Our goal at Montage has always been to forge meaningful connections and ignite positive impact for our clients. With a clear purpose guiding us, we have experienced remarkable growth over the years. From our humble beginnings in a 200-square-foot residential loft, we have expanded to three locations in Maryland and Virginia. Our diverse workforce has multiplied from single-digit numbers to a strong team of nearly 50 employees. And since 2020 we have gained 14 new clients while maintaining relationships with the long-standing clients that have been with us from the start.
In our strategic push to deliver a more comprehensive portfolio of work to clients, we have continuously added new services that have dramatically enhanced our core capabilities of outreach, engagement, communication, and events. Today, we will delve into what these services mean for our current clientele and how they strategically position us to help future partners.
Measuring awareness and behavior change with a dedicated data team
Quantifying results can be a straightforward task for marketing tactics like digital advertising and social media. But how can we measure less tangible performance indicators such as awareness, education, and behavior change that reflect the true impact of our work?
Our skilled data scientists set out to tackle this challenge. They develop and employ a unique system of monitoring and measurement tailored to each project’s specific objectives, leveraging existing analytics tools when available and creating new mechanisms as needed to collect and synthesize data. To date, the team has built dozens of customized dashboards and developed APIs to connect data collection platforms, ensure accurate reporting, and validate the effectiveness of our efforts.
One such set of tracking tools was created to measure attribution of our outreach and marketing efforts for the All of Us Journey, our nationwide mobile tour supporting the National Institutes of Health’s (NIH) All of Us Research Program. The tour aims to accelerate participant advancement through various tasks as they enroll and participate in the research program. Specifically, we deploy tracking codes to quantify and calculate the Journey’s specific contribution as a share of the whole program. We establish key steps in the in-person experience to build out a larger conversion funnel which includes awareness and enrollment.
The aggregated data from the tour helps tell a full story about which of the efforts are best driving participation and quality conversations, the level of participant satisfaction, and other actionable insights. The data team’s analysis helps identify points in the participant journey that are underperforming, enabling our tour team to develop strategies to increase conversion at that stage.
As our data and analytics team continues to expand its infrastructure and capabilities, the results we uncover have become invaluable to our program managers in optimizing campaigns and achieving project goals. Additionally, they inform regular, comprehensive reports, highlighting the impact of our work to partners and clients.
Reaching multicultural audiences through co-creation and transcreation
Creating authentic connections within diverse audiences is not just a goal for us at Montage; it is a fundamental part of who we are. Leading the charge are our multicultural advisors and language experts who enlist various methodologies to ensure our messages resonate with our target populations and drive meaningful engagement. Among the multicultural communication strategies that our team employs are co-creation and transcreation.
Co-creation actively involves the intended audience throughout the development process of the communication product. In our work with Pyxis Partners, for example, we seek to connect with diverse and marginalized populations who are historically underrepresented in biomedical research. Our team of subject matter experts thus take a participant-centered approach when informing and reviewing the tools and materials we create. We put cultural sensitivity, language, linguistic appropriateness, and social and educational awareness at the forefront of our development process and source input from target audience members to speak directly and authentically to each community. Furthermore, our team collaborates with trusted partners in priority communities to engage with audiences and establish lasting relationships.
When looking to reach non-native speakers, Montage practices transcreation. Unlike translation, transcreation on developing in-language materials based on their intended meaning. As an example, when translating a flyer from English to a foreign language, the transcreation process involves composing both flyers at the same time to ensure that key messages resonate fully when read in either language.
In our work with Montgomery County Department of Environmental Protection, we devised multiple public outreach and media campaigns including communications in 10 different languages. By transcreating the educational materials, we ensured that they authentically reached the county’s diverse population segments through a variety of media. These campaigns were successful in breaking down cultural and language barriers to facilitate widespread awareness and behavior adoption of Montgomery County’s recycling efforts.
Diversity is one of Montage’s greatest strengths. Through co-creation and transcreation, Montage ensures client communications are inclusive and impactful, helping our clients maximize their reach, relevance, and results.
Leading clients with digital communication strategies
At Montage, we empower our clients to navigate the digital realm with confidence and enable them to achieve their goals. Most recently, we’ve leveraged our deep understanding of social media platforms and experience building engaged audiences to develop an end-to-end social media strategy for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention National Center for HIV, Viral Hepatitis, STD, and TB Prevention’s (NCHHSTP). We conducted in-depth research and introduced content pillars, channel management practices, and optimization tactics to help grow NCHHSTP’s social media presence, engage and grow key audiences, and effectively communicate the mission and point of view of the Center and its director, Dr. Jono Mermin.
Delivering streamlined operations with a multi-use warehouse
At Montage, we pride ourselves on creating exceptional live experiences while being mindful of clients’ budgets. That’s why we are thrilled with the addition of a multi-use warehouse and office space in Rockville, Maryland. This new physical location empowers us to bring several operational functions in-house, streamlining processes and further enhancing our ability to provide efficient and effective logistics solutions.
Shortly after we got the keys, we utilized the space to prepare for the launch of three nationwide mobile tours for the National Institutes of Health. Montage hosted a multi-day staff training on site rather than transporting all staff and vehicles to a more costly third-party location. The warehouse also enabled us to provide logistics support to the Montgomery County Department of Environmental Protection ahead of a compost bin distribution event in May 2023. The facility represents a new stage of growth for Montage, and we look forward to unlocking its full potential to deliver even greater value to our clients.
The expansion of our data and analytics, digital communications, multicultural, and operations services was part of an intentional roadmap to make a holistic range of marketing solutions available to our clients. This, in combination with Montage’s growth in recent years, has carried that plan into fruition. And there’s no stopping us now! Get in touch about how we can put our solutions at work for you.
