Aligning around a common vision—to keep kids safe
New Kind helps Redwoods reinvent the role of marketing to further its mission
Background
The Redwoods Group is transforming insurance.
As a B Corporation and partner for youth-serving organizations, The Redwoods Group uses business as a force for social change. Based in North Carolina, the business is designed to save lives, strengthen child-serving non-profits like YMCA’s and JCC’s, and help communities heal. The Redwoods mission is simple—serve others. Their vision is huge—to reinvent insurance to keep communities safe.
While the Redwoods mission and vision continue to guide how the company transforms their industry, the marketing team needed help amplifying the brand to scale their impact. New Kind facilitated a three-phase process to clarify the role of marketing as a force for helping the organization achieve its goals.
Industries: Insurance
Services: Identity System, Leadership, Positioning, Research
Seeing possibilities
We began by creating common ground with the Redwoods team using what we know about the current state of marketing. We conducted interviews with team members to better understand their highest goals and biggest challenges. And completed an audit of their current marketing materials.
We synthesized the data and presented our findings during a workshop with the marketing team. With the data as our shared foundation, we facilitated a discussion to uncover the most important areas we needed to bring forward for Redwoods marketing to thrive.
Choosing pathways
The next phase was dedicated to shaping the future state of marketing. Our goal was to build on the most important issues and key questions the team had identified in phase one. We used the insights to design a second workshop.
The workshop brought the team together to build key brand elements for the marketing team to further scale their efforts. We created personas, the core audiences that Redwoods needs to reach. We worked together to map customer journeys. And we led an exercise to clarify the life cycle of a marketing project internally. Finally, the Redwoods team created moonshots of their highest visions for how marketing could scale the Redwoods mission.
Bringing the strategy to life
Using insights from the first two sessions, New Kind designed a final workshop dedicated to determining the clear steps needed to achieve the future state we had envisioned together. To start we presented our preliminary ideas for positioning the marketing function—a prototype for the future of marketing at Redwoods. At it’s core, we positioned marketing as an amplifier for change.
Then we enlisted the team to help build out the prototype. First we generated ideas for the specific processes, tools, and roles the team will need to accomplish key objectives. Then we prioritized the ideas based on potential impact and scalability. Finally we plotted the ideas on a timeline to better understand what the team thought was most important to get started on right away.
During the final phase New Kind developed a report summarizing the process and our recommendations for how Redwoods marketing can achieve the future they want to create.
The recommendations encompass a high-level purpose for marketing within the larger goals of Redwoods. We framed specific objectives that marketing will accomplish, and the key results that will serve as benchmarks for progress. We used our workshop conversations to synthesize and define the people, processes, and tools they’ll need along the way, as well as a timeline of priorities.
Marketing’s purpose and pillars: We framed the report by defining the overarching goal for the company at the highest level. The next level defines marketing’s relationship to that goal. The three pillars clarify the key roles that marketing will play.
The road ahead
The Redwoods Group continues work to transform insurance into a force for keeping people safe and healing communities. We’re proud to partner with the Redwoods marketing team to help amplify such a powerful brand.