CASE STUDY

Cool Earth 

Developing a diversity, equity and inclusion playbook to unite employees around the world  

Challenge

Cool Earth, a UK rainforest conservation charity, needed to grow faster. It wanted to achieve that growth by increasing donations and working more effectively as a team. An inherently diverse organization, with active initiatives ranging from Peru to Papua New Guinea, it hoped to increase inclusion and connection to drive impact across its geographies.  

Solutions

We started with stakeholder interviews at all organizational levels, and in all regions. Those led to collaborative working sessions, where we helped co-create a revised set of corporate values and behaviors. With those clarified values, the team developed a new plan for diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives to unite employees around the world. And to help these new efforts take hold faster, we developed signature DEI experiences, such as a buddy system. Each employee now has a go-to support person, which improves engagement and increases communication and connection between local teams. 

Results

Cool Earth is putting this playbook and change roadmap to work, including initiatives to provide equal opportunities and localized and empowered leadership. With knowledge-sharing forums, DEI education policies, communication plans and processes to track employee engagement, it’s poised for faster growth. That means it can have more impact where it matters most: protecting the world’s rainforests and the indigenous people who live there. 

CASE STUDY

Lantheus

Modernizing a healthcare leader’s purpose and values

Challenge

Lantheus has been a pioneer in the healthcare industry, creating next-generation diagnostics and targeted therapeutics that delivered better patient outcomes since 1956.

In 2015, Lantheus was listed on NASDAQ, ushering in a new era of change for the healthcare leader. A new leadership team and the acquisition of Progenics Pharmaceuticals followed. These changes fundamentally altered the organization’s DNA, and the leadership team knew it needed to modernize its purpose and values.

Lantheus tasked Prophet with reinvigorating the organization’s purpose and values statements to effectively communicate its long-term aspirations, inspire employees and assert its core beliefs to customers and investors.

Solutions

Prophet first worked to understand the organization from the outside and in– performing a competitive audit, gathering out-of-category analogs, conducting executive interviews and sending employee surveys. We worked closely with Lantheus’ executive leaders to co-create potential solutions and test them with industry experts as well as current and prospective employees.

Our team used this data to develop the go-forward purpose and values and defined behaviors designed to empower employees to live the organization’s values. To help Lantheus’ leadership team activate the organization’s new purpose and values, we developed a high-level communication strategy that included a set of socialization materials.

Results

The new purpose, values and defined behaviors are playing a pivotal role in Lantheus’ communications to customers, employees, prospective talent and investors. In addition, Lantheus has weaved its purpose and values throughout its website, aligning its brand identity with its organizational DNA.

“Prophet helped us create meaningful purpose and values that are more than words on a PowerPoint slide.”

Paul Blanchfield
Chief Operating Officer

CASE STUDY

Ulta Beauty

Transforming a leading beauty retailer’s marketing department 

Challenge

National beauty retailer Ulta sought to recalibrate its marketing model to shift from product and category-focused operations to a more integrated approach, keeping customers at the center. The organization needed to balance master brand-building marketing with efforts to generate demand for the brands it sells. The evolving market and consumer dynamics create nuanced pressure to quickly adapt to meet customer wants and needs.

Solutions

Prophet designed a marketing operating model focused on supporting agility and efficiency. This approach also allowed the brand to prioritize improved communications and increased collaboration.  

First, our teams worked with Ulta to define a future-state vision across the organization, inspiring teams, providing clarity and ensuring active ownership. We then designed integrated, streamlined processes for market planning, prioritization and briefing to support the model we had created. Lastly, we implemented a new operations function to support a centralized view of the market. This helped drive the new planning and prioritization process, reducing the burden on Ulta’s functional teams. 

Results

The new marketing operating model enabled Ulta to become an integrated, customer-centric marketing organization. The new system has led to improved communications, increased collaboration and boosted productivity across the organization.

Impact

14

processes documented

144

key employee pain points addressed

“Prophet pushed us to think differently about our organizational structure and what would serve us best, both for the short and long-term. Today, we have greater synergy and efficiency across our growing marketing organization which benefits our teams, brand partners and ultimately our guests.”

Karla Davis
Vice President of Marketing

CASE STUDY

Financial Services Company

Putting customers at the center of an organization’s transformation

Challenge

A large, US financial services company was seeing declining growth in customer acquisition and revenue. Facing key market forces – including shifting consumer behaviors toward greater collaboration and personalization, new threats from fintech entrants and intense competition for top talent – the C-Suite and Board of Directors decided to embark on a complete transformation of the business.

Solutions

Prophet partnered with the company’s CEO, Chief Growth Officer and leadership team to design a transformation agenda that answered a series of strategic questions around:

  • Developing the organization’s purpose-based strategy
  • Prioritizing key markets and target customers
  • Aligning on key products, services and experiences to develop
  • Building the culture and capabilities required to support the transformation

Prophet then created a multi-year, enterprise-wide roadmap that detailed the initiatives necessary to transform multiple parts of the business in parallel. A Transformation Management Office (TMO) was established to enable and accelerate the company’s three-year transformation, largely through quarterly alignment and funding cycles.

While helping manage the transformation, Prophet brought multi-disciplinary teams to help execute the work across business value drivers: Brand & Marketing, People & Organization, Customer Experience, Products & Services, Sales & Distribution, Data & Analytics.  Along the way, Prophet has partnered to build new capabilities and codify processes so the organization can keep transformation momentum in the years to come.

Results

Prophet successfully launched a new brand that established the financial services provider as a leader in the industry. We helped develop a new employee value proposition to recruit top advisors and a new variable annuity product to grow its existing business. Prophet also introduced new revenue streams by helping expand its mutual funds’ presence on third-party platforms and creating a new managed account product – all while targeting and acquiring new buyer segments.

A year into the customer-centric transformation, Prophet is helping drive results such as +5% market awareness, +8% in new business revenue and a 20X increase in new leads.

Impact

5%

increase in market awareness

8%

increase in new business revenue

20x

increase in new leads

CASE STUDY

CVS Kidney Care

Helping CVS Kidney Care transform to disrupt the renal care industry

Challenge

Nine out of 10 adults in America with chronic kidney disease don’t even know they have it. And for the half a million U.S. patients on dialysis, the vast majority receive treatment in clinics. That means three times a week, four hours a day, away from home. Treatment is physically and emotionally taxing for patients and staying employed is challenging, if not impossible.

CVS Kidney Care knew there was a better way. The business saw an opportunity to transform kidney care in America, delivering a better experience for patients and their caregivers, better clinical outcomes, and an improved cost of care. But to truly disrupt this well-established industry, CVS Kidney Care needed differentiated strategies and high-performing teams that could keep pace with true make-market innovation.

Solutions

Prophet partnered with CVS Kidney Care using the firm’s Human-Centered Transformation Model™, to develop the broad range of capabilities required to be a real disruptive business. The transformation work included customer-centric product management and a creative commercialization capability that could rapidly build and iterate a compelling ecosystem of partnerships, combined with an agile operations organization. All this was also supported by a passionate, make-market culture. Fully integrated Prophet and CVS Kidney Care teams (or “Pods”) worked together, running in two-week agile sprints to break down silos, focus on the patient, caregiver and provider priorities, and dramatically accelerate progress towards seizing CVS Kidney Care’s key opportunities. Together, we collaborated on:

DNA

BODY

MIND

  • Identifying the talent, skills and experience required to scale the business
  • Transferring core skills in creative problem solving, innovation and product development

SOUL

  • Defining a “Culture of Courage” and mobilizing the organization to live the behaviors of a bold market-making CVS Kidney Care team

Results

Within the first year of its transformation, CVS Kidney Care has made clear progress on business outcomes and created a more engaged and productive team. The organization has improved business performance and has a clear growth trajectory. Cultural change is finding traction, and engagement scores within the CVS Kidney Care team have improved significantly. Most importantly, the entire organization is more committed than ever to transforming kidney care for patients and their caregivers.

Additionally, our work received recognition in the 2022 North America Transform Awards, earning Gold for the Best Development of a New Brand Within an Existing Brand Portfolio category.

“As a loyal Prophet customer, I highly recommend that everyone consider using their Human-Centered Transformation Model when seeking to accelerate organizational transformation and drive uncommon growth. There’s honestly no way we could have moved at this pace and achieved these results without a partner as deeply dedicated to truly building our own organizational capabilities. Trust me when I say, it works! – Lisa Rometty, President CVS Kidney Care

“There’s honestly no way we could have moved at this pace and achieved these results without a partner as deeply dedicated to truly building our own organizational capabilities. Trust me when I say, it works!”

Lisa Rometty
President

CASE STUDY

Polestar

Scaling and accelerating workforce training for rapid global expansion

Challenge

Polestar, an electric performance car brand, had set its sights on becoming global leader from day one. By the end of 2020, to compete with key competitor Tesla, the company is set to have a presence across 10 markets, with over 50 new spaces and 700+ new employees.

With its rapid expansion in motion and ‘go-live’ dates set across markets, the pressure was on to have all customer-facing staff equipped to deliver a consistent customer experience. Polestar tasked Prophet to build out a clear customer experience strategy that addressed training, recruitment, customer service, customer care, operations and data strategy.

Solutions

Prophet began by understanding the training needs and ambitions – both for the near term and beyond – to define the desired outcomes based on the employee’s level and role. The team’s also helped Polestar align on what ‘good’ training looks like.

This led to the development of a curriculum plan, tailored to the needs and learning journey of each employee group. Working in close collaboration with various subject-matter-experts across Polestar, we created over 30 hours of training content including eLearning modules, live training events and self-study exercises. From how to tell the Polestar story and what differentiates Polestar products, to how to respond to various customer scenarios and role-specific do’s and don’ts.

We also developed a training template and style guide to ensure a consistent and professional look and feel for all content produced across the globe.

Results

Prophet equipped and enabled all customer-facing teams to deliver a distinct, deliberate and disciplined customer experience. The training curriculum developed has effectively enabled employees to consistently represent the brand and armed them with the confidence to guide customers when choosing Polestar cars across the globe. Feedback to date has been extremely positive, with high participation and engagement rates.

“Prophet helped us create a L&D platform that brings our brand and products to life. It translates our vision into tangible tools so that our employees across the world can learn and apply how to deliver a distinct and consistent Polestar experience to visitors and customers alike.”

Mona Abbasi
Polestar CXO

CASE STUDY

DB Schenker

Defining a purpose with the power to transform

Challenge

For more than 145 years, DB Schenker has been supporting industry and trade in the global exchange of goods. With a commitment to continuous innovation, and in order to keep its place as the global industry leader, over the years the German logistics firm had merged and acquired numerous businesses to facilitate this success and growth. However, the mash-up of cultures resulting from this activity was impacting performance. Prophet was enlisted to develop a strategic purpose for DB Schenker that would unite is 76,000 employees around the world, guide actions and connect stakeholders.

Solutions

Working with the management board and the next generation of leaders, we developed a powerful, motivating purpose statement articulating what DB Schenker stands for and their ambition to become an innovative market shaper in logistics:

‘We advance businesses and lives by shaping the way our world connects’, revolves around the contribution each DB Schenker employee makes in running the global operations of thousands of businesses and the impact that has on improving their customers’ lives. One large customer, for example, relies on hundreds of DB Schenker employees – situated worldwide – to move its products around the globe, to retail stores, and into people’s homes.

To bring the new purpose to life and drive DB Schenker’s culture transformation, Prophet also developed a set of supporting values rooted in the firm’s over 145-year-old heritage they are designed to guide how people go about doing their work and decision-making across all levels of the business.

Results

Launched as part of DB Schenker’s global employee engagement program #weareschenker, the new purpose and values were well-received by the thousands of employees and continues to be a huge source of pride bolstering the brand and the business alike. DB Schenker is already seeing results, with public recognition from the industry, named the ‘Best Logistics Brand in Germany’, a testament to how the business utilizes its decades of experience and expertise to always provide customers with the best solution.

CASE STUDY

Encompass Health

Driving brand-led transformation of organization and culture

Challenge

After HealthSouth, a leading provider of inpatient rehabilitation expanded its position in post-acute care by acquiring Encompass Home Health & Hospice, the two companies needed to align on a brand that would support their business strategy. The new brand would have to stand out in the crowded U.S. healthcare space and work to unify a combined 35,000 employee workforce.

Solutions

Prophet helped to create a distinct brand strategy that communicated HealthSouth’s commitment to driving integrated care and improving health outcomes. As a result, a powerful new brand emerged, one that drew upon the strengths of both HealthSouth and Encompass Home Health & Hospice to communicate something bigger, stronger, and more united: Encompass Health.

The decision to rebrand represented a significant change, as employees felt great pride in the companies they had respectively built. Prophet worked to define a new purpose to function as the guiding North Star and to inspire employees and the broader set of stakeholders, including patients and healthcare partners. Through thousands of employee submissions and interactive group sessions, Prophet uncovered the critical elements of the culture and ways of working that need to be transformed into a core set of values. These values would be shared across the business to equip employees to lead the change. To do so, Prophet developed and activated a  detailed engagement and communications program, that reached from the company’s executive leadership team, as well as to local leaders and front-line employees.

The company’s employer brand also needed to reflect the promise and opportunities of a more integrated and forward-thinking healthcare company. Prophet teams developed an Employee Value Proposition (EVP) to align the enterprise brand and worked to refine messaging and experiences for recruiting talent.

Finally, the company did not have a marketing and communications function but recognized the importance of having a dedicated organization to steward the new brand and optimize the company’s investment. Prophet designed the organization and operating model needed for a new marketing and communications division and stood up this team throughout its first year with the planning, processes and governance needed to create sustained impact.

Results

The Encompass Health brand launched on January 1, 2018, with the Encompass Health brand gradually rolling out across all 127 hospitals and 237 home health and hospice agencies through the first quarter of 2019.

The transformation is already realizing a tremendous impact. 100 percent of Human Resources Directors surveyed agreed the company was successful in defining a set of values that represented the strengths of the employee culture. In the initial markets to transition to the Encompass Health brand, including Alabama and Texas, job applications increased by 18 percent year-over-year in the first six months after the rebrand because of the new EVP and recruiting experiences. Finally, the new marketing and communications function at Encompass Health made a number of hires to round out needed capabilities – following Prophet’s plans. Its leader was promoted to VP from within and now sits on the company’s Strategic Council.

“Throughout this process, we worked closely with Prophet to define a brand strategy that would improve awareness of our business strategy and the value proposition for each of our business segments.”

Mark Tarr
President and Chief Executive Officer, Encompass Health

Impact

100%

approval rating on values by HR Directors

18%

year-over-year increase in job applications

CASE STUDY

UBS

Repositioning the brand and engaging 60k employees

Challenge

Bigger and broader than previous brand campaigns, the one UBS launched was designed to communicate the company’s transformation under CEO Sergio Ermotti. In the several years since he’d assumed the role, Ermotti led UBS through brand repositioning and aligned all business divisions around a single strategy. UBS was finally ready to share its transformation with the outside world and use the brand relaunch to drive further change.

Before launching a more modern, human and unique brand and ad campaign, UBS had to first win over and prepare its most important advocates – the more than 60,000 employees who live and breathe the brand. UBS looked to Prophet for help developing and implementing an employee engagement campaign that informed, inspired and engaged employees.

Solutions

To engage employees, Prophet created a microsite on UBS’s employee intranet and regularly published relevant content. The topics and formats of posts varied, including quirky educational videos on tone of voice, a brand guidelines game and a series of intimate video portraits of UBS leaders and clients discussing the new positioning and direction. Additionally, we struck a partnership with a young, up-and-coming graffiti artist to immerse employees in the brand’s ethos through four large-scale artworks.

Using rigor and strategically-inspired creative thinking, we applied the same best practices of external marketing to deliver effective internal employee communications:

  • Equal effort applied to creating and promoting the site
  • All content must be easy and fun to assimilate
  • Select a few simple messages to communicate and repeat them

Results

The employee engagement campaign has been and continues to be a resounding success, with UBS continuing to win preferred employer awards every year. We initially defined success as having 30,000 employees visit and engage with the microsite, but have far exceeded that expectation as the microsite has now reached more than 62,000 employees. Both employees and top management have expressed how impressed they’ve been with the employee engagement program.

When asked about the brand relaunch, Hubertus Kuelps (group head of communications and branding) told Forbes, “This particular campaign has definitely energized the employee base. It has brought them to a level of pride…I haven’t seen in my communications career.”

Download UBS’ brand relaunch employee engagement content timeline.

“This particular campaign has definitely energized the employee base. It has brought them to a level of pride…I haven’t seen in my communications career.”

Hubertus Kuelps
Group Head of Communications at UBS

CASE STUDY

Chick-fil-A

Reimagining an experience for a quick-service giant

Challenge

Chick-fil-A, a leader in the quick-service industry, was growing faster than it ever imagined. With double-digit sales growth year after year and new restaurants opening up all over the country, it was becoming increasingly important that the thousands of restaurant operators and headquarter employees were aligned around a vision for the future of the company.

One of the most important channels Chick-fil-A uses to communicate its business vision is its annual event that brings the entire organization together for four days. This event had been occurring for over 40 years, however, the approach and experience had become predictable and was losing relevance. Prophet was engaged to provide a “fresh set of eyes” to this event with the goal of rethinking how it could more effectively inspire Chick-fil-A Operators to take their businesses, and even their lives, to the next level.

Solution

Prophet took leaders at Chick-fil-A through a strategic process to reimagine and redefine this annual event, and to elevate its purpose and impact well beyond just a few short days. Prophet then helped design an entire experience with multiple formats that reflected how Operators wanted to engage with each other and the organization. The result was a newly branded and newly defined event called NEXT.

At NEXT, key leaders and external speakers were able to share inspirational perspectives and a vision for the future through bite-sized TED-style talks during “Common Ground” time. Breakout sessions became “Labs,” and the “Expert Corner,” and gave attendees the chance to work together to hone specific skills and engage with speakers in a more intimate format. The typical corporate expo became the “Garages,” which brought the most critical initiatives across the organization together into a highly experiential and hands-on format.

Results

Prior to NEXT and Prophet’s involvement, there was a sense of frustration from Operators that the event, which was once meant for them, had lost its focus. However, following the first reimagined event, attendees and especially Operators felt re-engaged, empowered and inspired to be part of such an incredible organization. In fact, more than 80% shared they were likely to make a change in their business or their lives as a result of NEXT.

CASE STUDY

Zurich

Bringing a financial services brand back to life

Challenge

Zurich Financial Services was becoming just another commoditized insurance company in a sea of undifferentiated providers. Like the rest of the industry, Zurich was too internally focused, with Underwriters, Risk Engineers and Claims Adjusters calling the shots, and a brand positioning that lacked relevance in customers’ lives. Customers who told us they saw insurance providers as non-responsive, slow and untrustworthy – “little more than an organized crime syndicate”. We knew we needed a dramatic change in order to stand out.

Solutions

The idea was simple: We’ll help you deal with the most important things first, like securing a rental car or a place to stay.  Then we’ll help you through the process of restoring your world to order. We’ll put you at the center by delivering REAL help. And in 2008, at the height of the financial crisis, Zurich launched one of the most extensive global campaigns, introducing Zurich HelpPoint externally and internally.  Our unequivocal promise to customers was that Zurich delivers when it matters.

This could have been seen as yet another empty promise were it not for the vision of transforming 60,000 employees into authentic evangelists of the brand, armed with the permission to identify and execute proactive, spontaneous touchpoints, unheard of in the world of insurance.

Results

In a few short years, the sheer size and ambition of the transformation have been astounding, ranging from internal engagement programs, brand ambassadors, employee awareness-raising tactics, customer satisfaction and loyalty metrics, and the launch of hundreds of new product propositions globally. Revenue, margins and brand tracking scores are all up; and ten years later, Zurich ranks 7th in global insurance brands, and 206th in brands globally by Brand Finance.

CASE STUDY

Optum

Uniting employees around a new brand strategy

Challenge

UnitedHealth Group offered a portfolio of business services unmatched in breadth and depth in the healthcare industry. However, its businesses had traditionally acted independently of one another and employees were focused on their business units, limiting the group’s ability to engage clients more comprehensively. To address this, Prophet aided in the creation of a unifying brand that translated the new vision into a new to the world business and brand.

Solutions

Prophet brought together three distinct businesses under a new logo, visual system and employee engagement strategy to guide the customer experience and communicate what the new company could deliver to the market. To deliver on this new promise, the company needed to make sure that the employees understood the new brand strategy and could begin delivering on this promise and experience. A strategic launch process brought the new brand to life and captured the hearts of necessary stakeholders in order to establish the brand from the inside out.

Results

The new brand, known as Optum, organized 500+ products, solutions and services under a single brand with the promise to make the health system work better for everyone. With Prophet’s help, UnitedHealth Group launched a dynamic $30-billion dollar brand in less than 6 months.

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