A messaging script serves as the foundation for an organization’s external communications. When the Canadian Partnership Against Cancer needed to update and expand its corporate narrative to better tell its story to partners, funders and staff, Ascribe was ready to help every step of the way.

How Ascribe helped

The Canadian Partnership Against Cancer provides funding and resources to cancer agencies, health system partners and communities across Canada so they can take action to improve cancer outcomes. As part of our branding support, we often lead organizations like the Partnership through a focused, efficient process to clarify and get consensus on their mission, vision, value proposition, competitive differentiators and more. This helps organizations present a consistent message across all their communications channel.

In 2021, the Partnership came to Ascribe looking to update and expand on a corporate narrative document it developed internally in 2018. Our team started by reviewing how the organization talked about itself publicly, looking at executive speeches, partner presentations and other material. With that understanding, we hosted a facilitated session with key stakeholders within the Partnership where we asked focused questions on how they envisioned the organization’s brand character, their approach to partnership, what from the 2018 document had to be changed, and more. We later hosted a second session with the First Nations, Inuit and Métis cancer strategy team to get its perspective on important topics such as cultural safety.

What we heard during those sessions allowed us to develop a concise messaging script for the Partnership. Written in a conversational and approachable style, the document provided the overarching value proposition and elevator pitch for the organization, corporate boilerplate text, as well as sections articulating its responsibilities to Canadians, approach to engaging with partners and activities in support of the Canadian Strategy for Cancer Control. Together, these components have helped the Partnership tell a consistent story about itself to partners, funders and staff.

Based on the success of that engagement, we were invited back in late 2022 to further update the messaging script, as well as various pages across the Partnership’s website, to reflect the content of its 2022–2027 business plan.

Deliverable: Website

Our process:

• Background material review
• Questionnaire development
• Facilitated sessions with key internal stakeholders
• Writing and revisions