Project-managing the complete branding, print and distribution for an NHS public consultation, where any failure would be open to public scrutiny.
Household deliveries across two distribution drops, with GPS tracking and call-backtracking on the second, alongside complete branding, print and digital collateral.
Leicester City Clinical Commissioning Group covered the whole of Leicester, Leicestershire and Rutland. Their Building Better Hospitals consultation, formally the Acute Reconfiguration Project, ran from mid-September to mid-December, and its purpose was serious: to gather genuine public participation on the future shape of local hospital services.
Our primary contacts were Sue Venables and Jit Parekh, both Head of Engagement and Insights at the NHS in Leicester, working alongside a wider team of outside consultants, copywriters, social-media experts and web developers.
The brief, stripped to one line: reach everyone, be recognised by everyone, and do not fail in public.
A public consultation lives or dies on participation. The Commissioning Group was expected to deliver findings based on genuine public involvement across the entire catchment, and any shortfall would have been both disastrous and publicly scrutinised.
The key success factor was branding the public would recognise instantly and trust enough to engage with. From there, everything had to work: the consultation document, the household distribution, the posters, the banners, the digital assets, all of it consistent, all of it on time.
Evolution project-managed the complete branding, printing and distribution, including the door-to-door drops. The initial branding process went through twelve to thirteen iterations before the design was settled, with approvals required from multiple stakeholders at every stage.
The working rhythm tells you what the project was like. Amendments and briefs would often arrive on a Friday afternoon. We would have them ready to submit by Monday morning. That weekend discipline, repeated throughout the project, is what kept it on track and on time.
The main consultation document was a 24-page piece with an unusual construction: 12 pages of questions and answers and a 12-page consultation questionnaire, bound twice so the questionnaire pulled out cleanly without the document falling apart. A small detail. Exactly the kind of detail that decides whether a member of the public completes the form or gives up.
The first leaflet drop reached every household in Leicester, Leicestershire and Rutland: 450,000 homes over two and a half weeks in September. A second drop covered nearly 360,000 households in the urban areas in early to mid November, with complete call-backtracking and GPS tracking of the door-to-door deliveries. We also produced roller banners, posters, an Easy Read Guide, and the full set of digital collateral for social media, the website and presentations.
The project was delivered on time and to the satisfaction of the entire team. The consultation drew a significant number of responses from the public, and the project was received so well it was shortlisted for an award.
We are careful about claiming credit here, because the consultation’s success belonged to the whole team. What we can say plainly: the public cannot respond to a consultation that never reaches them. We made sure it reached them, twice, with proof of delivery.
The NHS team had consultants, copywriters, social media experts and web developers to coordinate. Print, branding and distribution arrived as one managed function with one accountable owner. The Friday-to-Monday turnaround discipline meant the project never stalled waiting for us.
GPS tracking and call-backtracking on the second drop turned distribution from an act of faith into an evidenced process. Integrated print and digital collateral, produced together from one brand, is exactly what a modern public campaign requires.
The double-bound consultation document is the Maximise mindset in miniature. The extra binding cost a little more per unit and protected the response rate of the entire campaign. Spend judged against return, not against the cheapest possible specification.
If you have a campaign or consultation where print, branding and distribution all need one accountable owner, we should talk.