Our Charge

The Saunders PR Group was charged with creating from the ground up and leading communications processes for this initiative. We also led survey development, branding, earned media, community engagement and partner outreach associated with the outreach and public engagement work of the corridors (originally deemed, the Northwest and East-West corridors and has since morphed into LinkUS), as well as developing protocols and communications alignment with the partners.

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Our Approach

Through a series of collaborative brainstorming sessions and iterative review, a project name and graphic identity were developed along with standards and protocols for use. Key messages were developed to help guide the initial phases of work and served as a basis for communications materials. As part of this work, we kept equity as a high priority to ensure we are conducting our work through this lens. We identified key stakeholders, ensured there is consistency in messaging and aligned strategies related to the LinkUS initiative. We led community engagement and outreach meetings, supported the LinkUS advisory board and the LinkUS Coalition. TSPRG created the LinkUS social media strategy and launched all platforms that was focused on both raising general awareness about LinkUS and alerting the public to specific opportunities to get engaged and/or learn about work under development. We  created and launched the LinkUS newsletter, earned media and public engagement plans. Our partner on this project, Planning NEXT drove the development of a multifaceted, content-rich website with a flexible design to accommodate project changes over time. , text and graphics were integrated to cover all elements of LinkUS, while making sure that the most critical information for the general public was easy to find and understand.

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Our Results

We facilitated the public launch of LinkUS via a series of media interactions, public outreach efforts, and stakeholder engagement sessions (in-person and virtual) socializing the public to LinkUS—its purpose, key components, and desired outcomes. Our team built a sustainable communications approach, created resources and sets of tools that were foundational to the communications program that exists today. We created processes, protocols and engagement efforts for the corridors, with a keen focus on an engagement approach that allows for a mix of strategies to ensure anyone who lives, works, plays or simply cares about the future of central Ohio has awareness of how to participate in the process. We developed brand guidelines, identified and created personas for our targeted messaging, created  protocols for how teams across the LinkUS corridor planning would work together in order to keep one another informed and drive engagement.