“Rationale has risen to every challenge we have given them.”
THE CHALLENGE
Edinburgh Innovations (EI), the commercialisation arm of the University of Edinburgh, enlisted Rationale to carry out a comprehensive strategic exercise to understand their current positioning and enhance their communications to increase international industry awareness of and engagement with EI.
We were also engaged to carry out a comprehensive Employer Value Proposition (EVP) development exercise, considering how to inspire internal stakeholders and define the EI culture, in a way that aligned with the organisation’s external reason for being.
THE SOLUTION
We worked with Edinburgh Innovations to understand their brand purpose, principal challenges and targets, and their resources. We achieved this by:
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- Carrying out one-to-one interviews with employees, researchers and key stakeholders
- Conducting international competitor analysis
- Undertaking market research to define industry priorities, the forces of change and R&D, and more
- Developing an Employer Value Proposition strategy, including internal and external employer value propositions, internal and external employer brand narratives, employer brand values, a messaging matrix and a full roll-out strategy for launch and ongoing ownership.
THE RESULT
Our strategy laid out how to bring a compelling brand narrative to life in a targeted way – engaging different customer groups across channels and creative assets.
Rationale created a purpose-driven narrative which spoke to all key audiences – academics, international industry and students – showing that EI understands the positive social impact of their work, while surfacing the particular subject-matter-expertise of the University of Edinburgh to a global industry audience.
This newly articulated purpose was carried into EI’s EVP, which also focused on making clear the benefits of entrepreneurship and aligning and motivating employees around the positive social impact of EI’s work. We also delivered a roll-out strategy to support EI in incorporating it into the ‘day-to-day’.
Testimonials
“Rationale has risen to every challenge we have given them - from analysing our communications operations, to brand voice process, to the roll out of entrepreneurship campaigns. Each time they have met these challenges with focus, creativity and positive, impactful solutions.”
“Engaging internal University stakeholders was key to establishing a narrative that aligned with the aims of EI. In the end, this meant creating a narrative related to social impact rather than commercial gain.”