Internal / Staff Communications

Case study: RAC

Brief: When the UK’s leading motoring organisation – the RAC – needed to improve internal communications and provide a team building exercise at its annual one-day conference, Kestrel came up with the answer.
 
Activity: We created a special game that involved the 150 conference delegates producing an actual four-page company magazine.  Divided into 15 teams of 10 people, each team – or 'newsroom' as they became – had to write five stories on specific subjects, devise a competition and create a name for the magazine. They had two hours in which to do it.
 
To make things more interesting, and competitive, the two hours was divided into seven sections.  Stories had to be given to the editor in chief within the relevant 20-minute section. They were all on really tight deadlines.
 
Each team was given a laptop and memory sticks so they could submit copy electronically.  They were also given Polaroid cameras and access to a photo library.
 
Kestrel took the role as editor in chief and from the 75 stories, 15 competitions and magazine names, had to select those going in to the final publication.  Each story selected meant points for the team that wrote it.  “It was a little frantic,” said Naomi van Moppes, Kestrel’s head of conferences. “We had a design expert with us so we selected the stories, scanned the photos and worked with him on the page layout.”
 
Result: “In just four hours we were able to give each delegate a printed copy of their magazine and award prizes for the winning team, best headline and best photo. We were very surprised at the standard of the story writing and of the creativity behind some of the photos.”
 
The objective was to create something that the employees felt very much a part of. It was also to help identify exactly the type of material that they wanted in any staff communication vehicle. The magazine is now being produced on a regular basis and the client was delighted...