One of the world’s largest home and corporate removals companies, until recently SIRVA’s best-known brand in the UK was Pickfords. An aggressive program of acquisitions saw the company grow dramatically in recent years – resulting in a real need to update staff on new developments and foster a sense of belonging. The company’s personnel department already produced a newsletter in-house but struggled to juggle the twin demands of greater staff numbers and news flow. The decision was made to outsource the staff newsletter to Working Titles.

The target audience and brief
The removals crews were identified as a key audience. Apart from forming the obvious backbone to the business, they were also the only group without easy access to SIRVA’s intranet-based news service INSIGHT.

Many operational staff, particularly older and more experienced staff on whose goodwill the business depended, had difficulty reading. Yet the need remained for a publication that embraced and engaged employees at every level within the company. The brief was therefore to:
1. Report on corporate progress and activities, staff and social news, and personnel issues (including health and safety)
2. Flag customer service initiatives and help maintain the already strong sense of pride in good customer service
3. Signpost and encourage use of the company intranet and summarise any content of particular relevance to the removals crews.

What we did
Working Titles recognised that the newsletter had to succeed on two different levels. It had to appeal to all – including less confident readers – but also had to include information not already available on the Intranet, to attract SIRVA’s more media-literate (and better informed) office-based staff.

THE HERALD’s was redesigned from the ground up to signify change. Reader ‘hooks’ were used on the front and back covers. These included humorous pictures, cartoons, ‘fun facts’ and customer testimonials (previously shown to be the most popular part of the newsletter). Editorial was sectionalised to ease navigation. THE HERALD’s previous penchant for ‘management speak’ was replaced with short words and sentences, in plain English. New business projects were covered in more detail than was practical on INSIGHT.

“Andy quickly gained an in-depth understanding of the culture and structure of our complex organisation. [His] professionalism and tact is outstanding. It is truly a pleasure to work with him.”
SIRVA UK