New Work: Impactt Ltd.

Impactt are one of the world’s leading ethical trade consultancies.  They work with many of the world’s leading companies to improve labour standards and have been pushing things forward in this field for ten years. Looking at their client list is like taking a walk down the high street and they’re hugely respected in the industry as a company effecting real change for workers.

I’ve been working with the company’s team to develop a new web strategy; the first phase went online last week and you can see the results at impacttlimited.com

A few notes on the project:

My work is now primarily about strategy rather than straight builds so I’ve spent a great deal of time getting to know the company, the issues they’re working with and the team who run things. This has been fascinating, and also very good fun.

We started with the Global Microbrand principle (stay small and sell all over the world), and tweaked it for a social context (stay small and influence all over the world). It’s key that an innovative company like this are telling people what they’re doing both from a commercial and social point of view. If they can provoke a discussion both on their own site and elsewhere, that’s even better.

Impactt had been producing a printed newsletter full of stories on labour standards ("The Meteor"). We decided after some thought to move this over to a new, two-pronged strategy, and worked with the team to re-develop The Meteor as a blog and a live news feed.

With the help of Mark McGuinness we worked to map out the style, content and potential audience for the blog and coached the team as they made their first tentative footsteps into the blogosphere.  It’s now up and running and I must say, they’re doing an excellent job.

I think it’s vital to avoid a technology led approach with these things. I have a pet phrase which goes something like "Giving someone a blog is like giving them a blank piece of paper. It doesn’t mean anything until they know what to write". The potential readership of Impactt’s blog is a group of people who have huge influence in this field so there’s a big opportunity here to really help make change happen globally.

The Live News Feed is a great feature which allows users to receive the latest news on labour standards daily or weekly. It has the double function of keeping clients, and everyone in the office up to date with the latest news, all filtered by one person. 

Making this happen was an incredibly simple combination of delicious, Google Reader, Feedburner (all free) and a bit of training. This to me embodies the power of what can be done these days with free software.

I also worked together with the team at Rolled to build a brand new, fully content managed, accessible and (in my opinion) beatifully designed website. I’m really pleased with how this came out and initial feedback has been very good.

Moving into the future I’m keen to start looking at the company’s use of video and audio. There could well be a new podcast on labour standards coming your way soon!

I must extend a great thanks to the Impactt team for pulling together and really doing a great job of getting content together, no easy feat when you already have a full time job to do.

Incidentally, I’m not the only one with a pet saying about blogging. Mark McGuinness has one too: "A blog is for life, not just for Christmas".

Food for thought as we enter into the season of goodwill.