Industries:

Case Studies:

Industry: Accounting

Client Issue: The managing partners of two offices of this large Big 5 accounting firm wanted to position the firm as an outstanding leader on business and economic issues that affected their clients and prospective clients. They were seeking to distinguish the firm from the other major firms that supplied similar client services.

Our Solution: We designed and orchestrated major forums on critical business issues, featuring renowned speakers from around the world. Using highly interactive formats, we engaged the CEO guests in substantive discussion with these prominent thought leaders and immersed the firm’s leadership in critical issues. We also created compelling issue documents that were sent to guests to reinforce key findings.

Result: The programs were critical to helping these offices maintain and grow their position in a highly competitive marketplace. In post-forum interviews, many CEOs and CFOs reported that the forums enhanced their learning about critical issues and strengthened their views of the firm.

Industry: Biomedical

Client Issue: The company, established in the early 90’s, wanted to make a difference and had the resources, but needed to implement a more strategic approach and consolidate their giving under one department. An administrative assistant was managing the program without any experience. The leadership knew it was time to be more strategic but did not know how to design a program.

Our Solution: The top executives were individually interviewed to determine direction, a staff person was hired, and a plan was developed building on interviews, knowledge of the issues, location of the headquarters and the industry.

Result: The company developed a niche in their industry, enhancing their reputation as well as making a difference in the community.

Industry: Community 

Client Issue: The Commission and Chamber of Commerce of a large community in the southwestern United States. wanted to prioritize public education issues in the areas of equity, funding, structure, commitment, communication and standards.

Our Solution: We designed and facilitated a forum of 400 members of the education and business community, building baseline data and discussions with audience participation technology.  

Industry: Corporate

Client Issue: A corporate foundation wanted to confirm its mission and funding principles and ensure its alignment with the corporation’s business objectives. Additionally, they wanted to identify and explore future issues of importance to the community and develop effective strategies for contributing to effective solutions.

Our Solution: We helped craft a conference format for involving its corporate employees in a highly interactive discussion through the use of audience participation technology.

Result: The foundation confirmed and aligned its direction with the corporation’s and ensured that its philanthropic activities addressed critical community needs and were effective.

Industry: Financial

Client Issue: The client had a good contributions reputation in the community, but had been recently purchased by another company. They could no longer work in isolation with direction only from the local CEO. The citizenship staff worked in solos, rarely communicating with one another.

Our Solution: Along with a staff member, we reviewed the strategies of the parent company, determining how we might integrate the present strategies into the work of the parent company. It was important to collaborate with the parent company and to indicate that our strategies were compatible. Additionally, it was important for the staff member to understand the value of team work and the difference a coordinated approach could make.

Result: The staff member learned the value of coordination and became more collaborative while continuing to do the excellent job she had done in her narrow job. The team was able to make a greater difference in the community and convince the executive leadership of the value of citizenship and its connection to the bottom line.

Industry: Financial Services

Client Issue: This Fortune 500 company and its Diversity Resources Department looked to assert their strong, cutting-edge diversity program in its marketing and hiring practices as a way of distinguishing itself from other firms.

Our Solution: We helped the client plan, manage, and facilitate a highly participative two-day seminar for 125 of its national leaders. Prominent national speakers on diversity set the tone for how to capitalize on the firm’s diversity successes. Using keypad technology, we helped create consensus on plans to strengthen the firm’s share of the diversity market.

Result: The firm gained a strong national position as a leader in hiring diverse employees and captured an increasingly large percentage of the diversity market.

Industry: Financial Services

Client Issue: A regional bank had accumulated a very lengthy list of organizations it supported, ranging from children’s hospitals to arts organizations to minority economic development non-profits. The list had grown primarily because the bank had acquired three other banks in the region — all with their own legacies of giving. The bank needed to make tough decisions on how to spend approximately $2 million in giving.

Our Solution: LaBreche helped the bank delineate what activities held marketing value verses which were simply “plug-and-play” programs that had no additional marketing leverage, in addition to developing a system for the bank that respected all bankers’ individual requests yet set guidelines for future giving. Additionally, the agency helped politely inform organizations that had been recipients for years that they would no longer be supported.

Result: Today, the bank makes fewer, but more strategic decisions on its giving and maximizes the marketability of each opportunity.

Industry: Financial Services

Client Issue: A large North American investment banking and brokerage firm supported financial education programs for middle-school children, but had never previously leveraged its efforts. The bank held a decade-old contest that was in need of a new, refreshing approach.

Our Solution: LaBreche enhanced the contest each year with new and interesting angles that were newsworthy to local media and developed tightly-written key messages to support the initiative.

Industry: Higher Education

Client Issue: This four-year, urban-based college wanted to assert its leadership on health care workforce issues as a recruitment tool for students and faculty alike and to enhance its position among health care institutions and other key funders and stakeholders.

Our Solution: Through a series of focus group meetings, we helped our client frame the issue of “building the healthcare workforce through diversity”. We planned and facilitated several conferences, brought nationally and locally prominent health care experts to interact with stakeholders to build practical solutions, and positioned the college administration, the faculty and the college curriculum as outstanding contributors.

Result: The college strengthened its relations with key leaders in the healthcare industry, raised its profile as an excellent academic institution for diverse faculty and students, and initiated new academic offerings and collaborative initiatives that educate and train the healthcare workforce.

Industry: Insurance and Financial Services

Client Issue: This corporation needed to convene its top 125 executives worldwide to ensure alignment on the company’s vision, guiding principles, governance policies and strategies and community involvement strategies.

Our Solution: We planned and moderated three days of meetings using our audience response system to help executive participants register their anonymous opinions and facilitated broad range discussions for moving forward as a united senior management team.

Result: The CEO was able to reach consensus on critical policies and practices of importance to the company and to develop a strategy that was ground-tested.

Industry: International Law

Client Issue: The competition among large law firms with international expertise was increasingly intense and this international law firm wanted to assert itself with stakeholders as an unparalleled leader in international business.

Our Solution: We helped the firm bring in major leaders from China and South Africa on critical trade issues to forums for its key clients and thought leaders. Speakers, who later became prominent leaders in these countries’ trade strategies, interacted with the participants, and the programs generated massive press coverage.

Result: The firm strengthened its position as a uniquely qualified firm on international issues of importance with connections to prominent world leaders.

Industry: Manufacturing

Client Issue: The client was interested in developing a more strategic community relations program.They were in an industry that was receiving much negative press and were trying to build a more positive image, as well as meet the needs of the community. Because they realized the value of community relations, they were adding head count to the staff and were looking to develop a strategic corporate citizenship plan.

Our Solution: We developed a plan centered around issues pertinent to the business and the community. Leadership on the issues was key, and though monetary contributions were focused, the emphasis was on the volunteer resource. An extensive retiree volunteer program was developed which placed over 1000 retirees in over 300 community agencies.  Each senior managers’ yearly plan was required to include a community involvement objective.

Result: The company developed a strong reputation as a community leader, both locally and nationally, which enhanced the ability to do business.

Industry: Manufacturing

Client Issue: A large international paper manufacturer lagged behind its competitors in developing an environmental brand. Meanwhile, its competition was successfully leveraging its environmental initiatives and gaining market share.

Our Solution: LaBreche, in collaboration with the company and its branding agency, established environmental positioning and key messages that would allow the company and its products to become more environmentally relevant to its end-users. LaBreche developed a strategic, 12-month introduction of the new “green” brand.

Result: The manufacturer was able to immediately establish itself as a company that is leading the environmental movement in its industry, primarily based on distinctive marketing efforts, not necessarily on the timing of its environmental initiatives.

Industry: Manufacturing

Client Issue: A global manufacturer was in need of leveraging its foundation for marketing to a specific audience: librarians. The manufacturer was looking for a specific program that would fulfill the overarching goals of the corporation.

Our Solution: LaBreche developed an innovative, national donation program that had numerous features to market; from special events, to a scholarship, to significant trade media exposure.

Result: A community relations program that has brought significant goodwill to current client relationships, while prompting inquiries about actual products and services from prospective customers. The program was deemed by the foundation’s executive director as the company’s most successful CSR program ever.

Industry: Philanthropy

Client Issue: A community foundation with a statewide initiative wanted to strengthen and illustrate its leadership position on stakeholder issues through its use of financial resources, its convening credibility, capacities, and commitment to strengthen the industry from which it derived, preserve the natural resource on which it depends, and revitalize the surrounding communities.

Our Solution: We helped the foundation create a public-private initiative that provides the framework for its work, advises it on funding, decisions and design, manages stakeholder conferences, and organizes and staffs a statewide advisory committee of experts to counsel the projects.

Result: The foundation has provided nearly $10 million for projects that are informed by compelling research and meet its initiative’s goals and objectives, generated additional support from state, federal and other private groups, and raised the profile of issues of critical importance to the sustainability of the natural resource.

Industry: Public-private Collaboration

Client Issue: Twenty corporate CEOs and heads of nonprofit organizations were frustrated by sensational news coverage and lack of quality, balanced reporting.

Our Solution: We created and managed this collaborative project to enhance the quality of news content and reduce media-public disconnect. We created a broad-based sponsoring coalition, developed a public forum series, established working relationships with local media outlets, and generated media coverage. Recommendations were made for strategic actions by the media and the public to ensure the delivery of more substantive and balanced news and provide for more accountability by the press and more feedback from the public, leading to the articulation and publishing of news standards and practices by several commercial news organizations.

Result: Several of the media outlets, including the newspaper with the state’s largest circulation, acknowledged the recommendations and developed explicit standards for its management and workforce.

Industry: Public-private Collaboration

Client Issue: Several major corporations and large public employers were concerned about the future workforce in the context of changing demographics and their own changing needs.

Our Solution: We designed and managed a series of high level policy forums for employers and policy makers of several Minnesota organizations. We framed the issues and used our audience response technology to gather opinions and attitudes from a total of 1000 business, education, government and labor leaders at several forums to engage the audience, test speakers' ideas, and generate creative problem solving.

Result: Program and policy recommendations were made to employers and policymakers, resulting in several actions that fostered the recruitment, retention and development of a skilled workforce.

Industry: Public Sector

Client Issue: A large metropolitan regional planning agency needed to solicit business and community leaders and citizen feedback to guide the Council’s formal recommendations to the Minnesota State Legislature for regional services and financial investment.

Our Solution: We developed, facilitated, marketed and developed a final report on a series of thirteen highly participatory public forums, using our interactive technology to solicit citizens’ and business and community leaders’ opinions.

Result: The agency’s proposal to the State Legislature was successful and allowed them to proceed with the action recommendations informed and confirmed by the public.