Navigating change

Change is everywhere. You're changing (or have changed); the expectations of your constituents change; the environment in which you operate changes—or, more likely, a combination of all three.

Change can create significant opportunity if you can bring together the strategy and tactics needed to align the spinning plates. Success often depends on beginning and strengthening relationships—connecting to constituents who will buy your product or service, join your organization, enroll in your program, or give their philanthropic support. If you can align your value and vision with the needs and values of your constituents, you can move beyond transactions and begin to build the relationships that will help your organization grow during the good times and weather the inevitable storms.

Our approach

We collaborate to define and articulate the intersection of your organization's vision and value and your constituents' needs and values. We develop communications systems that help connect you to the people and organizations whose interest and participation are important to your future. We help to realize strategic plans.

We root our programs in comprehensive research and in an understanding of the relevant and the competitive landscape. We develop the strategic, verbal, and visual frameworks that can support brand-building communications across media and time. We help craft powerful main messages and then articulate them in a distinctive voice, so that you can attract interest, build comprehension, encourage participation, and ultimately build a loyal corps of advocates and supporters.

In practice…

To help meet the ambitious goals of their new strategic plan, the League of American Orchestras collaborated with us to put in place a new name, descriptor, and brand communications system—and to simplify its complex communications architecture. The new system helps the League to better connect with a very diverse set of constituents, strengthen the community of orchestras nationwide, and ultimately help these organizations meet the challenges of the 21st century.

Direxion Funds (formerly Potomac Funds) was a distant third in a three-way leveraged index fund race. We helped to re-launch the company with a distinctive new name and identity—and constituent-focused communications—as a part of a larger strategic plan to redefine themselves and their market, grow their organization, garner media attention, and increase assets under management. It's working.

The Fuller Craft Museum (formerly the Fuller Museum of Art) reinvented itself to embrace a new cultural opportunity. Internally, the process of defining and promulgating a new brand gave structure to the change; externally, the new brand and position made the transformation tangible and exciting, increasing attendance, membership, and support.

Though already recognized as among the best management schools in the nation, MIT Sloan School of Management was not effectively communicating its unique position in management education. With the help of a cross-institutional stakeholder team, we worked to evolve a brand voice and communications strategy that promotes the institution's unique perspective and value—and helps it better connect to students, partners, alumni, and donors.

Evolve!

Change is constant and certain. Sametz Blackstone Associates works with a wide range of corporate, educational, cultural, and professional service organizations to help develop the ideas and communications that build connections, resources, and relationships—and help evolving organizations to better navigate change.