Purpose Commons came to Spitfire at a defining moment: it was preparing to publicly launch as an organization, having evolved from its inception as an incubator project at Hopelab. Purpose Commons needed clear messaging to describe what can too often be a conversation reserved for academic or philosophic spaces — how to define and measure one’s life purpose. Purpose Commons is focused on bridging the gap between the growing world of purpose science research and its proven benefits for young people and their mental health and the everyday people working on the front lines of youth-serving organizations. A successful launch required a strong strategy to communicate clearly and consistently to Purpose Commons’ priority audiences, the tailored messaging needed to do so and the creation of a communications infrastructure strong yet nimble enough to get off the ground running. Purpose Commons found support with Spitfire.
Starting with strategy, we conducted a series of strategy sessions to identify and refine Purpose Commons’ goals, audiences and metrics of a successful launch. Through this work and in close and ongoing collaboration with its sister organization, The Purpose Science and Innovation Exchange (PSiX), we identified that the best approach was a cadenced one separated by audience. We developed messaging and materials to communicate first with existing funders and to introduce them to Purpose Commons’ new executive director, TeRay Esquibel, ahead of a public launch across all of Purpose Commons’ primary audiences: mission-aligned funders, youth-serving organizations, and like-minded researchers at Cornell University and other relevant research institutions.
Once we had set the strategy and developed the launch plan, we shifted to simultaneously creating the necessary infrastructure to operationalize a successful launch as well as the carefully curated and tailored messaging to communicate it effectively. Our development of Purpose Commons’ first-ever communications infrastructure included building a new website, establishing a social media presence, and building a mechanism for story collection to capture the impact that its work was already having through its pilot project, The Contribution Project, with young people across different regions. Given the complexity and academic nature of the concepts that Purpose Commons was hoping to communicate as well as the natural evolution of its framing at its inception stage, we worked alongside Purpose Commons’ executive director to refine the organization’s core messaging to find metaphors that resonated and, by Esquibel’s own success metric, would “help his grandma understand what [Purpose Commons] did.”
Lastly, we helped execute Purpose Commons’ launch by developing final assets, including social media content and copy, a media strategy, and coinciding media materials, as well as a toolkit of sample social media content for partners to share upon the announcement. Together, we successfully communicated Purpose Commons’ work and the mission of its exciting inaugural chapter.