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Article

Empathy & Enthusiasm

Communication is now more complicated than ever. We no longer get to think about reaching our audiences using a couple of mediums.

Communication is now more complicated than ever. We no longer get to think about reaching our audiences using a couple of mediums.

Mixed mediums

We have to think about social media, websites, TV, radio and print. And because of that, nearly every project a client brings to the table is layered.

These projects require professionals of all kinds to understand their clients’ needs in detail, build trust, and then execute in a way that is multidisciplinary. For that reason, strategists, designers, writers and thinkers all benefit from not just being skilled in one area—or a few areas—but also being able to take on a variety of new and daunting tasks—and excel while doing so. To do all that, professionals and their teams must be both empathetic and enthusiastic. You can’t provide excellent client service or achieve a broad range of goals without these traits.

The argument for more empathy in the workplace isn’t emotional but evidence-based. A study from Harvard Business Review found that businesses that make empathy part of their day-to-day operations outperform their counterparts who don’t by 20 percent. These high performers are the organizations that dive deep, listen with the intent to understand—not reply—and in doing so, unlock the client’s full potential.

So how does an agency stay empathetic and enthusiastic? A team of T-shaped people. It’s an idea first posited by IDEO CEO Tim Brown in a 2010 interview with Chief Executive Magazine, in which he describes the combination of breadth and depth that makes a person T-shaped.

The vertical stroke

The vertical stroke of the “T” is a depth of skill that allows them to contribute to the creative process. The skill can be from any number of different fields: industrial design, architecture, social science, business or engineering.

The horizontal stroke

The horizontal stroke of the “T” is the disposition for collaboration across disciplines. It is composed of two things. First, empathy. It’s important because it allows people to imagine the problem from another perspective—to stand in somebody else’s shoes. Second, these professionals tend to get very enthusiastic about other people’s disciplines, to the point that they may actually start to practice them. T-shaped people have both depth and breadth in their skills.

Depth and breadth

Empathy and enthusiasm. Easier said than done—but not out of reach.

When organizations don’t achieve both breadth and depth, their teams are often composed of I-shaped people. Unlike T-shaped people, I-shaped people just have a vertical stroke—excellence in one area, adaptability in none. They have difficulty exercising the empathy required to collaborate with diverse teams or the enthusiasm required to support multiple elements of a demanding project. T-shaped people revel in these opportunities.

Courage and curiosity

That’s why all organizations need to be on the lookout for the Ts—people with the courage to take on the daunting, and the curiosity to discover the new. These Ts acknowledge the insight and input of others. They speak in we terms instead of me terms. They are excellent in some areas, and ready to learn in others. They are bold—not boring.

Creative agencies and teams, especially, should be on the lookout for the Ts constantly. They include designers who want to write better, writers who want to understand design, and strategists who want to solve problems in fields they know little about. The Ts matter to creative agencies because they build wholistic and cohesive brand experiences composed of engaging content, inspired design and thoughtful strategy. These are the agencies that develop campaigns that are more than witty copy, a clever logo or a single novel idea.

Every team, regardless of its field, needs the Ts, the capital Ts—the ones with the big, bold horizontal strokes. Teams need to find the members that round out their collective skillsets, are interested in a range of professional development, and are ready to remain relevant. It’s this breadth and depth that creates teams that can learn, listen and explore new ways of doing things that matter. It’s these teams who develop lasting relationships and build trust. So exercise the courage required to face the unknown. Demonstrate the curiosity necessary to make the unknown the familiar.

Be empathetic. Be enthusiastic. Be excellent.

Case Study

Lord Stanley’s Gift

Inside every slab of stone is a monument waiting to be unveiled. One must simply remove the excess.

Inside every slab of stone is a monument waiting to be unveiled. One must simply remove the excess.

The challenge

How do you brand an international art competition without hinting at a winning aesthetic? By inspiring the world’s greatest artists while capturing the hearts of a nation.

Over two decades, a group of celebrated hockey players and passionate fans came together with a single purpose: to create a national monument commemorating the gift of Lord Stanley of Preston to the people of Canada—the Stanley Cup, the championship trophy awarded annually to the winner of the National Hockey League playoffs.

A national art competition

Lord Stanley Memorial Monument Inc. (LSMMI), led by acclaimed Canadian architect Barry Padolsky, set out to design and erect a monument in downtown Ottawa to mark the 125th anniversary of the Stanley Cup in 2017.

LSMMI hired Stiff to develop, coordinate, implement and execute a complete, overarching communications strategy that ultimately included the Lord Stanley’s Gift visual brand, design competition website, monument website, media strategy and youth outreach plan. It was a strategy crafted to engage the world’s best artists, excite the Canadian public and educate young people.

A public art installation goes digital

We also were challenged to build a monument website that met the needs of the monument’s diverse partners. Canadian Heritage wanted the site to educate Canadians about the history of the Stanley Cup and its central place in the history of professional hockey. The City of Ottawa expected the website to excite the public and position the monument as part of Canada 150 celebrations. The National Hockey League and the Ottawa Senators Hockey Club needed the monument website to be an information resource and enhance the experience of people who visit the completed monument.

“This is serious business. A lot of people have dedicated their hearts to this.”

Lord Stanley’s Gift Board Member
Brand as blank slate

We created a visual identity that conveyed the historic significance of the Stanley Cup, respected the dignity of the office of Governor General that Lord Stanley held when he made his historic pledge, and inspired dozens of artists across Canada and around the world to exhibit creative and technical excellence on par with the athletic prowess of those who compete for the Stanley Cup. At the same time, we ensured the identity did not prejudice or influence the ideas and inclinations of prospective artists.

The visual brand and design competition website showcased the monument as an opportunity for artists and designers to engage their full arsenal of talents to create what promised to be a highly popular piece of public art. The visual brand in particular captures that once-in-a-generation opportunity and its inherent creative potential. It evokes the presence of the monument itself—a stark pillar of rough stone, a figurative blank canvas that hints at work that has yet to begin.

In designing and building a website that ultimately satisfied the needs of these partners, we created three key sections:

Design competition website

65

Applicants (benchmark was 20)

12,000

Views over eight months

32%

Bounce rate

3 min

Average session duration

Monument website

4,400

Visitors

5,800

Sessions

22%

Bounce rate

Public Engagement

300

Attendance at competition launch

600

Attendance at monument unveiling

1,150

Finalist page visits

469

Students at interpretive panel design competition (benchmark was 400)

“This is unlike anything I’ve ever seen. And that’s a good thing.”

Barry Padlosky
Case Study

Veterans Affairs Canada

No jargon. No BS. Just clear thinking and straight talking.

No jargon. No BS. Just clear thinking and straight talking.

The challenge

Veterans Affairs Canada (VAC) needed to launch its highly anticipated Pension for Life program. We helped to make the announcement a success.

SITREP: A major announcement; a disconnected audience

In November 2017, Veterans Affairs Canada (VAC) hired Stiff to deliver strategic communications advice and multiplatform content for a major policy announcement. Large amounts of technical information and research had to be presented to the Veteran community, media and Canadians.

The job wasn’t going to be easy. VAC’s Pension for Life (PFL) enacted sweeping changes to an important compensation program for ill or injured Veterans, many of whom had stopped listening to messages from the federal government department. What’s more, timing was tight. We had just five weeks to execute.

“I cannot overstate how valuable Stiff’s contributions have been. You pushed our thinking and really helped us to break our pattern of communicating.”

Amy Meunier, Director at VAC
Interview, interpret, analyze

The Stiff team conducted wide-ranging research and analysis before making strategic recommendations.

We interviewed key VAC leaders and frontline staff to understand the ins and outs of the PFL program. We then conducted off-the-record interviews with approximately 30 Veterans, still-serving Canadian Armed Forces members, military families, and Veteran support workers.

Based on this research, we reached an unexpected conclusion. While some Veterans focused on the monetary aspect, VAC’s lack of credibility with many ill or injured Veterans was actually due to frustrations over long processing wait times, inaccessible language, lack of transparency and hard-to-understand information.

No bells. No whistles. Just honest talk.

Our course of action, to borrow a military phrase, was clear. VAC’s messaging required a dramatic change in style, tone and content. It was the only way to give PFL its greatest chance of success.

We executed by delivering clear, truthful and reasoned explanations of the new option—free of complicated jargon and insincere hyperbole—that also anticipated and addressed challenges with processing wait times. Straight-talking Veterans deserved nothing less.

After action review

Website

Media coverage, and digital and sentiment metrics exceeded expectations

Mainstream media coverage was balanced and fact-based

Post-announcement unique webpage views jumped by 2,364%

Average time on the website session grew from 2 minutes to 8 minutes and 48 seconds

Social Media

8,421 social media referrals to microsite between December 19 and 31, 2017

23 Twitter posts garnered 86,540 impressions

Facebook accounts posted 32 times and reached a total of 852,869 people

Facebook had 22% negative reactions, 5% neutral reactions and 73% positive reactions

The Facebook Live event drew 78,037 live viewers (positive reaction of 50.5%), which grew to 356,728 viewers in the first 14 days (positive reaction of 71%)

Article

All Together Now

Any brand, whether it’s of an individual or an organization, should know its own voice. The voice is how a brand showcases its personality and values.

Any brand, whether it’s of an individual or an organization, should know its own voice. The voice is how a brand showcases its personality and values.

Communicating with one voice

To be truly effective, a voice must be singular and consistent. Doing so gives a persuasive power to ideas and builds trust and credibility with an audience.

Brands that stay true to one voice position themselves as more authentic than those with disparate voices. They’re more easily found, too. Adopting a standard lexicon helps a brand’s SEO, since search engines boost pages that consistently use the same terms.

Finding your brand voice

A brand voice is a defining personality trait. Coca Cola is happy. Nike is confident. Apple is visionary. Successful brands can distill their personalities and voices down to just a word or two. But no organization can authentically project its values unless it also lives those values at the office. Tech start-ups stocked with millennials may tout a freewheeling culture that perfectly matches an ultra-casual and chronically upbeat brand voice, but there’s also nothing wrong with the polar opposite: an insurance company—with a long history of careful process—adopting a formal, neutral brand voice.

The consistency needed to maintain a brand voice extends from the smallest details of punctuation to the broadest applications of message and audience.

So how is it done?

A unified voice must:

Say the same things.

The brand aligns its messages across all platforms. No materials are contradictory. Terms, ideas and concepts are consistent.

Use the same words.

The brand agrees on definitions of its most commonly used terms and words to avoid.

Use the same style.

The brand follows a consistent style for spellings, capitalizations, abbreviations and other language variables.

Use the same tone.

The brand uses the same level of formality and the same general attitude, whether positive, negative or neutral.

Speak to the same audience.

The brand communicates with audiences through the appropriate media.

Communicators have a few means of projecting a singular voice. Let’s look at each.

Diction

Perhaps more than any other mechanism, diction—word choice—profoundly affects voice. Diction is about conveying the right message with the right words. It’s also the driving force of tone, which emerges through two qualities: formality and attitude.

Let’s look at two companies using their distinct voice to discuss identical topics.

MailChimp is moderately informal and very positive:

“Customers feel loyal to the brands that they love just like they feel loyal to friends and family. Brand loyalty is rooted in emotion. As business owners and marketers, our end game isn’t necessarily to make a quick sale, but rather to establish an emotional connection with customers by marketing to them in a personal, caring way. That connection is what leads to lasting brand loyalty.”

The New Yorker, meanwhile, is moderately formal and slightly negative:

“Corporate branding is now big business, and companies routinely spend tens of millions of dollars rebranding themselves or coming up with names for new products. And good monikers are still defined by [Robert Young’s] precept that a name should somehow evoke the fundamental qualities that you hope to advertise.”

Neither is wrong; they’re perfect reflections of the overarching brand. Writing in one voice means consistently striking the right balance of formality and attitude.

Punctuation

Punctuation creates tempo. Commas, dashes and semi-colons slow down a text by marking where the audience should pause. A lot of pausing has a more formal effect than a fast-paced text, as a New York Times article by Ben Yagoda comically explains:

“As a professor at the University of Delaware, I read a lot of writing by college students, and in it a strong recent trend is reversion to comma-by-sound. I attribute this not so much to students’ love of the Constitution and the classics but to the fact that they don’t read much edited prose (as opposed to Facebook status updates, tweets and the like)… So students will write sentences like this:

‘So, students will write sentences like this.’

But, they are wrong.”

Medium also affects punctuation. Brands should follow guidelines that favour their preferred formats. For example: commas are difficult to read online. They are slow and easily missed on screen.

See how Twitter uses short declarative sentences to avoid commas altogether:

“Twitter is what’s happening in the world and what people are talking about right now. See every side of the story. Show the world what’s happening. Spark a global conversation.”

Think about your reader’s experience and go from there.

Syntax

Diction is word choice, syntax is word order. Like diction, syntax can signal attitude and formality. Single independent clauses can come across as authentic and no-nonsense—or terse, if used excessively. Winding, conditional sentences undermine conviction, while unusual word order can imply wisdom (used to great effect by Yoda). A brand can vary its syntax so long as it is aware of the effect it creates. Consistent, be.

Speaker

A final component of voice is the speaker behind the writing.

The first person. Using the pronouns I, me, we and us adds intimacy to writing. Many brands speak about themselves in the first person to convey warmth and a personal connection to their audiences. Look at this example from a Vice article, where the first person plus some self-deprecation creates instant empathy:

“I was never a particularly athletic child. For some godforsaken reason, my sociopath of a kindergarten teacher gave our class tests in skipping (as in, “to my Lou”) and I failed them countless times before giving up.”

The second person. You. The second person is useful for addressing the reader directly, which also builds intimacy. Here’s an example from Kurt Vonnegut’s “How to Write With Style”:

“When you yourself put words on paper, remember that the most damning revelation you can make about yourself is that you do not know what is interesting and what is not. Don’t you yourself like or dislike writers mainly for what they choose to show you or make you think about? Did you ever admire an empty-headed writer for his or her mastery of the language? No. So your own winning literary style must begin with interesting ideas in your head.”

But be careful not to accidentally implicate the reader if the topic is negative or the tone accusatory. Be like Kurt: implicate the reader willfully.

The third person. She, he, it, they, one. Using the third person adds formality. News organizations almost exclusively use the third person because it fosters a sense of impartiality. For example:

“CNN could not independently verify this report.”

Unified design

A cohesive writing voice isn’t complete without a visual style to match. Consistent messages rely on consistent visuals to further establish trust and reliability. Most organizations use brand guidelines to put rigour around the exact colours, typefaces, iconography and layouts they use. Brand guidelines are useful, so long as they don’t conflict with the organization’s brand personality.

Bringing it all together

Success happens when all brand elements—culture, values, personality and voice—are in perfect sync. Maintaining a cohesive brand voice complemented by consistent design work eventually becomes natural. Until then, think of every image, word and punctuation mark as a chance to practice perfect vocal harmony.

Article

Google Washing

Here’s the thing about knockoffs: even though they’re fashionable, they tend to lack quality. From a replica Chanel flap bag to an imitated Google office, copycats just don’t do the trick.

Here’s the thing about knockoffs: even though they’re fashionable, they tend to lack quality. From a replica Chanel flap bag to an imitated Google office, copycats just don’t do the trick.

Engagement doesn’t mean entertainment.

That’s certainly what we’ve found when we’re asked to help our clients with culture and employee engagement consulting.

The businesses that receive the lowest engagement measurements are usually those that anxiously introduce fun cultural imitations—thirty-foot slides, office putting greens, turntables in music rooms—without realizing these perks clash with their strategies and their people. We call it Google-washing. And we see it all the time.

Many executives presume that fun workspaces are the key to productive employees (especially for younger staff). They identify engagement problems in their organizations and respond with clumsy cultural initiatives. They sense mistrust between teams, so they erect open-office concepts. They worry their people aren’t dedicated, so they hand out branded tote bags. These Band-Aid solutions attempt to fix surface issues, but only mask deeper cuts.

Executives are right to care about their employees’ experiences. Amidst new challenges—increased marketplace competition, evolving employee expectations and technology-fueled collaboration—an organization’s ability to engage its people can make or break its business. We see these executives go wrong time and again when they assume that culture, specifically a fun culture, is the only way to connect with employees.

Processes, management and tools all impact an employee’s work life. And yet so many executives fixate on fun cultural appendages without examining their current technology, teamleads and cultural styles.

Engagement: beyond ping-pong tables and treadputers

We get the thinking. Millennial stereotypes have leaked into HR strategy. Baby Boomer and Gen X HR experts maintain that younger staff need free swag and fun toys to stay motivated. When asked for evidence, they point to organizations like Pixar, Netflix and Google—corporations that have commodified playful and explorative work cultures to redefine entire industries. It’s easy to associate the success of these companies with their cultural symbols, their profit margins with their ping pong tables. But in this case the metonymy doesn’t work.

These garage-start-ups-turned-tech-giants wield in-office fun toys and free booze as one small part of a large strategic system. And these perks evolved with their companies. They weren’t added as an afterthought. It may be more interesting to talk about Adobe’s rock wall than its employee onboarding microsite, but both are important to its business. To reduce success to fun culture (and then assume that’s why its millennial staff perform well), is short sighted. So when we see executives measure their offices for climbing holds, we tell them to slow down and see if their corporate structure can actually support another wall.

Cultural misalignment hurts business.

Here’s a scenario we’ve seen before: an HR representative contacted us about an engagement problem at her organization.

When we got onsite, C-suite Gen X directors complained that the younger employees were demanding. They told us, “Millennials like collaborating. We introduced these collaboration spaces, but no one uses them.” To which we asked, “What are they collaborating on?” And a director explained, “Well, nothing at the moment. They’re pretty heads-down on their own projects.”

This approach lacks authenticity. (And reeks of prejudice.) Executives shouldn’t simply rubber stamp the culture they want. Culture is experienced, created, exchanged and revised among all employees. It knows no hierarchy. Executives can shape culture through their choice in people, structures, management and tools. But they can’t impose cultural change with fun initiatives. When they attempt to, they discredit their already existing cultures, confuse employees and muddle their missions.

Understand and uphold your own culture.

Employees see more value when executives take genuine steps to understand their experiences, rather than make assumptions and create kneejerk initiatives. Ask yourself: which cultural styles are upper management modeling? Are these preferences reflected in project processes? What barriers do employees face to completing work effectively and efficiently? What are the characteristics and qualifications of the most junior employees? Once you recognize how your culture plays out at all levels, then you can decide which systems need to be reworked, reinforced or reinvigorated.

Skip the bean bags.

Maybe your organization’s culture is about exploration and creativity. Maybe those break-out areas make sense for you. But if your organization isn’t naturally fun, that pool table you just installed may do more harm than good.

Take time to understand your culture—what works and what doesn’t—to bring about meaningful cultural change. You may be surprised. Your culture may be working for your business better than you think. Maybe all it needs is careful refinement.

Article

What’s in a game?

It’s an important question because gaming brands are some of the biggest—Nintendo, Ubisoft, Rockstar, Blizzard, and almost too many more to count. Don’t know these brands? Maybe just Nintendo? It’s time to pick up the controller.

It’s an important question because gaming brands are some of the biggest—Nintendo, Ubisoft, Rockstar, Blizzard, and almost too many more to count. Don’t know these brands? Maybe just Nintendo? It’s time to pick up the controller.

Storytelling is evolving.

Now before you back away because you think games aren’t a serious medium, know this: if you aren’t paying attention to the highly immersive, storytelling world of gaming you aren’t dialed in.

At more than $135 billion in 2018, the global games industry is now valued at about three times the global film industry.

Games have become the new silver screen, giving you the full experience—the true, engrossing, intimate experience. And that’s because intimacy in brand experience is about matching the message to the medium and giving your audience an opportunity to be part of the story.

And thanks to games’ new role as a medium of immersive brand experiences that showcase storytelling, technology, art and design, the ingredients that make great games are no longer just an arena of interest for teenagers. Not at all. Games are important to all of us because they can help us keep an eye on what makes a brand experience great—and what qualifies as immersive and intimate to modern audiences. And with all that, games can also help us understand the missteps that lead to brand failures.

Consumer expectations are everything. Take two recent examples.

Red Dead Redemption 2

Rockstar Games—the studio behind the world-famous Grand Theft Auto franchise—released Red Dead Redemption 2, the third game in a series of western action-adventures. Universally acclaimed by critics and fans, the game is set in a living, breathing, open-world environment where the players’ choices impact nearly everything around them. Players can spend their time hunting, robbing trains, petting stray dogs, or simply chopping wood to build a cabin and improve their character’s crafting skills. Red Dead Redemption 2 is truly immersive because all players get their own experiences, their own stories, and because the care and attention to detail put into that experience matches what the medium can offer. Technology, storytelling, and Rockstar’s mastery of those elements, met fans’ expectations and set the tone for a game that takes advantage of the latest technology while remaining intimate.

Diablo Immortal

But what does failure look like? It looks a lot like Diablo Immortal. Announced by Blizzard Entertainment with no set release date, Diablo Immortal is an action role-playing game designed for mobile devices. It’s a drastic departure from previous games in the series that were launched on PCs. It’s also widely seen as a watered-down version of its predecessors. It abandons the care, attention to detail and intimacy that had previously defined the Diablo franchise. While the game may now fit in your pocket, it doesn’t offer an experience the players see themselves fitting into. It’s not that Blizzard needed to offer up a game with exact equivalents of petting dogs, chopping wood or robbing trains. It’s that Blizzard failed to avoid the tension between technology and their brand, deviating too much to one side and delivering a new technological experience that didn’t make the case for a new brand experience.

Blizzard’s misstep is a
universal lesson. 

Connection first, details second.

Brands can’t just cash in on what technology has to offer; they also have to pay attention to what the competition is delivering, and what their audiences expect. That means offering connection, emotion, authenticity and narrative. While technology sets the tone for how people communicate and connect with brands, it’s not the only component of an engaging product.

Blizzard abandoned the care and quality that it was known for in order to stumble into the world of mobile technology, and in doing so highlighted the peril brands face when they focus only on one element. Blizzard knew better and had done better before. The company got comfortable and they failed to remain vigilant and true to their craft while exploring new technologies—and their audience noticed. Will yours?

Article

Commsplicated

More than half of all organizations have boards of directors. Chosen well, each includes people who challenge constructively, and who help management define strategies for organizational development.

More than half of all organizations have boards of directors. Chosen well, each includes people who challenge constructively, and who help management define strategies for organizational development.

Tension, yes. But not always constructive.

The board’s oversight role brings a fundamental tension to the board and executive director relationship. Unfortunately, that tension is not always constructive.

Organizations do not always crisply define where board oversight ends and executive management begins. Most CEOs and boards would likely agree their roles are discrete and distinct. In practice, overlap occurs. Governance dictates such. In this grey area, struggles for power and authority often emerge. Communications in particular is pulled both ways.

Who owns what?

Decisions about investor relations and communications with shareholders are clearly within the purview of the board. Communications to customers and employees are generally the executive’s domain. In all matters, the board presumes communications will come direct from the executive. But the executive doesn’t always want to—or feel it must—report to the board on the details of every decision taken (or intended to be taken).

The predictable result of this situation is that the board feels out of the loop, and disrespected. The CEO gets his or her back up believing that the board wants to meddle in the company’s daily operations. Communications and investor relations, meanwhile, point fingers at one another for inconsistent messaging, or jobs not done well.

Sadly, this shade of dysfunction is not uncommon.

No problem is unsolvable. Even issues as delicate as board and executive relations and communications can be repaired.

It’s about nuance
That’s where we come in.

In our experience, the tensions borne in these challenges can be resolved through open and direct communications. Think of us as facilitators—counsellors, even. We bring everyone to the table. We ask each to express their needs and desires. We help the personalities understand the nuances of particular roles. Then we build a communications plan and feedback loop that ensures everyone is bound together and pulling in the same direction.

Executive communications is the top-tier communications effort within an organization. It should be (or at least feel like) a joint effort between the executive and board to move the organization forward at the pace they set together. With a thoughtful, intelligent process in place, all parties can manage the people who report to them, and work together for the good of the organization—within the parameters their roles permit.

Most organizations don’t define executive communications well.

Giving shape to the shapeless

There are always gaps. But those gaps don’t have to become gulfs. They can be bridged successfully with a thoughtful, considered approach that brings the CEO and board together as one, executing the company’s mission together.

Ask us how.

Article

The Art of Impermanence

Change is in our blood. Being part of change, responding to it, surviving it.

Change is in our blood. Being part of change, responding to it, surviving it.

We turned 30 in 2018.

Across three decades, we’ve thrived as markets have shifted, expanded and, in some cases, vanished.

We’ve seen audiences grow more savvy (and increasingly demanding and fickle). We’ve refined our services as new platforms and technologies emerged. Yep, impermanence is us.

Our secret? Be flexible and nimble, able to pivot swiftly to meet customer and market demands. Our pivot point? Excellence. The pursuit of it may be the one thing that has never changed about Stiff.

On a rainy Halifax day in December 1988, our chairman, Brian Hanington incorporated Stiff Sentences: a company of writers. The company of writers, in fact. Our name—long a source of fascination—was a product of the eighties’ trend toward pun-based monikers. It was a play on the phrase associated with long jail terms, as well as a nod to the fabric of language and logic (or illogic) of grammar. Viewed through our proprietary naming methodology, it fell into the second of six categories: evocative names, ones that were hard to forget. And it worked.

We were the source of the written word in films, broadcast and print advertising, speeches, print publications and multi-media productions (remember them?). Since then, we’ve served clients on four continents, delivering exceptional writing in every promotional genre. We learned what it takes to bring audiences to their feet—and their wallets or conscience.

We were already our clients’ trusted communications advisors. Humbly, we knew that mastering the English language was challenge enough for any company and appreciated its critical importance in communicating a brand.

More than sentences

Yet we regularly proposed improvements to graphic designs. We named businesses and products. We created riveting approaches to anchor ad campaigns. We led the strategic development behind major annual reports. We pinpointed key messages for ministerial speeches. We provided direction so precise, video producers had only to follow the script. The only thing left to take on the full mantle of a strategic communications agency was to call ourselves one—and bring more amazing talent on board.

So we shifted again, dropped a word to reflect that we’re not just about sentences and started a whole new chapter as Stiff. On one hand we’ve retained the irony of our founding name, as our work is the opposite of rigid or difficult. On the other, we’re proud of the name’s association to the power and strength of the consultation, creative ideas and content we deliver.

The right Stiff

Today, we strive for excellence as a tightknit but fast-growing team of strategists, writers, digital developers and design specialists that nurtures, protects and promotes corporate identities.

We help clients manage their change challenges—even if the message is that they haven’t changed as the world morphs around them.

And us? We won’t predict what the future of communications will bring—other than the fact that we’re confident we’ll be a part of it, still striving to produce excellent work, still striving to help our clients reach their own versions of excellence, still striving to be the right Stiff.

Mixed mediums

We have to think about social media, websites, TV, radio and print. And because of that, nearly every project a client brings to the table is layered.

These projects require professionals of all kinds to understand their clients’ needs in detail, build trust, and then execute in a way that is multidisciplinary. For that reason, strategists, designers, writers and thinkers all benefit from not just being skilled in one area—or a few areas—but also being able to take on a variety of new and daunting tasks—and excel while doing so. To do all that, professionals and their teams must be both empathetic and enthusiastic. You can’t provide excellent client service or achieve a broad range of goals without these traits.

The argument for more empathy in the workplace isn’t emotional but evidence-based. A study from Harvard Business Review found that businesses that make empathy part of their day-to-day operations outperform their counterparts who don’t by 20 percent. These high performers are the organizations that dive deep, listen with the intent to understand—not reply—and in doing so, unlock the client’s full potential.

So how does an agency stay empathetic and enthusiastic? A team of T-shaped people. It’s an idea first posited by IDEO CEO Tim Brown in a 2010 interview with Chief Executive Magazine, in which he describes the combination of breadth and depth that makes a person T-shaped.

The vertical stroke

The vertical stroke of the “T” is a depth of skill that allows them to contribute to the creative process. The skill can be from any number of different fields: industrial design, architecture, social science, business or engineering.

The horizontal stroke

The horizontal stroke of the “T” is the disposition for collaboration across disciplines. It is composed of two things. First, empathy. It’s important because it allows people to imagine the problem from another perspective—to stand in somebody else’s shoes. Second, these professionals tend to get very enthusiastic about other people’s disciplines, to the point that they may actually start to practice them. T-shaped people have both depth and breadth in their skills.

Depth and breadth

Empathy and enthusiasm. Easier said than done—but not out of reach.

When organizations don’t achieve both breadth and depth, their teams are often composed of I-shaped people. Unlike T-shaped people, I-shaped people just have a vertical stroke—excellence in one area, adaptability in none. They have difficulty exercising the empathy required to collaborate with diverse teams or the enthusiasm required to support multiple elements of a demanding project. T-shaped people revel in these opportunities.

Courage and curiosity

That’s why all organizations need to be on the lookout for the Ts—people with the courage to take on the daunting, and the curiosity to discover the new. These Ts acknowledge the insight and input of others. They speak in we terms instead of me terms. They are excellent in some areas, and ready to learn in others. They are bold—not boring.

Creative agencies and teams, especially, should be on the lookout for the Ts constantly. They include designers who want to write better, writers who want to understand design, and strategists who want to solve problems in fields they know little about. The Ts matter to creative agencies because they build wholistic and cohesive brand experiences composed of engaging content, inspired design and thoughtful strategy. These are the agencies that develop campaigns that are more than witty copy, a clever logo or a single novel idea.

Every team, regardless of its field, needs the Ts, the capital Ts—the ones with the big, bold horizontal strokes. Teams need to find the members that round out their collective skillsets, are interested in a range of professional development, and are ready to remain relevant. It’s this breadth and depth that creates teams that can learn, listen and explore new ways of doing things that matter. It’s these teams who develop lasting relationships and build trust. So exercise the courage required to face the unknown. Demonstrate the curiosity necessary to make the unknown the familiar.

Be empathetic. Be enthusiastic. Be excellent.

The challenge

How do you brand an international art competition without hinting at a winning aesthetic? By inspiring the world’s greatest artists while capturing the hearts of a nation.

Over two decades, a group of celebrated hockey players and passionate fans came together with a single purpose: to create a national monument commemorating the gift of Lord Stanley of Preston to the people of Canada—the Stanley Cup, the championship trophy awarded annually to the winner of the National Hockey League playoffs.

A national art competition

Lord Stanley Memorial Monument Inc. (LSMMI), led by acclaimed Canadian architect Barry Padolsky, set out to design and erect a monument in downtown Ottawa to mark the 125th anniversary of the Stanley Cup in 2017.

LSMMI hired Stiff to develop, coordinate, implement and execute a complete, overarching communications strategy that ultimately included the Lord Stanley’s Gift visual brand, design competition website, monument website, media strategy and youth outreach plan. It was a strategy crafted to engage the world’s best artists, excite the Canadian public and educate young people.

A public art installation goes digital

We also were challenged to build a monument website that met the needs of the monument’s diverse partners. Canadian Heritage wanted the site to educate Canadians about the history of the Stanley Cup and its central place in the history of professional hockey. The City of Ottawa expected the website to excite the public and position the monument as part of Canada 150 celebrations. The National Hockey League and the Ottawa Senators Hockey Club needed the monument website to be an information resource and enhance the experience of people who visit the completed monument.

“This is serious business. A lot of people have dedicated their hearts to this.”

Lord Stanley’s Gift Board Member
Brand as blank slate

We created a visual identity that conveyed the historic significance of the Stanley Cup, respected the dignity of the office of Governor General that Lord Stanley held when he made his historic pledge, and inspired dozens of artists across Canada and around the world to exhibit creative and technical excellence on par with the athletic prowess of those who compete for the Stanley Cup. At the same time, we ensured the identity did not prejudice or influence the ideas and inclinations of prospective artists.

The visual brand and design competition website showcased the monument as an opportunity for artists and designers to engage their full arsenal of talents to create what promised to be a highly popular piece of public art. The visual brand in particular captures that once-in-a-generation opportunity and its inherent creative potential. It evokes the presence of the monument itself—a stark pillar of rough stone, a figurative blank canvas that hints at work that has yet to begin.

In designing and building a website that ultimately satisfied the needs of these partners, we created three key sections:

Design competition website

65

Applicants (benchmark was 20)

12,000

Views over eight months

32%

Bounce rate

3 min

Average session duration

Monument website

4,400

Visitors

5,800

Sessions

22%

Bounce rate

Public Engagement

300

Attendance at competition launch

600

Attendance at monument unveiling

1,150

Finalist page visits

469

Students at interpretive panel design competition (benchmark was 400)

“This is unlike anything I’ve ever seen. And that’s a good thing.”

Barry Padlosky
The challenge

Veterans Affairs Canada (VAC) needed to launch its highly anticipated Pension for Life program. We helped to make the announcement a success.

SITREP: A major announcement; a disconnected audience

In November 2017, Veterans Affairs Canada (VAC) hired Stiff to deliver strategic communications advice and multiplatform content for a major policy announcement. Large amounts of technical information and research had to be presented to the Veteran community, media and Canadians.

The job wasn’t going to be easy. VAC’s Pension for Life (PFL) enacted sweeping changes to an important compensation program for ill or injured Veterans, many of whom had stopped listening to messages from the federal government department. What’s more, timing was tight. We had just five weeks to execute.

“I cannot overstate how valuable Stiff’s contributions have been. You pushed our thinking and really helped us to break our pattern of communicating.”

Amy Meunier, Director at VAC
Interview, interpret, analyze

The Stiff team conducted wide-ranging research and analysis before making strategic recommendations.

We interviewed key VAC leaders and frontline staff to understand the ins and outs of the PFL program. We then conducted off-the-record interviews with approximately 30 Veterans, still-serving Canadian Armed Forces members, military families, and Veteran support workers.

Based on this research, we reached an unexpected conclusion. While some Veterans focused on the monetary aspect, VAC’s lack of credibility with many ill or injured Veterans was actually due to frustrations over long processing wait times, inaccessible language, lack of transparency and hard-to-understand information.

No bells. No whistles. Just honest talk.

Our course of action, to borrow a military phrase, was clear. VAC’s messaging required a dramatic change in style, tone and content. It was the only way to give PFL its greatest chance of success.

We executed by delivering clear, truthful and reasoned explanations of the new option—free of complicated jargon and insincere hyperbole—that also anticipated and addressed challenges with processing wait times. Straight-talking Veterans deserved nothing less.

After action review

Website

Media coverage, and digital and sentiment metrics exceeded expectations

Mainstream media coverage was balanced and fact-based

Post-announcement unique webpage views jumped by 2,364%

Average time on the website session grew from 2 minutes to 8 minutes and 48 seconds

Social Media

8,421 social media referrals to microsite between December 19 and 31, 2017

23 Twitter posts garnered 86,540 impressions

Facebook accounts posted 32 times and reached a total of 852,869 people

Facebook had 22% negative reactions, 5% neutral reactions and 73% positive reactions

The Facebook Live event drew 78,037 live viewers (positive reaction of 50.5%), which grew to 356,728 viewers in the first 14 days (positive reaction of 71%)

Communicating with one voice

To be truly effective, a voice must be singular and consistent. Doing so gives a persuasive power to ideas and builds trust and credibility with an audience.

Brands that stay true to one voice position themselves as more authentic than those with disparate voices. They’re more easily found, too. Adopting a standard lexicon helps a brand’s SEO, since search engines boost pages that consistently use the same terms.

Finding your brand voice

A brand voice is a defining personality trait. Coca Cola is happy. Nike is confident. Apple is visionary. Successful brands can distill their personalities and voices down to just a word or two. But no organization can authentically project its values unless it also lives those values at the office. Tech start-ups stocked with millennials may tout a freewheeling culture that perfectly matches an ultra-casual and chronically upbeat brand voice, but there’s also nothing wrong with the polar opposite: an insurance company—with a long history of careful process—adopting a formal, neutral brand voice.

The consistency needed to maintain a brand voice extends from the smallest details of punctuation to the broadest applications of message and audience.

So how is it done?

A unified voice must:

Say the same things.

The brand aligns its messages across all platforms. No materials are contradictory. Terms, ideas and concepts are consistent.

Use the same words.

The brand agrees on definitions of its most commonly used terms and words to avoid.

Use the same style.

The brand follows a consistent style for spellings, capitalizations, abbreviations and other language variables.

Use the same tone.

The brand uses the same level of formality and the same general attitude, whether positive, negative or neutral.

Speak to the same audience.

The brand communicates with audiences through the appropriate media.

Communicators have a few means of projecting a singular voice. Let’s look at each.

Diction

Perhaps more than any other mechanism, diction—word choice—profoundly affects voice. Diction is about conveying the right message with the right words. It’s also the driving force of tone, which emerges through two qualities: formality and attitude.

Let’s look at two companies using their distinct voice to discuss identical topics.

MailChimp is moderately informal and very positive:

“Customers feel loyal to the brands that they love just like they feel loyal to friends and family. Brand loyalty is rooted in emotion. As business owners and marketers, our end game isn’t necessarily to make a quick sale, but rather to establish an emotional connection with customers by marketing to them in a personal, caring way. That connection is what leads to lasting brand loyalty.”

The New Yorker, meanwhile, is moderately formal and slightly negative:

“Corporate branding is now big business, and companies routinely spend tens of millions of dollars rebranding themselves or coming up with names for new products. And good monikers are still defined by [Robert Young’s] precept that a name should somehow evoke the fundamental qualities that you hope to advertise.”

Neither is wrong; they’re perfect reflections of the overarching brand. Writing in one voice means consistently striking the right balance of formality and attitude.

Punctuation

Punctuation creates tempo. Commas, dashes and semi-colons slow down a text by marking where the audience should pause. A lot of pausing has a more formal effect than a fast-paced text, as a New York Times article by Ben Yagoda comically explains:

“As a professor at the University of Delaware, I read a lot of writing by college students, and in it a strong recent trend is reversion to comma-by-sound. I attribute this not so much to students’ love of the Constitution and the classics but to the fact that they don’t read much edited prose (as opposed to Facebook status updates, tweets and the like)… So students will write sentences like this:

‘So, students will write sentences like this.’

But, they are wrong.”

Medium also affects punctuation. Brands should follow guidelines that favour their preferred formats. For example: commas are difficult to read online. They are slow and easily missed on screen.

See how Twitter uses short declarative sentences to avoid commas altogether:

“Twitter is what’s happening in the world and what people are talking about right now. See every side of the story. Show the world what’s happening. Spark a global conversation.”

Think about your reader’s experience and go from there.

Syntax

Diction is word choice, syntax is word order. Like diction, syntax can signal attitude and formality. Single independent clauses can come across as authentic and no-nonsense—or terse, if used excessively. Winding, conditional sentences undermine conviction, while unusual word order can imply wisdom (used to great effect by Yoda). A brand can vary its syntax so long as it is aware of the effect it creates. Consistent, be.

Speaker

A final component of voice is the speaker behind the writing.

The first person. Using the pronouns I, me, we and us adds intimacy to writing. Many brands speak about themselves in the first person to convey warmth and a personal connection to their audiences. Look at this example from a Vice article, where the first person plus some self-deprecation creates instant empathy:

“I was never a particularly athletic child. For some godforsaken reason, my sociopath of a kindergarten teacher gave our class tests in skipping (as in, “to my Lou”) and I failed them countless times before giving up.”

The second person. You. The second person is useful for addressing the reader directly, which also builds intimacy. Here’s an example from Kurt Vonnegut’s “How to Write With Style”:

“When you yourself put words on paper, remember that the most damning revelation you can make about yourself is that you do not know what is interesting and what is not. Don’t you yourself like or dislike writers mainly for what they choose to show you or make you think about? Did you ever admire an empty-headed writer for his or her mastery of the language? No. So your own winning literary style must begin with interesting ideas in your head.”

But be careful not to accidentally implicate the reader if the topic is negative or the tone accusatory. Be like Kurt: implicate the reader willfully.

The third person. She, he, it, they, one. Using the third person adds formality. News organizations almost exclusively use the third person because it fosters a sense of impartiality. For example:

“CNN could not independently verify this report.”

Unified design

A cohesive writing voice isn’t complete without a visual style to match. Consistent messages rely on consistent visuals to further establish trust and reliability. Most organizations use brand guidelines to put rigour around the exact colours, typefaces, iconography and layouts they use. Brand guidelines are useful, so long as they don’t conflict with the organization’s brand personality.

Bringing it all together

Success happens when all brand elements—culture, values, personality and voice—are in perfect sync. Maintaining a cohesive brand voice complemented by consistent design work eventually becomes natural. Until then, think of every image, word and punctuation mark as a chance to practice perfect vocal harmony.

Engagement doesn’t mean entertainment.

That’s certainly what we’ve found when we’re asked to help our clients with culture and employee engagement consulting.

The businesses that receive the lowest engagement measurements are usually those that anxiously introduce fun cultural imitations—thirty-foot slides, office putting greens, turntables in music rooms—without realizing these perks clash with their strategies and their people. We call it Google-washing. And we see it all the time.

Many executives presume that fun workspaces are the key to productive employees (especially for younger staff). They identify engagement problems in their organizations and respond with clumsy cultural initiatives. They sense mistrust between teams, so they erect open-office concepts. They worry their people aren’t dedicated, so they hand out branded tote bags. These Band-Aid solutions attempt to fix surface issues, but only mask deeper cuts.

Executives are right to care about their employees’ experiences. Amidst new challenges—increased marketplace competition, evolving employee expectations and technology-fueled collaboration—an organization’s ability to engage its people can make or break its business. We see these executives go wrong time and again when they assume that culture, specifically a fun culture, is the only way to connect with employees.

Processes, management and tools all impact an employee’s work life. And yet so many executives fixate on fun cultural appendages without examining their current technology, teamleads and cultural styles.

Engagement: beyond ping-pong tables and treadputers

We get the thinking. Millennial stereotypes have leaked into HR strategy. Baby Boomer and Gen X HR experts maintain that younger staff need free swag and fun toys to stay motivated. When asked for evidence, they point to organizations like Pixar, Netflix and Google—corporations that have commodified playful and explorative work cultures to redefine entire industries. It’s easy to associate the success of these companies with their cultural symbols, their profit margins with their ping pong tables. But in this case the metonymy doesn’t work.

These garage-start-ups-turned-tech-giants wield in-office fun toys and free booze as one small part of a large strategic system. And these perks evolved with their companies. They weren’t added as an afterthought. It may be more interesting to talk about Adobe’s rock wall than its employee onboarding microsite, but both are important to its business. To reduce success to fun culture (and then assume that’s why its millennial staff perform well), is short sighted. So when we see executives measure their offices for climbing holds, we tell them to slow down and see if their corporate structure can actually support another wall.

Cultural misalignment hurts business.

Here’s a scenario we’ve seen before: an HR representative contacted us about an engagement problem at her organization.

When we got onsite, C-suite Gen X directors complained that the younger employees were demanding. They told us, “Millennials like collaborating. We introduced these collaboration spaces, but no one uses them.” To which we asked, “What are they collaborating on?” And a director explained, “Well, nothing at the moment. They’re pretty heads-down on their own projects.”

This approach lacks authenticity. (And reeks of prejudice.) Executives shouldn’t simply rubber stamp the culture they want. Culture is experienced, created, exchanged and revised among all employees. It knows no hierarchy. Executives can shape culture through their choice in people, structures, management and tools. But they can’t impose cultural change with fun initiatives. When they attempt to, they discredit their already existing cultures, confuse employees and muddle their missions.

Understand and uphold your own culture.

Employees see more value when executives take genuine steps to understand their experiences, rather than make assumptions and create kneejerk initiatives. Ask yourself: which cultural styles are upper management modeling? Are these preferences reflected in project processes? What barriers do employees face to completing work effectively and efficiently? What are the characteristics and qualifications of the most junior employees? Once you recognize how your culture plays out at all levels, then you can decide which systems need to be reworked, reinforced or reinvigorated.

Skip the bean bags.

Maybe your organization’s culture is about exploration and creativity. Maybe those break-out areas make sense for you. But if your organization isn’t naturally fun, that pool table you just installed may do more harm than good.

Take time to understand your culture—what works and what doesn’t—to bring about meaningful cultural change. You may be surprised. Your culture may be working for your business better than you think. Maybe all it needs is careful refinement.

Storytelling is evolving.

Now before you back away because you think games aren’t a serious medium, know this: if you aren’t paying attention to the highly immersive, storytelling world of gaming you aren’t dialed in.

At more than $135 billion in 2018, the global games industry is now valued at about three times the global film industry.

Games have become the new silver screen, giving you the full experience—the true, engrossing, intimate experience. And that’s because intimacy in brand experience is about matching the message to the medium and giving your audience an opportunity to be part of the story.

And thanks to games’ new role as a medium of immersive brand experiences that showcase storytelling, technology, art and design, the ingredients that make great games are no longer just an arena of interest for teenagers. Not at all. Games are important to all of us because they can help us keep an eye on what makes a brand experience great—and what qualifies as immersive and intimate to modern audiences. And with all that, games can also help us understand the missteps that lead to brand failures.

Consumer expectations are everything. Take two recent examples.

Red Dead Redemption 2

Rockstar Games—the studio behind the world-famous Grand Theft Auto franchise—released Red Dead Redemption 2, the third game in a series of western action-adventures. Universally acclaimed by critics and fans, the game is set in a living, breathing, open-world environment where the players’ choices impact nearly everything around them. Players can spend their time hunting, robbing trains, petting stray dogs, or simply chopping wood to build a cabin and improve their character’s crafting skills. Red Dead Redemption 2 is truly immersive because all players get their own experiences, their own stories, and because the care and attention to detail put into that experience matches what the medium can offer. Technology, storytelling, and Rockstar’s mastery of those elements, met fans’ expectations and set the tone for a game that takes advantage of the latest technology while remaining intimate.

Diablo Immortal

But what does failure look like? It looks a lot like Diablo Immortal. Announced by Blizzard Entertainment with no set release date, Diablo Immortal is an action role-playing game designed for mobile devices. It’s a drastic departure from previous games in the series that were launched on PCs. It’s also widely seen as a watered-down version of its predecessors. It abandons the care, attention to detail and intimacy that had previously defined the Diablo franchise. While the game may now fit in your pocket, it doesn’t offer an experience the players see themselves fitting into. It’s not that Blizzard needed to offer up a game with exact equivalents of petting dogs, chopping wood or robbing trains. It’s that Blizzard failed to avoid the tension between technology and their brand, deviating too much to one side and delivering a new technological experience that didn’t make the case for a new brand experience.

Blizzard’s misstep is a
universal lesson. 

Connection first, details second.

Brands can’t just cash in on what technology has to offer; they also have to pay attention to what the competition is delivering, and what their audiences expect. That means offering connection, emotion, authenticity and narrative. While technology sets the tone for how people communicate and connect with brands, it’s not the only component of an engaging product.

Blizzard abandoned the care and quality that it was known for in order to stumble into the world of mobile technology, and in doing so highlighted the peril brands face when they focus only on one element. Blizzard knew better and had done better before. The company got comfortable and they failed to remain vigilant and true to their craft while exploring new technologies—and their audience noticed. Will yours?

Tension, yes. But not always constructive.

The board’s oversight role brings a fundamental tension to the board and executive director relationship. Unfortunately, that tension is not always constructive.

Organizations do not always crisply define where board oversight ends and executive management begins. Most CEOs and boards would likely agree their roles are discrete and distinct. In practice, overlap occurs. Governance dictates such. In this grey area, struggles for power and authority often emerge. Communications in particular is pulled both ways.

Who owns what?

Decisions about investor relations and communications with shareholders are clearly within the purview of the board. Communications to customers and employees are generally the executive’s domain. In all matters, the board presumes communications will come direct from the executive. But the executive doesn’t always want to—or feel it must—report to the board on the details of every decision taken (or intended to be taken).

The predictable result of this situation is that the board feels out of the loop, and disrespected. The CEO gets his or her back up believing that the board wants to meddle in the company’s daily operations. Communications and investor relations, meanwhile, point fingers at one another for inconsistent messaging, or jobs not done well.

Sadly, this shade of dysfunction is not uncommon.

No problem is unsolvable. Even issues as delicate as board and executive relations and communications can be repaired.

It’s about nuance
That’s where we come in.

In our experience, the tensions borne in these challenges can be resolved through open and direct communications. Think of us as facilitators—counsellors, even. We bring everyone to the table. We ask each to express their needs and desires. We help the personalities understand the nuances of particular roles. Then we build a communications plan and feedback loop that ensures everyone is bound together and pulling in the same direction.

Executive communications is the top-tier communications effort within an organization. It should be (or at least feel like) a joint effort between the executive and board to move the organization forward at the pace they set together. With a thoughtful, intelligent process in place, all parties can manage the people who report to them, and work together for the good of the organization—within the parameters their roles permit.

Most organizations don’t define executive communications well.

Giving shape to the shapeless

There are always gaps. But those gaps don’t have to become gulfs. They can be bridged successfully with a thoughtful, considered approach that brings the CEO and board together as one, executing the company’s mission together.

Ask us how.

We turned 30 in 2018.

Across three decades, we’ve thrived as markets have shifted, expanded and, in some cases, vanished.

We’ve seen audiences grow more savvy (and increasingly demanding and fickle). We’ve refined our services as new platforms and technologies emerged. Yep, impermanence is us.

Our secret? Be flexible and nimble, able to pivot swiftly to meet customer and market demands. Our pivot point? Excellence. The pursuit of it may be the one thing that has never changed about Stiff.

On a rainy Halifax day in December 1988, our chairman, Brian Hanington incorporated Stiff Sentences: a company of writers. The company of writers, in fact. Our name—long a source of fascination—was a product of the eighties’ trend toward pun-based monikers. It was a play on the phrase associated with long jail terms, as well as a nod to the fabric of language and logic (or illogic) of grammar. Viewed through our proprietary naming methodology, it fell into the second of six categories: evocative names, ones that were hard to forget. And it worked.

We were the source of the written word in films, broadcast and print advertising, speeches, print publications and multi-media productions (remember them?). Since then, we’ve served clients on four continents, delivering exceptional writing in every promotional genre. We learned what it takes to bring audiences to their feet—and their wallets or conscience.

We were already our clients’ trusted communications advisors. Humbly, we knew that mastering the English language was challenge enough for any company and appreciated its critical importance in communicating a brand.

More than sentences

Yet we regularly proposed improvements to graphic designs. We named businesses and products. We created riveting approaches to anchor ad campaigns. We led the strategic development behind major annual reports. We pinpointed key messages for ministerial speeches. We provided direction so precise, video producers had only to follow the script. The only thing left to take on the full mantle of a strategic communications agency was to call ourselves one—and bring more amazing talent on board.

So we shifted again, dropped a word to reflect that we’re not just about sentences and started a whole new chapter as Stiff. On one hand we’ve retained the irony of our founding name, as our work is the opposite of rigid or difficult. On the other, we’re proud of the name’s association to the power and strength of the consultation, creative ideas and content we deliver.

The right Stiff

Today, we strive for excellence as a tightknit but fast-growing team of strategists, writers, digital developers and design specialists that nurtures, protects and promotes corporate identities.

We help clients manage their change challenges—even if the message is that they haven’t changed as the world morphs around them.

And us? We won’t predict what the future of communications will bring—other than the fact that we’re confident we’ll be a part of it, still striving to produce excellent work, still striving to help our clients reach their own versions of excellence, still striving to be the right Stiff.