Building a Foundation for a New National Body
The Australian Association for Peer Workers in mental health and suicide prevention needed a brand and messaging foundation before a fixed national launch, with an audience spanning peer workers, government, funders and employers, requiring messaging that spoke to their distinct perspectives while reflecting peer work values and principles and avoiding clinical framing around mental health. Compass Studio ran a discovery workshop with the Association's leadership, then built a branding, messaging and content strategy that reflected the diversity of its audiences while maintaining a clear and consistent identity.
The Challenge
The National Mental Health Consumer Alliance was launching the first national body to represent Australia's mental health and suicide prevention peer workforce, the Australian Association for Peer Workers working in mental health and suicide prevention. The audience brought together a wide range of stakeholders, each with their own perspectives and priorities; peer workers with diverse and intersecting lived and living experiences, First Nations peer workers whose voices and cultural perspectives needed to be meaningfully represented and government, funders and employers, each with distinct priorities and considerations.
The Approach
Compass Studio treated this as a branding, messaging and membership call to action, not a single communications plan. Work started with a discovery workshop with the Association's leadership, then moved through a branding and positioning strategy, a messaging and audience strategy for peer workers, members, government and funders, a topline content strategy, and a website structure and sitemap delivered ahead of the developer's start date.
The Impact
The result is a complete brand and messaging foundation for a national body. Peer workers, government, funders and employers each now have targeted messaging, grounded in the language of the lived experience movement rather than clinical framing, ready to carry the Association through its national launch and into a sustainable membership model.
"They understood our niche audience with ease and produced an amazing communication strategy for us that we use on a weekly basis."
Danielle Bament
General Manager
A Strategy Ready for National Launch
What started as a branding and messaging challenge became the foundation the Association will build on for years, well beyond its national launch. The work now sits with the Association's team, ready to adapt as the organisation and its membership model grow.