Communicating research impact with University of Leicester IAA team

Challenge

The IAA team needed a vibrant, innovative and inclusive way of sharing their Impact Accelerator Account success after being awarded a new round of funding. With so many high quality case studies and demonstrable impact, how could they share the breadth and number of successes succinctly!?

This needed to appeal to both funding and academic audiences, as well as prospective students and the general public too.

Solution

The Nifty Team worked closely with the IAA team, communications team, university departments and individual academics to get to the heart of their impact story. We honed in on key impact messages, summarised multiple research projects into one page or less, and found a narrative to weave them all together.

Our foxes created the copy and visual outputs for:

impact animations;
a visual summary report;
a suite of snappy infographics;

to compellingly communicate the real world benefits of Leicester’s research.

Our biggest challenge was matching our Nifty storytelling style to the Leicester brand guidelines. We collaborated with the comms team to create an overarching style that felt inherently Leicester, and told the story in a striking, unique way.

Result

The IAA and comms team showcased the visual suite at their IAA celebration event, with individual researchers and departments hosting impact infographics on their webpages. The word spread so far and wide that three other IAA teams from other institutions got in touch for the Nifty treatment too!

Illustration of two people waving out of windows

Thanks again for all your work and support, we are really thrilled with the outcomes and looking forward to using them to promote the success, and continuing work, of our ESRC IAA.

Sue Lewin, IAA Officer, University of Leicester

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