Organizational Memory
Marketing & PR card, MethodKit for Memory & Reminiscence
Card 33 of 66 · MethodKit for Memory & Reminiscence
  • ThemeCustomers & Market
  • CardCard 33 of 66
  • Questions5 to explore
Customers & Market

Marketing & PR

Reaching out to customers, industry & journalists

Marketing and PR are where strategy becomes public, and the reasoning behind past choices is exactly what gets lost.

The useful institutional knowledge here is not the campaigns themselves but the logic behind them: why a particular audience was prioritized, what messaging was tested and dropped, what the press coverage actually said versus what was hoped for. That context rarely survives a team change.

For smaller organizations, marketing knowledge is often concentrated in one or two people who carry the brand voice, the agency relationships, and the history of what has been tried. When those people leave, the organization often ends up repeating experiments that have already been run.

Keeping a plain record of active initiatives, key contacts, the channels being used, and the messaging that currently works gives the next person enough to build on without starting from scratch.

What to capture

For this part of the company brain, what is worth writing down and keeping current. The goal is not a complete archive but a living record that new people can read and returning people can trust.

Current positioning

The core message the organization is using right now to reach its audience, and who approved it and why.

Active campaigns & channels

What marketing activity is currently running, where, and who is responsible for each piece.

Key relationships

Journalists, agencies, platforms, or communities the organization has relationships with, and who holds those relationships internally.

What has been tried

A short log of past campaigns or approaches, with a note on what worked and what did not, so the organization can learn from its own history.

Questions to explore

Use these on your own or in a group. There are no right answers, only better conversations.

  1. What is the core message the organization is using right now, and how was it arrived at?

  2. Which marketing channels are active and who is responsible for each?

  3. What media or press relationships does the organization have, and who manages them?

  4. What has been tried in the past that was stopped, and why?

  5. If the person running marketing left, what context would be hardest to replace?

Things to notice

  • Messaging drifts. Without a record of the current positioning and how it was arrived at, organizations find themselves iterating on top of layers of undocumented experiments.
  • Agency and media relationships are personal. When the person who manages them leaves, the relationship often weakens or disappears along with them.
  • Past campaigns are rarely reviewed. Organizations tend to move forward without capturing what the last initiative actually produced, which means the same lessons get re-learned.