The thought process

I worked with John Reese, the Senior Vice President, Regulatory and Government Affairs and the IT team on the structure and content for the intranet before developing a name and identity for it. The name ended up a variation on the company name, and so it was natural to build upon the company brand.

Once everything was ready to launch, the challenge was to inform staff throughout the company of its benefits and how to use it. Many plant employees had never used an intranet before, so I thought it was important to explain both the big ideas behind it as well as how to use it. I designed a poster campaign to handle the big ideas and a pocketsize "at a glance" handbook to tackle the practicalities.

Having been involved with the company from the start, I knew that both collaboration and openess were at the core of the corporate philosophy. The thinking behind the intranet was based on the same principles. As I developed concepts of being connected and sharing resources and ideas, I knew that the poster campaign was another opportunity to reinforce the company philosophy.

Now that the company had plants in different states, it faced the challenge of making employees from all these different regions feel connected, and part of one company. Illustrating that each department is connected, and that each individual plays an equally important role in the company as a whole, were my way of helping that process.

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The visual idea here, was to take something small and seemingly insignificant (the E in NET) and make it big and impactful when shared. The sharing of resources and information is particularly advantageous within the power industry. Plant workers' experience, safe practice and problem-solving abilities can benefit and expand far more quickly when they learn from one another's experiences, as learning curves are far steeper than working independantly, which has become more common since deregulation.

 

 

 

 

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Large banners hung in the plants stressing the potential strength offered by the intranet.

 

 

 

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Screen savers and mousepads were distributed throughout the company to add further visibility, and help create a unified look and feeling.

 

What the client said:

 

USPOWERGEN Intranet
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PRACTICAL EXAMPLE #19 - DESIGN, NAMING, AND INTERNAL CAMPAIGN

The brief: Design and promote a new intranet.

 

intranet-1

It is easy to communicate multiple messages visually.

intranet 2

Posters that required a little more reading were positioned in elevators and locations where employees had the time and opporunity read them.

intranet 3

It doesn't matter if you don't get all the messages at once, you would see the poster time and again, keeping it interesting as pennies dropped one at a time.

 

banner

 

screen savers

 

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