For more than 20 years OSC has used research, high quality personnel, strong partnerships with local entities, and consistent tracking of project impact to create highly effective, internationally recognized strategic communications campaigns that create lasting change within their target audiences.
Drawing upon established and emerging behavioral, economic, and communications literature, OSC applies cutting edge methodologies and locally appropriate technology to engage audiences through their own social and media consumption networks.
OSC’s strategic communications specialties include:
- Planning
- Strategy Development
- Campaign Design
- Message Development
- Decision Support
- Social Marketing
- BCC Integration
- Gamification
- Campaign Monitoring & Adjustment
- Graphic Design/Infographics
- Collateral
- Billboards/Banners
- TV/Radio Production and Media Buying
- Recorded Media: MP3, MP4, CDs, Tapes
- Social Media Integration
- Event Planning
- Conferences/Study Tours
Evidence-Based Strategies
OSC employs an array of research tools and techniques such as communications audits, surveys, focus groups, media monitoring, and target audience feedback mechanisms in order to:
- Understand the existing infrastructure for disseminating information, and develop sustainable communications channels and information delivery mechanisms
- Learn what motivates people in the target audience, and apply that knowledge in the campaign
- Identify key stakeholders who can influence project outcomes, and enable them to be effective in developing and delivering compelling messages on specific reform objectives
- Determine local media usage habits, and use this information to develop strategies that encourage consistent and accurate reporting on economic and social change issues that support of overall program goals
Using this knowledge, OSC develops a multifaceted strategy tailored to reach the target audiences with a mutually reinforcing battery of messages delivered in the mix of formats best suited to project objectives, time frame and the development/social environment. OSC maps each component to specific, measurable results during its planning process, ensuring that campaigns are well-focused and designed with built-in accountability from the outset.
Technology
OSC builds productive dialogue across public and private sectors, providing pioneering and fully integrated online, mobile, and app-based solutions to communications challenges in a huge variety of contexts. OSC’s ICT tools such as PBx, SMS, websites, and portals enrich and extend conversations that are already taking place, opening up new spaces for productive engagement. OSC utilizes extensive on-the-ground research to inform its ICT programming, applying specific technologies as indicated by rigorous, statistically robust analyses of factors including: sustainability, cost, time to launch, end user satisfaction, and programmatic impact.
OSC permanently embeds ICT into the fabric of local communications landscapes by building local capacity to design, launch, and maintain ICT initiatives from day one. Using a combination of formal training, practical exercise, remote coaching, interactive electronic manuals, and other proven methods, OSC rapidly transfers comprehensive ICT skill sets to local counterparts and beneficiaries.
Empowering Local NGOs & CSOs
OSC empowers local NGOs and CSOs to communicate effectively and mobilize stakeholders in support of reform and development initiatives. OSC also prepares these organizations to manage their own public outreach and advocacy efforts independent of donor support. In doing so, OSC creates new, non-governmental sources of information in countries with imperfect information markets and builds a diverse network of locally based and staffed organizations through which future outreach efforts can be carried out.
Strengthening Local Media
OSC builds the capacity of local media to report on government reform and development topics by combining editorial and news-gathering training, technical production skills development and topic-specific seminars that increase journalist knowledge of issues such as anti-corruption, economic governance, and healthcare provision. OSC ensures media access to government and non-governmental sources of information by facilitating briefings, roundtable discussions, and informal networking events that connect journalists to the full range of relevant stakeholders.
Community Participation
OSC facilitates community-level meetings where citizens gather to interact with government representatives, reform experts, and community leaders. As part of its NGO and CSO strengthening work, OSC improves the grassroots organizing capability of these organizations, enhancing their ability to involve individuals and communities in the advocacy process.