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The UK telecommunications market is a highly competitive, commoditised market, which has been distracted by consolidation and disruption. Many companies still talk in terms of technology and products. Yet increasingly, real industry innovators - and those gaining traction with business leaders across decision making units - are those who are developing clear and thought-provoking points of view. Those who communicate in a way that makes technology relevant and accessible to all audiences. To ensure better cut-through with C-level audiences, COLT UK therefore needed to make the shift towards talking about business issues in the language of business, and providing a broader context for its products and services.
To give COLT UK the content with which to widen its channels of communication and appeal to multiple audiences, Harvard undertook strategic level planning with the UK's senior management team. Harvard developed a series of messaging workshops covering COLT UK’s major business units to ascertain where the company was and where it could go in terms of its communications. These sessions brought out the positives that existed in the business and harnessed them for the communications effort. This content has been developed into points of view
which are used for story pitching, feature work, speaker opportunities etc - giving COLT UK a fresh perspective on how it comments on its market.
From these sessions, Harvard not only received company-wide buy-in, essential in implementing any communications campaign, but also gave COLT UK’s sales operation a fresh set of messages to take to market. As a follow up, Harvard worked with COLT UK’s communications team to execute a major press event around the company's Voice over IP product. The fact that this launch was positioned as a strategic assessment of the market rather than 'just another product launch' brought in 20 UK journalists, from titles such as the FT, Reuters, Information Age and Computer Business Review. COLT UK’s MD also hosted six tier one publications at a separate breakfast briefing to introduce his new team to their most important press.
But the focus was not on the output, but rather the outcome. Multiple press briefings had been delivered, but, more importantly, Harvard had prepared COLT's UK management team so that it could confidently talk about the wider issues affecting its customers, people and industry.
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