Bentall Green Oak
From Analog to Digital: Building a Government Agency's Entire Communications Ecosystem from Scratch.
How does a global real estate investment leader with over 200 senior executives elevate their social media presence to match their world-class market reputation? This was the opportunity BentallGreenOak (BGO), a leading global real estate investment management firm, brought to Birk Creative in 2022.
The Challenge
While BGO had an existing social media presence, they recognized significant potential for strategic enhancement—from developing a comprehensive content strategy and governance framework to empowering their executive women on LinkedIn. Birk Creative was brought in to transform their social media ecosystem, delivering a sustainable, strategic program that BGO could own and manage for long-term success.
The Opportunity
BentallGreenOak approached Birk Creative with an ambitious vision that went far beyond simple content creation. The firm recognized several strategic opportunities to enhance their digital marketing and communications infrastructure:
Strategic Content Framework: Developing a comprehensive content strategy to guide their presence on LinkedIn and Instagram with a cohesive, powerful brand voice.
Governance and Compliance: Creating the firm's first social media governance policy to provide clear guidelines, protect the brand, and ensure compliance across hundreds of employees.
Executive Women Empowerment: Activating the BGO Women's Network with the confidence and skills to build powerful personal brands on LinkedIn.
Systematic Content Planning: Implementing a structured process for planning, creating, and distributing content that would position BGO as an industry thought leader.
BGO sought a strategic partner who could not only develop the vision but also build the systems, policies, and training required to implement it at a global scale and ensure its long-term sustainability.
The Transformation
Birk Creative designed a holistic, five-pillar approach to transform BGO’s social media presence from a blank slate into a strategic asset. The engagement was built around a model of deep discovery, strategic system-building, and comprehensive enablement.
Pillar 1: The Strategic Foundation
(The Full Day Live Audit)
The entire project was anchored by a single, intensive full day discovery session. This was not a simple meeting; it was a comprehensive live audit that included a SWOT analysis, stakeholder interviews, competitive research, and a deep dive into BGO’s existing brand assets. This session produced the foundational document for the entire engagement: a master content planning spreadsheet that would become the central nervous system for BGO’s social media strategy.
From this audit, we developed a multi-layered content strategy organized into five content buckets:
Leading the Industry: Positioning BGO as a premier thought leader.
Recruiting: Attracting top talent by showcasing company culture.
CSR: Philanthropy: Highlighting community impact and employee giving.
CSR: Climate: Communicating a commitment to sustainability and Net Zero goals.
CSR: DEI: Showcasing the firm’s commitment to diversity, equity, and inclusion.
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Pillar 2: Brand Alignment and Strategic Constraints
BGO's brand guidelines were exceptionally tight—and that was a strategic advantage. Working within their established visual identity system, from approved fonts and color palettes to their existing asset library, provided clear parameters that allowed us to focus energy where it mattered most: developing a world-class global social media strategy rather than reinventing their brand.
This disciplined approach extended to linguistic strategy as well. Because BGO is a Canada-based firm with a global presence, we conducted research to determine whether the social media strategy should use Canadian English or American English conventions. This wasn't a trivial decision—choices like "colour" versus "color" or "flavour" versus "flavor" signal cultural positioning and audience understanding. The research informed a consistent American English approach across all content, ensuring the brand voice resonated authentically with BGO's primary markets while maintaining their Canadian identity.
Pillar 3: Governance and Compliance
Recognizing the significant compliance and brand risks for a firm of BGO’s stature, Birk Creative developed the company’s first-ever Social Media Guide for Employees. This comprehensive, 17-page document provided clear and actionable guidelines on everything from security best practices and confidentiality to brand representation and compliance with securities laws. This was a critical deliverable that provided BGO with a framework for responsible and effective employee advocacy.
Pillar 4: Empowering Executive Women with Social Media Confidence
A strategy is only as good as its execution. A key element of the engagement, driven by a highly collaborative and creative partnership with our lead client, Rahim Ladha, was the empowerment of BGO’s executive women. Recognized as a leader in building social media confidence, Birk Creative was specifically sought out to design and deliver a specialized LinkedIn workshop for the BGO Women’s Network.
This wasn’t a generic training program. It was a tailored experience designed to address the unique challenges executive women face in the digital sphere.
The workshop focused on:
Building a Powerful Professional Brand: Teaching executives how to articulate their expertise and leadership story on LinkedIn.
Content Creation with Confidence: Providing a framework for creating and sharing content that is both authentic and strategic.
Privacy and Protection: Equipping participants with the knowledge to protect their privacy and manage their digital footprint, giving them the confidence to post.
Overcoming Barriers: Directly addressing and dismantling common hurdles like the “fear of bragging” that can hold women back from showcasing their accomplishments.
This initiative was a testament to the positive and forward-thinking leadership of Rahim Ladha, who was open to learning, change, and investing in the professional growth of his team. The result was not just a trained cohort, but an empowered network of executive women ready to become powerful brand ambassadors for BGO.
Pillar 5: Building a Self-Sufficient Ecosystem
Our goal was not to create dependency, but to build capability. Every deliverable was designed to empower the BGO team to manage their social media presence independently after the engagement. This included:
A Master Content Planning System: The foundational spreadsheet, complete with content calendars for three months and a repository of future ideas.
A Reusable Campaign Framework: A series of creative campaign concepts with branded hashtags (e.g., #BGOCommercialConversations, #TomorrowsBGO, #BGOImpact) that could be deployed long-term.
A Custom Template Library: A suite of branded visual templates for LinkedIn and Instagram, enabling consistent and professional content creation.
The Result
A Sustainable Framework for Global Social Media Excellence
The impact of this engagement was not measured in likes or followers, but in the successful creation of a sustainable, scalable, and compliant social media infrastructure for a global firm.
Organizational Impact:
First-Ever Social Media Governance: Established a firm-wide policy and compliance framework for over 200 executives and all employees.
Executive LinkedIn Activation: Empowered senior leadership to transform their digital presence and become powerful brand ambassadors.
Content System Sustainability: Created a self-sufficient content planning and production capability, eliminating the previous ad-hoc approach.
Unified Brand Voice: Ensured a consistent and professional brand identity across all social media touchpoints.
Strategic Outcomes
Comprehensive Content Library: Delivered over three months of pre-planned content across multiple strategic campaigns.
Employee Advocacy Framework: Implemented a systematic approach to activating employees as brand advocates.
Evergreen Training Resources: Provided a library of training materials for ongoing employee enablement.
The Birk Creative Difference
This engagement exemplifies Birk Creative’s role as a strategic partner, not just a creative vendor. By focusing on foundational strategy, governance, and enablement, we delivered more than a campaign; we built a lasting capability. We transformed a recognized industry leader’s digital presence from a blank slate into a strategic asset, providing BentallGreenOak with the tools, knowledge, and framework to own their social media narrative for years to come.