July 30, 2010

Consulting projects

How can we help you?

“Since Ann Wylie became editorial consultant of Northern Update, our client magazine has skyrocketed from a mediocre publication to one that is emulated throughout the industry.”
— Roberta J. Laughlin, vice president, Mutual Funds Marketing, Northern Trust
Find out what others say about Ann Wylie’s consulting services

Need to launch a new communication? Reposition, revitalize or redesign your existing one? Or just get a fresh perspective on how you’re doing and where you can improve?

If so, Wylie Communications can help you:

Get an extra pair of hands — or four. We provide a “virtual staff” to write and edit newsletters and magazines for Saint Luke’s, Northern Trust, State Street/Kansas City and Sprint Corp.

Launch a new program. We helped a new Sprint company develop its employee communication program.

Revitalize a flagship piece. We:

  • Revamped Saint Luke’s Health into a more effective, attractive, popular magazine — for the same budget as its less-appealing predecessor.
  • Helped transform Burns & McDonnell’s Bench Mark into an award-winning marketing magazine.
  • Served as creative consultant and editor for Northern Trust, helping to polish its marketing magazine’s design, editorial content and readability.
  • Helped the American Business Women’s Association (ABWA) reposition Women In Business, its flagship magazine, to better reach working women.

Make communications more effective. We:

  • Gave FedEx a blueprint for transforming its management magazine into a strategic tool for the organization’s success.
  • Created a new newsletter to help ABWA reach a growing audience of retired members.
  • Helped Accenture focus an employee newsletter more tightly on key messages, engage readers with more compelling copy and improve readability and design.

Get out-of-the-box ideas. We:

  • Helped FedEx develop creative story ideas for its 25th anniversary magazine.
  • Give Accenture, The Principal, Walgreens and others a fresh perspective on their communications.
  • Spent half a day walking through all of Saint Luke’s communications, giving on-the-spot suggestions for improving the newsletters, magazines, Websites and press materials.

Reach reluctant readers. We developed a plan to help American Century Investors boost readership of e-mailed communications to an overloaded audience.

Stop reinventing the wheel. We:

  • Gave General Dynamics C4 Systems a template for marketing products and services with a fill-in-the-blanks executive summary and proposal-writing guidelines.
  • Created a template and guidelines for Public Strategies Inc.’s research reports to make it easier for clients to scan, read and implement information.
  • Developed writers guidelines to help Northern Funds’ communicators reduce editing time and improve contents.

Outmaneuver the competition. We benchmarked a Motorola company’s press releases against those of its competitors, then delivered guidelines to help the company set the standards for media relations writing in the industry.

Those are some of the ways we’ve helped others. We’d love to help you, too. To discuss your project, contact Ann Wylie. We’ll help you breathe new life into your communications.