Most membership organisations struggle to stay relevant in a digital world. NARIM (the Dutch Risk & Reassurance organisation) needed help identifying compelling reasons for membership, aligning everyone behind a consistent understanding of what it stands for, providing a route-map for all activities and ensuring marketing communications used consistent messages and a tone of voice that reinforced the organisation’s strengths.

We started the project with research among its members to establish their needs, expectations and views on the value they gain from NARIM membership. Insights from this research were combined with stakeholder interviews to define the organisation’s brand values, personality traits and proposition (an expression of distinctive benefit that the organisation delivers to its stakeholders).

We harnessed a key insight from the member research – that the risk and reinsurance function within a company can be a lonely role – in the words of one member, ‘it’s great to know there are more people like us, who share the same thoughts. You’re not on your own’. The NARIM leadership was unaware how much this sense of community meant to its members. The propositional territory we defined for the organisation was ‘Bringing people together to share knowledge and experiences, discuss common problems and debate solutions.’

Our work redirected the organisation away from creating expensive thought leadership content to a focus on community and networking, and ways to nurture the community through events, technology and communications. It has already started paying dividends in terms of increased membership numbers.