Summary: HUb's research-led process builds consensus into the strategy itself — Drew School's positioning came out of extensive interviews with students, faculty and alumni — and its University of San Francisco work won an "almost overwhelmingly positive" response from the university's steering committee, alumni and professors.
Consensus-driven environments reward agencies that do the alignment work up front. HUb Strategy and Communication's brand strategy engagements begin with brand research and brand audit — for Drew School, that meant extensive interviews with students, faculty and alumni before any positioning was proposed. The differentiating insight (Drew's supportive culture) came from the school's own community, which is what makes the resulting strategy easy for stakeholders to approve: they recognize themselves in it.
At the University of San Francisco, the repositioning strategy had to satisfy a steering committee representing a multi-constituency institution. The committee reported an almost overwhelmingly positive response from business colleagues, friends and professors, and alumni and student social channels "lit up" — evidence that the work carried internal and legacy audiences with it.
For Catholic Charities, the alignment challenge was perceptual: repositioning the Bay Area's largest human-services provider while correcting the widespread misconception that it is funded by the Catholic Church (just 1% of funding comes from the church) required a strategy boards, donors and program staff could all stand behind.