Research, Digital Strategy & Tactics

We began our engagement with a research and discovery phase, including a stakeholder survey and interviews with key employees and teams. This helped us map out the full scale and breadth of the current challenges the company faced, and identify areas where our work could have the most impact. Through synthesis, we identified six focus areas in which we could develop overarching strategies and corresponding tactics:

1. Audience Engagement

2. The External Website

3. Data & Analytics

4. Brand & Issue Advocacy

5. Brand Experience & Voice

6. Content Creation & Social Media

For each of these areas, we defined archetypes and user personas, developed specific actionable tactics, and worked with stakeholders to prioritize the sequencing of our efforts in conjunction with internal teams.

WEBSITE OVERHAUL & REPLATFORMING

One of the most immediate outcomes of our strategy work was the imperative to update the corporate website, and rebuild it on a technology stack that could support the company’s needs in the long term. Their previous site was built on an archaic, proprietary CMS that used outdated technologies and was difficult to update and maintain. We moved them to a modern stack that included Netlify cloud hosting, Gatsby.js and Sanity headless CMS.

In addition to moving Marathon to a more modern set of technologies, we worked to improve the user experience and UI throughout, maintaining the components of the previous website that were effective, while instituting a light overhaul of the overall design schema. This included a complete reimagining of the navigation systems, improving type and visual hierarchies, and making links, buttons and hover states more obvious and legible.

See the new website here.

CORPORATE SUSTAINABILITY REPORT

In addition to our core strategy work, we worked with Marathon’s sustainability team to update the system of print deliverables and the digital experience for the 2018 Corporate Sustainability Report (CSR), which was set for release in the summer of 2019. Previous reports lived on the web as microsites, and were accompanied by a PDF and print version that was automatically compiled from the website pages. Overall, the digital and print system lacked the design considerations needed to make the deep amount of content digestible. We worked to create a system of type and visual hierarchies, supported by stat callouts, illustrations, pull quotes and charts that made the content easier and more enjoyable to consume.

In our strategy process, we recommended that the sustainability section be moved from microsite format to being fully-integrated with the corporate website. Due to time and budget constraints, we were required to stick to the microsite format for launch, and worked with their existing development team to update and improve the experience as much as was feasible. As part of the replatforming effort we subsequently led the full transition and integration of the Sustainability section into the corporate site, realizing that strategic goal. This now allows for the company to fully leverage sustainability content throughout the site and in their communications efforts.