Canada School of Public Service Seeks Marketing Agency 

The Canada School of Public Service (the School) is looking for a full-service marketing agency that has strong change management acumen, expertise in strategic marketing and innovative design capabilities for the development of a three-year marketing strategy and engaging brand that is flexible, recognizable and easy to implement in a wide variety of marketing and communications activities.

The School’s objectives are:

• to optimize the opportunities for increased visibility of the School’s offerings to all clients and public servants in all regions of the country by means of a distinctive, fresh and contemporary visual brand
• to motivate public servants across the country to learn more about the School and to foster enthusiasm towards active participation in the School’s offerings

Background:

The School is the common learning provider for Government of Canada public servants across the country. Its mission is to provide learning opportunities and tools to support deputy heads’ accountability towards learning within their departments and public servants’ professional development. In short, the School equips public servants to serve Canadians better. The School is situated in 14 locations across Canada.

This is a pivotal time for Canada’s public service. The world in which the public service operates is continuing to change in fundamental ways. The School must keep pace to better serve Canada and Canadians now and into the future, in accordance with the Government’s vision “to create the Public Service of tomorrow by leveraging new technologies, seeking innovative whole‐of‐government opportunities for improved efficiency and effectiveness, and that will be agile and able to anticipate and respond to the evolving needs of Canadians and the Government.”

In support of this vision, the School recently completed a three-year transformation, which included updating and refining the School’s delivery and management of learning, its programming and underlying business model, and the supporting strategies required for implementation. The successful implementation of this transformation included the launch in April 2016 of GCcampus, the School’s online learning platform.

The School has implemented a Departmental Results Framework to keep focused on the impact of its achievements for Canadians. It has also undertaken a Departmental Review to ensure alignment with Government priorities, improve the delivery of results and increase efficiency. These initiatives will help solidify the School’s future vision and build on what has been achieved so far. The School will also have an important role in fostering lifelong learning for all public servants, a significant culture change.

The School is also conducting Client-perspective research that will build the foundation to:

• successfully reposition the School’s brand
• increase service excellence
• develop actionable recommendations for a learner-centric marketing strategy, one that accurately addresses the needs of target audiences, while also accounting for the School’s strategic objectives

By identifying existing hot buttons and pain points, the Client-perspective research will guide the School to define its unique value proposition so as to increase the quality of its services and establish a benchmark and gap analysis.

The objectives of the Client-perspective research are to:

1. a) measure the School’s brand equity and brand perception, and establish a benchmark against which the School can compare the reach and success of future marketing campaigns
2. b) gather behavioural insights from the School’s client base, allowing the School to segment its clients into behaviorally similar groups and adapt messaging to each demographic, resulting in improved engagement and targeted campaigns
3. c) gather insights on service excellence and learner expectations, allowing the School to better its offering (customer service expectations, course content expectations, technological expectations, follow-up expectations, etc.)
4. d) find out which marketing tools being used work best, what new and innovative opportunities can be explored, what communication mix is successful, how often people want to hear from us, and what key messages resonate the most with each demographic

The School also produces business intelligence (BI) data on its offerings, uptake patterns, etc.

The School is looking for a Contractor/Agency that will analyze and transform this Client-perspective research and BI data into a multi-year marketing strategy, branding intelligence and products.

Scope of Work:

The School expects a repositioning of the brand based on the analysis of several sources of information and data such as, but not limited to, quantitative and qualitative data from the Client-perspective research, web analytics, learner profile data, Level 1 evaluations, and reports on user organizations, to increase the probability that learner-centric marketing strategies will reflect the environment and address highlighted concerns appropriately. Developing a multi-year strategy, complete with objectives, strategies, tactics, timelines and expected outcomes will steer marketing activities and allow the School to measure a successful implementation.

Understanding our learners’ behaviours and the repositioning of the School’s brand will be essential to the development of an appropriate marketing strategy and products.

More precisely, the Contractor/Agency must:

• analyze the School’s brand equity and brand perception to develop a successful marketing and brand repositioning strategy
• develop strategies and tactics for behaviorally similar groups of learners and adapt messaging to each demographic, resulting in improved engagement and targeted campaigns
• optimize the marketing and communication mix currently used by the School with new and innovative opportunities for successful engagement with each demographic segment
• produce strategy and revised brand material that adheres to all elements contained in the Government of Canada Policy on Communications and Federal Identity
• produce revised brand identity material for implementation on a priority basis to ensure the most critical tools are ready for the deployment of the strategy and tactics

This revised brand identity will be developed with input from School designers in a think tank style approach. New brand material to be identified during the exercise includes, but is not limited to, e- marketing products; social media kit; print and promotional products; course material; decks; internet, intranet and GCcampus content; videos, banners, digital backdrops, and displays. A selection of brand identity material will be produced by the Contractor/Agency, while some can be developed in-house, depending on expertise of service, timeliness, urgency, cost-effectiveness, and availability of internal resources.

Due Date:

May 23rd

Address:

Canada School of Public Service

373 Sussex Drive

Ottawa, ON K1N 6Z2

Ruder Finn And Finn Partners have agency experience.