Know-how: Integrated communication for SMEs
All too often, small and medium-sized enterprises fail to generate advertising impact through effective communication. They lack the know-how, resources, and management capacity—or so it seems.
Hint AG is a growing IT company in the healthcare sector with around forty employees. Thanks to specialized solutions, especially in the outsourcing sector, Hint is knocking down open doors with its customers: Hospitals and nursing homes are better and more easily concerned with patient care than with maintaining servers and databases.
Hint not only tells its customers that successful solutions require a partner with expertise; the company also takes this philosophy to heart in its own communications. This is how the collaboration with the Zurich-based corporate publishing house Infel came about. "For a service provider like Hint, the technological know-how must be matched by an equal level of communication expertise," explains Peter Bösiger, Head of Customer Management at Hint. "So I was looking for a partner who could support me in analyzing and integrating the existing communication tools."
Better together
Within a year, all content, timing and formal aspects of the Hint communication world were harmonized. Because Hint is strongly connected to the Internet per se, a relaunch of the website was the logical starting point. However, this could not be an isolated measure: Right at the beginning, an overarching guiding idea, image and brand world for all media, was developed and a master plan was drawn up, which included all communication channels.
structured aspects.
Only then did the printed newsletter also undergo a change of identity: The next issue reached its readers as "HINTergrund". The case studies it contained were included and continued on the new website. The performance report was also included in the cross-media concept, as was a trade fair appearance, the associated invitation and the mailing afterwards. In this way, every contact reinforced the brand message, made the Hint world unmistakable and the communication as a whole more effective.
Peter Bösiger is convinced that the process has brought the company forward and contributed to the good course of business. For example, as a welcome side effect of the information structuring, Hint has recognized how its entire range of services can be formulated in a coherent offer consisting of three parts. And Bösiger expects that what has been achieved will also pay off in the future: "Hint now has an integrated communication strategy that adapts to the constantly growing structures and is no longer in danger of falling apart."
Daniel Hofmann
Hint not only tells its customers that successful solutions require a partner with expertise; the company also takes this philosophy to heart in its own communications. This is how the collaboration with the Zurich-based corporate publishing house Infel came about. "For a service provider like Hint, the technological know-how must be matched by an equal level of communication expertise," explains Peter Bösiger, Head of Customer Management at Hint. "So I was looking for a partner who could support me in analyzing and integrating the existing communication tools."
Better together
Within a year, all content, timing and formal aspects of the Hint communication world were harmonized. Because Hint is strongly connected to the Internet per se, a relaunch of the website was the logical starting point. However, this could not be an isolated measure: Right at the beginning, an overarching guiding idea, image and brand world for all media, was developed and a master plan was drawn up, which included all communication channels.
structured aspects.
Only then did the printed newsletter also undergo a change of identity: The next issue reached its readers as "HINTergrund". The case studies it contained were included and continued on the new website. The performance report was also included in the cross-media concept, as was a trade fair appearance, the associated invitation and the mailing afterwards. In this way, every contact reinforced the brand message, made the Hint world unmistakable and the communication as a whole more effective.
Peter Bösiger is convinced that the process has brought the company forward and contributed to the good course of business. For example, as a welcome side effect of the information structuring, Hint has recognized how its entire range of services can be formulated in a coherent offer consisting of three parts. And Bösiger expects that what has been achieved will also pay off in the future: "Hint now has an integrated communication strategy that adapts to the constantly growing structures and is no longer in danger of falling apart."
Daniel Hofmann
