The challenge
“I want everyone to know the strategy – not just their bit of it,” says Danny Barrasso, and his eyes light up. “I want them to really understand that we are only in business because of the customer. They don’t distinguish between stores or on line. We are just New Look to them.”
Then his brow furrows: “But it is difficult to get this across in words or memos. We need a new approach and fresh thinking to help people engage with this, and to see how they are part of creating a great experience that helps our customers feel good about themselves!”
Building a multi-channel brand
Danny is the UK and Republic of Ireland MD for New Look; a business that has grown from a single store in Taunton to one of the top fashion businesses in the UK with a growing international presence. He gets digital marketing and innovation and understands that to create great and consistent customer experiences requires engaging people across every part of the retail, online, distribution and head office operations; because each part of the business contributes to achieving the end result for customers.
Visualizing the Strategy
We met because Danny had heard about our work on communicating strategy using visualisation. Using a visual narrative makes things more tangible for people and so enables them, whatever their role in the organisation, to see the overall picture and where they fit into it. Unlike presentations or “briefings” a visual gives people a common platform from which they can talk and then work together on how they support the strategy. It puts them in a frame of mind to tell stories to each other about how they experience and feel about work. This is because when people process visual information it involves more neural pathways; it engages emotional centres and makes messages more memorable.
We asked every one of Danny’s colleagues to talk to us about what they do and how they help the business. They talked about the overall strategy and a number of initiatives that included:
- Building the brand to differentiate the New Look offer through great value product, fantastic customer service and consistent messaging/imagery which reflects the brand
- Growing the business through refitting older stores, building new stores, creating a distinct menswear business, improving the range, click and collect and other initiatives
- Changing relationships in the company through on-line learning, digital communication platforms, opportunities for career progression and standardised processes to clarify expectations and improve consistency.
Then, rather than talk, we created visuals that bought these themes together and worked with Danny and Retail Director Russell Harrison to create a visual narrative to illustrate their strategy:
Danny and Russell used the visual to explain the strategy at a major launch for managers throughout the business and also worked to break it into micro-stories to make it easier for teams to digest over a period of time, with micro pictures and videos on their internal ‘Hub’ app over a period to sustain the conversations.
The Results
“The Big Picture worked really well. All of the feedback we received was that it was a great way of bringing the strategy to life and explaining it for the teams. It is great to see it up back of house in all the stores I visit.”
Russell Harrison, Retail Director
IABC UK & Ireland Past President 2019-2020
Gold Quill Award Winner
