One of Canada’s leading independent schools was still recovering from a past media crisis, and the school was committed to better planning for the future. The school enrolled Curious Public to equip its senior administration with issues management training and diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging (DEIB) best practices. Their request was to create a customized training series to give the school’s senior staff the skills to assess and improve their current DEIB framework, issues management processes, and media response plan.

We paired with our partners at Denise O’Neil Green Consulting, a world-renowned diversity, equity and inclusion consultancy, to help us create the custom training series. First, we assessed the landscape of all other Canadian independent schools’ traditional and social media coverage, DEIB work, and any public responses given to the media during crises. We then crafted training materials that directly focused on communication with Gen Z, independent school-specific DEIB communications opportunities and challenges, and issues management best practices. The training was complete with fictionalized scenarios of increased media intensity for which staff had limited time to produce a concise communications response plan. Our media relations experts then evaluated response plans.

The training series gave the school’s staff a safe space to discuss sensitive DEIB issues and unpack their own experience of past conflicts. As a result of the training, our client was able to build an issues management process amongst senior staff and outline the school’s future media response plan.

The Regional Municipality of Durham forms the east end of the Greater Toronto Area and part of the Golden Horseshoe. Durham region consists of eight municipalities and a total population of 683,600 and growing. Its communities are diversifying with more businesses and young families flocking to the area. The Municipality enlisted Curious Public to help revitalize the region’s communications to improve engagement and reflect Durham’s unique features, growing communities and business centres. They also asked us to evaluate the Corporate Communications department’s organizational structure and make recommendations to eliminate inefficiencies and maximize strengths.

We reviewed Durham’s internal and external communications and marketing material. We also interviewed all communications staff and leaders to get a panoramic view of how communications teams worked and the Municipality’s current messaging. From those insights, we created a new Master Narrative that positioned Durham as a desirable place to live, work, do business, and raise a family. The narrative became a home base for all messaging and communications products. 

Using the narrative, Durham’s communications teams could ensure consistent and comprehensive messaging to express the Municipality’s unique value proposition in order to attract and encourage new businesses and sources of revenue to the area. 

We then evaluated Durham’s Corporate Communications organizational structure, responsibilities, and the process of how communications and marketing products were created. We compared our discoveries against a thorough competitive analysis of comparable regions’ communications content and organizational structures. 

We created a final report for the Region of Durham to showcase the current strengths within the department and recommended growth and efficiency opportunities to implement. Our report also included suggested organizational structure and job descriptions for new roles.

Curious Public planned and delivered the Municipality of Durham Region’s Master Narrative and Communications Review in 90 days. Corporate Communications (renamed “Communications Office” through our process) had a new Regional narrative in place, a new team structure, and a message track to execution.

The Municipality’s Master Narrative was also acknowledged with a MarCom Platinum award for quality and excellence.