The Assignment:
Create a research report that's smarter than your average bear.
The Strategy:
Eye-catching design + a comedic approach = attention.
Overview
We’d done the research, and the state of teamwork was … not good. The aftershock of quarantine had shaken up corporate routines and employee expectations, leading to teams having a harder time communicating and connecting. Mural — a popular digital whiteboarding software — wanted to position itself as part of the solution. But first, people had to recognize there was a problem.
We had research results that supported our conclusion, and now we needed to put them out into the world in a way that brought attention to the problems facing enterprise teams, the research itself, and how Mural could help transform the way teams worked together.
Our answer? The real, actual, no BS state of teamwork in 2024.
Development
Our first draft of the research report had all the right information, but it didn’t yet have that special something. So we ripped it up and started again, developing a new design system for displaying stats, a tongue-in-cheek theme for section header pages, and a funny, call-and-response style narrative to keep people’s attention. And a pretty awesome opening spread, “an AI-generated rendering of a typical workplace, circa 2024.”
The end product made a quick splash – over 500 downloads in the first 2 weeks alone, not bad for a gated asset with almost zero promotional dollars behind it. The response was so good we decided, “why not print it?” So we turned it into a full-color, softcover book that we handed out at trade shows and events.
Six months later, the guide is still going strong, with over 1,500 downloads and 2,000 hard copies out in the world. And best of all: we did it! We saved teamwork! All fixed now.
