Enjoy complimentary coffee, tea and continental breakfast as you meet your fellow attendees.

Sign-in, pick up your materials and enjoy a continental breakfast before we start the day.

Be sure to stop by and visit your sponsors!

Welcome to the Strategic Storytelling for Internal Communications Conference.

In this fast-paced forum, you'll get to know your fellow peers, share your biggest internal communications challenges, and learn a few fun facts.

Competition for top talent is fierce. The first impressions a company makes through its digital presence, recruitment process, and onboarding experience play a pivotal role in attracting and keeping employees. PrimeSource Building Products has embarked on a strategic journey to refine these touchpoints, creating a cohesive, seamless, and transparent narrative that genuinely positions the company as an employer of choice. This presentation will explore how PrimeSource leverages Day One Storytelling to align new and prospective employees with our business, people, culture, values, vision, and mission from the very beginning. In this session, you will:

• Gain actionable strategies for enhancing their own company’s first impressions and explore how to best use psychological principles through the lens of internals comms to further enhance their company’s standing.
• Discuss practical implementation methods and how to tailor compelling narratives for new hires to ensure buy-in.
• Learn how to measure the impact of these strategies on employee sentiment and retention, ensuring they can effectively display an authentic and inviting organizational culture from day one.

Find, write and deploy stories that show up when and where you need them to (complete with costume changes).
he·ro/ˈhirō,ˈhērō/: a person who is admired or idealized for courage, outstanding achievements, or noble qualities.

What do superheroes and great stories have in common? Like a caped crusader, a good story lives among the commoners. It flies high but is grounded in the everyday. It isn’t always what it appears to be. And most important, it shows up and saves you when you’re in distress.

Heidi Coryell Williams serves as executive director of storytelling for Clemson University’s Division of Marketing and Communications. She leads a team of embedded marketers at Clemson and supports a broader network of communicators, strategists and academic leaders — all pursuing impactful, perception-shaping messages about their South Carolina-based, public R-1 Research institution.

In this session, communications professionals will learn how to identify, build and produce long-form content that can be tapped into by almost anyone, and then they’ll see what it looks like when that content is published across a wide variety of products, platforms and audiences. The COPE content strategy — Create Once. Publish Everywhere — can be scaled to work for anyone at any-sized organization. Attendees should leave:

1. Inspired by how a single story can be deployed dozens of different ways and published over many months or even years effectively.
2. With an understanding that the best storytelling extends well beyond writing — and what that looks like.
3. Understanding how strong traditional research and writing can be used to proactively meet audiences and organizational needs -- in the moment and in the future.
4. Practical tips for managing content and teams will also be shared. Ultimately, participants should walk away confident that the same things that make for a great story also provide a solid foundation for a team’s strategic communication efforts.

(Spoiler alert: Your institution, organization or corporation is NOT the hero of your story.)

Enjoy complimentary coffee, tea, and other refreshments as you network with your peers.

Be sure to stop by and visit your sponsors and be sure to fill out your evaluation forms.

Ferguson shifted from a traditional internal communication approach to an innovate storytelling approach to launch their new brand identify and communicate their revamped mission, vision and values and corporate strategy. Learn how they made their employees the main characters of the story – encouraging them to share their individual stories and amplifying them internally and externally. The campaign has transformed into an ongoing storytelling initiative that regularly reinforces the Ferguson’s values and allows employees to recognize each other through positive storytelling.

In this session, you will learn:

• How to use storytelling to connect employees to a company’s brand, mission, vision and values.
• How to use storytelling to communicate company strategy in a meaningful way that drives business outcomes.
• How to regularly reinforce company values and encourage strong personal and emotional connections through effective storytelling.

From Charlottesville to the War in Gaza to mental health concerns to Supreme Court rulings, how you communicate to – and more critically, engage with – your employees during uncertain and often emotional situations can make or break most employee comms pros.

In this session, you will learn how:

• To determine if you should say something – or not.
• To align your employee communications and engagement with your culture, purpose & business.
• To consider and maximize comms levers to best reach your different employee audiences.
• To identify and highlight critical resources to help employees and leaders be better equipped to handle the situation.
• To engage with your PR, Marketing, Government Relations, DEI, HR & other business partners to power-up efforts when appropriate.

Reservations have been made at a number of local restaurants.
Don't miss this opportunity to have lunch with your peers at a local Washington, DC hot spot!


**Everyone is financially responsible for their own lunch.

Merck’s manufacturing communications team invested in a professional-quality docuseries about the pillars of its strategy, as told by employees actively working on these pillars, from leadership to the shop floor. To “give credit to the people doing the work of transformation,” as their division president tells it, Merck’s communication team organized a quarterly content structure around these strategic pillars and how they managed to align the docuseries with quarterly All Hands meetings, with pull-through to site and operating channels. In this case study, you will learn:

• Strategies to structure content around your organization’s strategy in alignment with key events, such as quarterly All Hands meetings for enhanced employee engagement with your organization’s strategy.
• How storytelling can effectively communicate organizational strategy and change through employee stories across various organizational levels.
• Ways to use storytelling in employee recognition and to celebrate employee contributions to change and strategic goals.

Enjoy complimentary coffee, tea, and other refreshments as you network with your peers.

Be sure to stop by and visit your sponsors!

Getting multichannel storytelling right for strategic internal communications is a complex objective often under-resourced communications teams must achieve. This panel brings together a diverse group of internal communications professionals and is your opportunity to get answers to your most pressing challenges in multichannel storytelling. You’ll learn:

• How to craft and adapt your organization's story to thrive across diverse media platforms, from internal networks to social media.
• How to maintain a consistent brand voice and message while tailoring content to the strengths of each channel.
• How to understand and use metrics and feedback mechanisms that help you evaluate the effectiveness of your multi-channel storytelling efforts.

Don't stop the conversation!

Join us at the lobby bar as you network with your peers and sponsors in the adjacent at the #ALIcomms
Participate in raffles & sign-up for dinner with your peers!

Want to keep the conversation going? Join a group of attendees for dinner at a local Washington, DC hot spot.


Sign-up at the registration desk or during the networking reception to join a group at tonight's dine-around. Reservations have been made.


**Dutch treat.

Enjoy complimentary coffee, tea, and continental breakfast as you network with fellow attendees on this final day.

Together we will recap yesterday's top takeaways and set the stage for this final day of learning.

This session is designed to equip internal communications professionals with the insights to craft authentic and compelling communications around civic engagement and the 2024 elections that resonate with internal stakeholders. Participants will explore the intersection of storytelling and strategic civic engagement, learning how to align their narratives with organizational values while empowering their teams and communities to actively participate in the democratic process.

Learning Objectives:

• Understand the core principls of aligning storytelling with organizational values and civic engagement goals in a condensed time frame.
• Learn key techniques for quickly crafting authentic, impactful stories that resonate with internal audiences.
• Engage in a dynamic Q&A to clarify concepts and gain tailored advice for applying storytelling strategies within your organization that appeal to a multi-generational team.

Runway for Water: Innovative Storytelling to Communicate Our Why showcases Water For People's inventive campaign, leveraging a fashion week theme to spotlight the global water crisis and drive employee engagement. Set in India, this approach aimed to raise awareness externally and reignite employees' connection with their mission, focusing on the water collection burden on women and girls.

Internally, the campaign used a toolkit, social media guidance, and a short film premiere featuring team and local women's stories to boost engagement and pride within the workforce. This strategy proved effective in strengthening the bond between employees and the organization's cause, showcasing the significant impact of innovative storytelling on fostering a mission-driven culture.

You will learn:

• Strategies for innovative storytelling to enhance employee engagement in a global setting.
• The effectiveness of thematic campaigns in connecting employees with organizational missions.
• Why internal storytelling is important in building pride and unity among employees.

Enjoy complimentary coffee, tea, and other refreshments as you network with your peers.

Be sure to stop by and visit your sponsors and be sure to fill out your evaluation forms.

Connect with your fellow attendees around your biggest communications challenges!

How do you drive employee engagement when your workforce spans multiple generations? Effective communication across generational lines is crucial for fostering collaboration, enhancing productivity, and ensuring a cohesive organizational culture. You’ll gain insights and hear about strategies on how to bridge communication gaps between different age groups, leveraging the strengths of each generation to achieve common goals.
You will learn:

• The distinct communication preferences and values of different generations, from Baby Boomers to Generation Z.
• How to adapt your communication approach to effectively engage and motivate employees of all ages that catalyzes change and drives internal engagement.
• The best communication tools and platforms that can bridge generational gaps and foster a more inclusive work environment.