Royal London are the largest mutual life insurance and pensions company in the UK, with over 150 years of experience and over 3,000 employees. The client wanted to embed the Brand Tone of Voice within the organisation in order to make the internal and external communications more consistent.

The aim of the project was to develop an online learning tool that can train Royal London people on the Brand’s Tone of Voice. The training department required external assistance in order to create an eLearning module that would address this learning need.

We were invited to tender and submitted our ideas based on initial exploratory discussions held with the Royal London Learning, Development & Brand team.

Our proposal was selected above other learning content providers based on our ideas and our quick turnaround. One additional point that was also a contributing factor to our successful bid was our experience in delivering similar projects using the Agile project methodology, rather than using a linear waterfall method. This helped us to rapidly develop this eLearning solution for the Client in the 2- week project timeline that was available.

Challenges

Prior to the project, Royal London reviewed their available resources for Tone of Voice and decided to refresh these materials. As part of this refresh, the Client wanted to research different ways of presenting their information in a creative and engaging way.

The Client’s existing training materials were all developed and hosted within the Storyline eLearning authoring platform, for which they have a dedicated team who can edit the training modules that companies provide for them. It was a requirement for the Tone of Voice training to also be developed within the Storyline 360 eLearning environment.

The Client was extremely keen to see what we could come up with, when working from a blank canvas. Consequently, we weren’t shown any previous work, so as not to contaminate our thinking. Armed with brand guidelines – which acted as our design roadmap, we put on our thinking caps and set about creating their content.

The Solution

We planned a series of review and iteration points within the two-week turnaround period. This was slightly challenging for the Client as their review team needed to be available for those dates. In order to help mitigate this, we created a robust project schedule that listed all milestones.

To ensure that we were utilising our Agile methodology to the best of our ability, we broke the project down into 4 logical parts. The first milestone was for day 3 – this was to complete and send part 1 of the project to the Client. This consisted of around 2-3 minutes of visual and interactive content, and demonstrated our progress, whilst also acting as a mini pilot.

Working in this way allowed us to incorporate any feedback that we received from part 1 into the second, third and fourth parts. In addition, this Agile way of working allowed us to demonstrate to Royal London exactly how we were interpreting their information into the eLearning module early on, both visually and interactively.

The Client was very clear and explicit in their instructions for the content. This made it easier for us to bring the project to life in an effective and creative way. We used the Royal London brand guidelines to create the overall style. We were also provided with access to imagery by the Royal London brand team and employed a mixture of simple interactive elements.

One piece of feedback that we received was regarding the use of colours within the materials. The Client was currently undertaking a review of their branded assets and requested that we invert some of the colours in order to reduce the appearance of certain brand colours that had recently been relegated to secondary status. We were able to effectively accommodate this change into the project.

Once we received all feedback, we rapidly moved into the second part of the content production. Overall, there were very few changes that needed to be made. This enabled us to deliver each section before the milestone deadline and ultimately deliver the whole project one day early.

The development process included:

• Editing and adjusting the existing content into a more coherent journey that followed a format adapted from the 4MAT System (this was the client’s preference).
• Adding functionality to the storyboard – how the content should be presented, adding knowledge checks to keep the learner engaged.
• Developing graphics from the storyboard, including characters, scenarios and equipment created in Altrad’s preferred art style.
• Filming and animation development, including voiceover work.
• Combining the storyboard details, graphics and videos in Articulate Storyline 360 to create the eLearning content.

Creation and development of a bespoke online platform, with LMS features tailored to the Altrad L&D department needs.

Results

As a result of our Agile and flexible approach – and because we could get ahead of the due dates – we were fully accommodating with deadlines, which helped the Client tremendously.

Overall, we went above and beyond the expectations of our Client to deliver each section of materials before the due dates. The project was delivered to the Client one day ahead of schedule, within the original 2-week delivery period. Royal London received everything they requested and complimented us on our processes and professionalism.

This Tone of Voice eLearn module will be used across the Royal London organisation to train their people in how to talk to both external stakeholders, in particular customers, and internal colleagues, and how to use the right language and terminology.

Royal London’s people now have an interactive way of learning and refreshing their understanding of the Brand Tone of Voice, enabling greater consistency across internal and external communications.

“We were really impressed with The Immersive Learning Studio. The team’s proactive approach meant that they quickly got to grips with our main objectives and were able to easily navigate any changes that happened down the line. We’re very happy with the quality and gamification of the eLearning.”

Thea Rogerson
Brand and Sponsorship Manager – Royal London