Riding The Wave Of Change With Tides

This article was originally published at diamondandbranch.com

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This past Valentine’s Day, the Diamond+Branch team opened our hearts to someone special – a San Francisco-based nonprofit named Tides!

‍We knew it was a perfect match from the start. You see, for a while now, the unofficial motto of Diamond + Branch has been to use our skills to help more people do more good, and in Tides, we found an organization with the exact same mission.

Tides is a philanthropic partner, which means they work to make the charitable giving of others more effective and efficient in creating the changes those people want to see in the world! Not just any changes–Tides’ vision is of “a world of shared prosperity and social justice, founded on equality and human rights, a sustainable environment, healthy individuals and communities, and quality education.

”I told you, OkCupid couldn’t have matched us any better!
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The Meet

Lindsay and I flew up to their beautiful offices in the historic Presidio for our first meeting, an onsite workshop to discuss their marketing strategy, where, let’s be honest, Lindsay did most of the work. But I was able to listen and take notes (and pictures), and together we learned about Tides’ many strengths.

One of the things that was special about Tides from the start was that marketing to them meant bringing in members of the team from many different departments — from Communications to Strategic Partnerships and Client Services. They understood that this was an organization-wide effort to make the overall client experience better, whether it was a potential client just learning about Tides to one that’s been with them for years.

And we discovered from listening to these teams that Tides has services to help individuals, corporations, foundations, and nonprofits. Since they are working to help many different types of clients, they needed messaging that resonated with each persona and that spoke to different stages of their customer journey.

‍So, we went to work (again, mostly Lindsay) discussing the opportunities to clarify the language and increase messaging effectiveness to their wide range of clients, both new and old.

We used our time together to really hone the personas of their individual, corporate, and foundation clients. By answering questions like, Who are these people?, What are their digital habits?, and What problems are they trying to solve?,we aligned messaging that will resonate best with each in the platform that is right for them across the full cycle of interaction, from the first time they hear about Tides to continued engagement well after they’ve become a client.

It was a fun and productive day (the perfect combo for a first meeting) and we left San Francisco with a strategy for the messaging that will have potential and existing Tides’ clients seeing themselves better reflected in the Tides brand. And yeah, I’ll say it, we left (part of) our hearts there too.
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The Story Continues

We are so excited to be able to say that this partnership story is just beginning! Now the fun really begins — using our newly aligned messaging in a campaign to bring more awareness to the Tides brand. With their long history of impactful work and now a marketing strategy to be used across departments and addressing all client types, we are confident that Tides has a significant opportunity to increase partner leads and prospects. Of course, I’ll make sure to report back to tell you how it goes!