WHAT WE DO

Origin Story is a creative studio — a business that gives us the freedom to use our gifts and creativity in a variety of ways.

We each bring a multitude of talents to the table. We’re eager to use those talents to benefit our communities.

We hope to become your creative partners and your first stop with any creative project that’s beyond your capacity or confidence.

Here are the types of projects we’re especially excited to work on:

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Storytelling & Writing

Sharing the story of your genius is critical work. That doesn’t mean it’s always easy. Whether writing for your website, social media or a promotional brochure, we’ll help you tell your story well.

Example deliverable: website copy, social media management, letters to donors, press releases

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Brand + Communications Strategy

Good communications connect the right people with the right message at the right time. We’ll help you get clarity on each of those key elements and develop the strategy that connects the dots.

Example deliverables: constituent map, key messages, channel map, brand briefing

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Design + Art

How we interact with the things in our world can influence our relationships. This is especially true for brands.

Whether designing a flier, your new website, or your physical office, we’ll help create a sense of belonging for your constituents.

Example deliverables: social media promos, websites, offices & interiors, annual reports

OUR APPROACH

The first step in any work is setting goals. The goals for our work must be aligned with your strategic vision and values. We’ll work together to frame these goals, ensuring a focus on your organization’s desired impact. (We typically use the SMART framework as a foundation).

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Seeking Truth

A good strategy helps you identify what it takes to connect with your target audiences.

At any level, that means understanding:

Who are we trying to reach?

How do we connect with them in the right ways?

What is the right message?

What is the right message?

In our experience, the best way to go about this is to ask your constituents as much as possible directly. Data and research can give us a great sense of the larger picture. The specifics of your community’s culture, though, go deeper than that. The first step in telling your story is listening to others’. Listening is also an important check against our biases. Relying on assumptions can lead us to waste precious resources on misguided efforts.

To do our work well, we need to center the realities and experiences of our target audiences.

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Reviewing Data

In this phase, we comb through all of the information gathered to answer the questions posed above. We’ll highlight recurring themes and pull forward outlier insights.

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Reflecting

During this phase we move away from the data and take some time to process what we’ve learned. This phase is key to getting a comprehensive understanding of what’s been revealed. It creates the space to explore multiple perspectives and begin the creative process.

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Developing Recommendations

This is the phase in which we develop what will become your brand strategy. This is a non-linear, collaborative, creative process that requires spaciousness to achieve optimal results.

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Synthesizing Findings

In this phase, we begin packaging our findings and recommendations into an attractive and easy-to-understand format for your team.

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Reporting Back

This phase of our strategy work is reporting back to you and your team. Ideally, we can do this in a way that allows for live Q&A, so we can help everyone feel comfortable with the plan going forward.

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Launch, Measure, Follow Up

The final phase of our work together is following up. A common complaint of consultation work is that folks just swoop in, write expensive reports, and leave. We want to help remedy that by intentionally planning time to check in on how things are working out for you, and help seize any emergent opportunities for improvement.