how do you design a campaign that moves 1.6 million associates?
PSP to the People
The Personal Sustainability Project (or “PSP”) was designed by Act Now to educate Wal-Mart and Sam’s Club employees, or Associates, on sustainability in a meaningful way to improve their health and well being, foster widespread community engagement and drive cultural change throughout the organization.
While Wal-Mart had in place a number of top-down methods to communicate with their 1.3 million U.S.-based employees, they lacked a communications channel that was truly embraced and accurately reflected the culture of the organization.
Act Now’s challenge was to develop a communications strategy as novel and engaging as the PSP program itself. As it turned out, the best approach was to get out of the way by designing a personal brand and a system of communication tools fueled by the activities and content created by Wal-Mart Associates themselves.
Grassroots Communications: Bottom-Up and Peer-to-Peer
After conducting extensive research to gain a thorough understanding of the Associate culture at Wal-Mart, Act Now began the dynamic process of interviewing program participants and documenting stories of individual and store activities to serve as source material. In keeping with the grassroots nature of the PSP program, Act Now ensured that all communication tools focused on celebrating Wal-Mart and Sam’s Club Associates: their interests, everyday actions and collective achievements. Similarly, Act Now developed sustainability educational tools focused on peer-to-peer learning and knowledge sharing.
The Personal Sustainability Project communication tools include:
- PSP Poster Series Break room posters featured a variety of Wal-Mart and Sam’s Club Associates sharing their personal practices and achievements.
- “What’s Your PSP?” Wearables Wal-Mart is a button and badge culture. Act Now created “What’s your PSP?” badge-backers as well as 10 unique PSP buttons. The act of writing a PSP and choosing a button to wear served as powerful enrollment and commitment mechanisms, as well as effective ways to share the program with customers.
- IF Act Now created a 42-page sustainability lifestyle magazine celebrating “the faces and voices of the PSP movement.” The magazine provided action ideas, product information and guidance from Associates to Associates.
- PSPtv This 14-episode video series featured inspiring Associate and Store/Club stories, earth-friendly product spotlights, and sustainability strategy callouts from Wal-Mart’s top executives.
- “I Knew That!” Card Game To further engage Associates and their competitive nature, Act Now created a sustainability education game featuring actionable environmental knowledge.
The Result: For The World’s Largest Corporation, a Communications System for and by its Employees
Act Now created a communications system that not only reflects Wal-Mart’s culture and engages its employees, it can also scale to incorporate a wide range of corporate initiatives, now including:
- Sales training
- Promotion of sustainable products
- Company benefits program enrollment
- Community engagement and outreach
The grassroots, employee-led communications system and tools developed for the Personal Sustainability Project are now firmly established as a cornerstone of Wal-Mart’s internal sustainability communications efforts. The end result is a more engaged, inspired and skilled work force that will be essential in driving the sustained health of the organization and its communities for years to come.