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What we do
Acumen Acumen works with CEOs and their communications teams to help them more effectively tell their stories to targeted audiences, including the media, investors, employees, analysts and opinion leaders, and government officials.
We believe that effective corporate communications represent a collection of focused actions emanating from a broader corporate messaging strategy. That blueprint should be designed to achieve specific business objectives and make the company more competitive, agile and profitable.
We provide both strategic services and program support to extend the reach and effectiveness of your communications efforts.
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Tactical support
Program Support
Acumen principals are experienced journalists. We know how to craft news releases and media materials that attract attention and deliver messages effectively. We provide the full range of media support including company backgrounders, white papers, and digital content. Acumen also allies with seasoned media relations professionals with records of success in reaching out to journalists and generating strategic visibility for clients
Executive communications
The leadership team must play a significant and compulsory role in conveying the company’s vision and key messages. Acumen has years of experience in working closely with senior leaders to develop all components of executive communications programs including messaging, presentations, speeches, and coaching.
Marketing & sales collateral
Acumen can provide a complete range of sales materials including brochures, presentations and direct mail in both print and digital formats.
Employee communications
Acumen has extensive experience in developing communications that inform and motivate internal audiences. We help companies exploit all forms of employee communications including printed materials, presentations, meetings and online channels.
Investor relations materials
We provide a complete menu of investor communications services including annual reports, presentations and investor meetings as well as close-up support during mergers, acquisitions and other strategic endeavors.
Web & social media
Acumen can help companies define successful processes, select appropriate Web 2.0 tools and implement the right techniques to improve communications, collaboration and ultimately, business performance
Branding services
We guide companies through a branding process to address the core issues of their business success, including the dynamics of their target audiences, the key benefits the company offers and the differing approaches of competitors. From there, we help them isolate and leverage the key attributes that distinguish their brand and clearly convey its relevance to all stakeholder groups.
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Strategic services
Our consulting capabilities
make it possible for CEOs and corporate leaders to maximize the value of
their communications, particularly in the challenging times of marketplace
or leadership change and structural or product realignment.
We partner
with clients in fashioning results-oriented approaches to reach their key
stakeholders – customers, investors and employers – as well as influencers
who have an impact on an organization’s reputation. Our approach focuses on
probing for strengths, advantages and distinctions, and identifying
weaknesses or obstacles. We then craft messages and communications
programs that facilitate business success.
The
Acumen Strategic Communications Blueprint is an actionable plan that
optimizes the power of communications to achieve the organization’s
business objectives. The Blueprint complements and works in tandem with a
company’s strategic plan and contains clear, definitive steps to ensure
that communications deliver peak value at all times.
Acumen principals customize
the Blueprint and provide strategies and tactics tailored to the client’s
particular objectives. These may include improved sales, investor
confidence and employee performance.
Positioning the corporation is one of the
Chief Executive’s primary responsibilities, especially during periods of
transition and turbulence. Acumen’s CEO & Executive Positioning strategy
enables the CEO and his or her senior management team to demonstrate
critical executive skills, leadership practices and management imperatives
and advance the organization’s strategic agenda.
Acumen works with the client to build an
“executive brand” for the organization and an actionable communications
plan to leverage senior leaders. Personalized Communications Profiles
position executives effectively and arm them with compelling, tailored
messages for their targeted audiences.
The Acumen CEO & Executive Positioning
strategy makes it possible for company leaders, individually and in
tandem, to project their ability, knowledge, commitment and charisma to
the benefit of the enterprise and its employees, customers and
shareholders.
Multiple horizontal
communications channels are commonplace in corporate infrastructures,
often overlapping and creating inefficiencies. Organizational unit leaders
may exacerbate the problem by creating vertical media intended to deliver
their own “special messages” to a single worksite or a workgroup that
spans the globe.
The result can be
incomplete distribution of senior management’s focused messages,
contradiction of corporate messages, confusion among employees and
increased operating costs.
Acumen’s
Communications Alignment process resolves these problems by recommending a
core set of messages and then adapting them to the organization’s key
stakeholder groups. We then align the organization’s communications
vehicles to ensure they support one another and are not contradictory. The
process also ensures that all communications adhere to and enhance
corporate branding.
Influential third parties,
such as journalists, financial analysts and industry consultants, play a
significant role in burnishing a company’s reputation. What these
“influencers” think and what they say about your company’s products,
management and marketplace behavior help mold the opinions of the
organization’s key stakeholders: your employees, customers and investors.
Through the Acumen
Influencer Engagement Process, a company is able to determine its key
influencers, assess their current attitudes, create an outreach strategy
and craft a relationship management process. Influencer engagement makes
it possible to convert opinion-leaders into champions who can help tell
your story for you and in so doing, add to its impact.
To realize the importance of your
corporate strategy, investors must have a clear understanding of your
company's fundamentals, management strengths, and growth
opportunities. This is especially true for companies new to the market,
those that are re-emerging, or companies undergoing significant management
changes.
Acumen Strategic Communications Inc. focuses
on articulating such opportunities to the North American investment
community. Ours is a three-pronged approach: The creation of a strategic
communications program, precise media focus, and an outreach program aimed
at the potential investor base. We begin by developing clear messages that
have a laser-like focus on the most compelling aspects of your business.
We then begin early-stage media relations and presentations among selected
stakeholders, including existing shareholders, potential sell-side
analysts, institutional value investors and high net worth account
managers.
Gauging audience responses, we refine our messages as
appropriate and expand delivery to the media and a broad investor
community selected from among 22 U.S. and 6 Canadian cities. With this thoughtful approach, your messages
achieve and maintain a clear focus.
Communications emphasize your most
compelling strengths and quantify “the unrecognized fundamental value” of
your company to investors. Accordingly, the perception of your distinct
investment potential rises above the on-going clatter of the market place.
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