Circle
Circle Housing
Changing how a business talks to its customers and teams.
Circle (now Clarion) is a third sector organisation and one of the UK's largest housing associations. I worked with the internal communications team to revamp the house copy style as part of a brand and company-culture refresh.
At the time, written communications were filled with grandiose language, jargon and complicated acronyms and were failing to inspire important actions required of tenants and team members. Simple requests were being ignored and comms were often divisive and aggressive.
Alongside the senior leadership teams, I developed a warm, up-beat copy tone for the business with clear language and messaging. A template bank and training documents were created to aid easy-uptake of the new guidelines. Key to the process was procuring information from colleagues and customers - this information would form the basis of the stories we needed to tell.
To kickstart the change I wrote board announcements, in-house magazine features, customer emails and marketing copy along with content for the website, intranet and social media. All content was rooted in the information we had learned through research with people and customers. This added relevance, with a new approach on tone, improved engagement and action across the business.
testimonial
Susannah Finn, director of communications, Circle