal channels, with measurable increases in message recall, employee understanding of strategic priorities, and leadership visibility scores. Colleagues described the campaign as ‘a genuine turning point’ that made the new direction feel real and inclusive, while leaders noted a stronger, more confident tone emerging in everyday communication.
Building on this success, we are now extending the approach into an ongoing internal storytelling strategy, equipping teams across the business to craft and share their own updates in line with the overarching narrative. The next step is to embed this as a living communications rhythm, one that keeps the strategy alive long past the initial campaign and continues to strengthen clarity, connection and pride across the organisation.
