CITB

CITB is the Construction Industry Training Board, a levy-funded arms-length government body responsible for training and skills development in the British construction industry.

It has a vast remit – inspiring young people to explore construction careers, encouraging the trades to conduct training, and setting the standards of an entire industry.

Their audiences are equally broad, from prospective and current tradespeople, schools and training providers, to central government, trade federations and construction business of every size, shape and shade.

We were appointed as the lead agency for CITB in 2018, to help simplify, optimise and amplify their communications, from strategy and planning right through to execution. Our role was to take strategic ownership of communication, manage social accounts, develop and deliver campaigns, and act as a consultant to senior leadership and other comms partners.

CITB had a huge communications output that spanned the vastness of its organisational remit, which had grown organically to serve emerging needs over time. This meant that they were left managing a large range of brands, campaigns and platforms, and it had become increasingly challenging to keep a clear view of the breadth of comms going out at any given time.

And because of this, audiences had become increasingly unclear about what CITB was doing – the large volume of communication across multiple activities blurring the focus. Which for a levy-funded organisation created risk at the points when stakeholders were consulted on how happy they were with CITB’s impact.

At the same time, the marcomms efforts of the CITB also had to work.

We had to positively shape the perception of construction careers amongst a sceptical young generation, had to offer relevant information and signposting on routes into the industry, had to encourage the industry to train and upskill as a driver of growth, had to advocate and lobby on behalf of the sector, and report on the impact of CITB as a whole.

Our foundation was to reset the comms model of CITB. We established three pillars of communication that matched the essential functions of the business – Attract, Support and Impact.

Within ‘Attract’ we built out the recruitment journey, launching a major new campaign called Future Made to begin showing a new generation what a career in construction really looks like, through the experiences of young people just like them making their way in the industry. We also undertook a huge optimisation of the GoConstruct platform, to better serve the needs of potential entrants looking for information on how to join.

Within ‘Support’ we helped to reduce the volume of messaging across the trade audiences, concentrating on fewer pieces of activity to stimulate training uptake in specific areas. We focussed messaging on the personal benefits of training to individuals and businesses, and adopted a more human, authentic approach to overcome the cynicism that was often a principal barrier to communication. We also explored innovative content partnerships with influencers in the sector, to find new ways to reach our biggest audience.

Within ‘Impact’ we clarified stakeholder communication, offering new models for articulating the work of the organisation in key documents such as annual reports or strategic business plans, and launching new platforms for ongoing engagement in the impact of CITB. For example “CITB 360º” became an online storytelling repository of the beneficiaries of the work CITB was doing, so that stakeholders could see in more tangible terms to outcomes of how CITB invested their levy.

Across the work we did with CITB we had a number of standout moments – breaking government performance benchmarks with our Future Made campaign, being recognised by TikTok as a best-in-class user of their platform with Go Construct, and, fundamentally, supporting a complex organisation through a highly challenging period of internal change and the chaos of the pandemic, to continue to support British construction to thrive.