Storytelling to make connections
An emdash case study about helping the Susandhi program make meaningful connections with their audience.
The Susandhi Fellowship Program is a unique five year program that selects meritorious students from low-income households and offers them a graduate degree in technology, industrial training and guaranteed job placement. In many ways, it’s better than your run-of-the-mill engineering degree. But aspiring engineers had trouble seeing that.
Our process
Step 0: Understanding the nuances
The Susandhi Fellowship Program (SFP) is the anti-thesis of traditional graduate programs. It begins with behavioural training, followed by a combination of classroom education and on-the-job training. While the program is aimed at local students, many of whom are from low-income families and are first-generation grasuates, SFP is a rigorous training program for the meritorious.
It is empathetic to their situation, but demanding on their potential. Any communication about SFP needed to reflect this, adequately.
Step 1: Identifying the brand story
If there is one thing that we wanted the audience to take away from the deck we were building, it is the transformational power of what SFP does. So, in this story, SFP is not the hero. The students are!
Keeping that in mind, we built the narrative of the Susandhi Fellowship program around the ideal student avatar (audience persona) — Lakshmi.
We chose to tell Lakshmi’s story instead of Ravi’s or Raja’s because we wanted to normalise the idea of young rural women in high-tech jobs. We wanted to make a girl represent the community, why not!
The client was delightedly welcoming of the idea. After all, the Susandhi Program has a very healthy gender ratio across batches.
Step 2: Introducing the facts without diluting the story
Once the dream is dreamt, we need to get to the plan. As a presentation introducing the Susandhi Fellowship Program to an audience, it needed details. We took the story of Lakshmi forward.
The Susandhi Fellowship selects meritorious students hailing from low-income households in India.
Through our well-charted out fellowship program and placement options, we educate, empower and embolden them into working professionals.
Our focus on social awareness also enables them to work as catalysts in the transformation of their communities, localities and the country as a whole.
Step 4: Adding proof to the story
What better way to tell the story about transformation than to show transformed lives? We spoke to students and collected powerful success stories — as part of a video we were creating for SFP — and weaved them into the deck.
For instance, here’s what Sreesha says.
Today, I work in projects using the latest technology, designing microchips for a living. I don’t have an engineering degree. In the industry, contribution matters more than pedigree.
And here’s Daneshwari.
Susandhi program helped me carefully balance my duties as a daughter, wife and mother, while exploring my abilities as an technologist.
Step 5: Leaving with a call to action
The Susandhi Fellowship Program addresses a wide range of audience groups, each of them able to contribute in their own unique way. A one-size fits all deck would have diminished the impact of a thoughtful deck they had at hand.
So, we built a modular version for them. It allowed them to mix and match a bunch of slides, to focus on the audience in front of them. The below slide is a view of three of their CTA modules presented as one.
Outcomes
What began as a ‘corporate deck’ went on to present the real story of the Susandhi Fellowship Program.
— This storytelling approach helped SFP attract the attention of students and parents, who were strongly swayed in favour of an engineering degree so far.
— The focus on the mission and values of the Susandhi Program helped position them as a differentiated educator in the already crowded space.
Team on account
Account director: Ranjani
Writer and designer: Sowmya
Do you have a story?
Let emdash tell your story for you. Write to work@emdash.in to speak to us now!
