Snohomish County Office of Social Justice, Communications Counsel – 2023-24

 The Snohomish County Office of Social Justice (OSJ) engaged Team Soapbox to provide strategic communications support aimed at increasing public awareness of the department and its mission.

Our work began with the development of a comprehensive communications plan, designed in alignment with OSJ’s goals and priorities.

Following discovery meetings with the client, we proposed a plan centered on creating compelling collateral, enhancing digital presence, and producing multimedia content. Specific deliverables included:

• Website Redesign: The existing OSJ website was outdated, misaligned with brand guidelines, and lacked a user-friendly interface. We reimagined the site architecture, designed modern and accessible page layouts, wrote new content, and fully integrated the refreshed brand identity to create an engaging and cohesive user experience.

• Original Photography: In response to concerns about overused stock imagery, we collaborated with a professional photographer to capture original images featuring community organizations funded by OSJ and recognizable landmarks that reflect the department’s commitment to equity and justice. These high-quality photos were incorporated into all communication materials and shared with community partners for their own use.

• Social Media Assets: To enhance OSJ’s social media presence, we developed a series of branded graphics highlighting cultural recognition days and heritage months, tailored for use across Snohomish County’s digital platforms.

• Video Production: We produced a series of videos that were shared via OSJ’s website, YouTube channel, and social media. The videos introduced the community to the department’s leadership and provided insights into their work and impact across the county.

• Annual Report: Our team researched, wrote, and designed OSJ’s annual report, March Forward, which showcased the department’s achievements and spotlighted community investment recipients. We also created a video version of the report to maximize engagement through visual storytelling and broaden its reach across digital channels.

Just Futures

A coalition of Washington non-profits called Just Futures received funding to pilot a series of grassroots community assemblies with the aim of changing how government conducts community engagement. The timeline for this work was aggressive—they needed to complete assemblies in seven cities across five months—and the group realized they needed a cohesive brand to help people understand that all their efforts were connected.  

Just Futures hired Team Soapbox to develop a visual brand and messaging that would tell the story of their collective work. Because the initiative was led by a large coalition, Soapbox conducted a workshop with staff from all partners to help prioritize their design needs. Soapbox developed a logo that incorporated colors from each partner to make it easier for all organizations to co-brand with existing materials. Partners shared that the image of a “collaboration tree” that they use regularly in materials was important to their shared understanding of the work, so Soapbox developed a simplified version of this graphic and incorporated it into the logo.  

Soapbox also developed key messages to help all partners consistently communicate about their work and used the visual brand to create presentation decks, one-pagers and other materials Just Futures could use to share the results of their collective work. Soapbox held a webinar for staff to make sure the coalition understood how to deploy the new brand and messaging.  

After the last assembly was completed, Just Futures used their new brand to report out progress to elected officials and community leaders 

Career Connect Washington (2022-2023)

In 2022, Career Connect Washington (CCW) hired Team Soapbox to provide annual communications strategy and support to CCW’s growing statewide network of career learning partners. As a coalition of education and employment agencies and advocates, CCW grew quickly over a short period of time and needed strategic communications help to think about what outreach, materials, and relationship-building activities could support their most urgent needs.

We conducted an extensive discovery period that included in-depth stakeholder and audience engagement with regional network partners who represented every educational school district across the state. The discovery period included facilitating focus groups, conducting one-on-one interviews, and surveys to develop messaging, understand communication needs and gaps. As a result of our findings, we developed a multi-year Approach Plan that included near-term communications activities that Team Soapbox would implement and recommendations for long-term tactics.

Our rollout work with CCW has included a wide range of communications outreach – to date some of our major implementation efforts have included: 

• A complete navigation and content overhaul of the CCW website, including improving user experience and making resources for network partners more findable and sharable online.

• The development of targeted materials to bring prospective new grantees into a program builder pipeline.

• The development of more than 15 videos – all produced and created over a two month period – to support storytelling about the impact of career connected learning programs on young people. Videos were created to support partners in their own outreach to students, and engage future supporters, employer partners, and funders. View a selection of our CCW videos on our YouTube channel.

Video specific work:

The video work spanned across the three geographic areas including King County, Snohomish County, and Franklin County. Team Soapbox managed the pre-production, production, and post production of all the videos created. In the pre-production phase, we partnered with CCW and their educational network partners to identify talent who were students and staff to be featured in these videos. We worked with over 30 students, young people, professors, teachers, and staff at 5 filming locations. During the production phase, we managed the videographer, sound, line producer, and production assistant. We captured b-roll, interviews, and sound. In post-production, we managed music, editing, graphics, and file and hard drive hand off of edited and raw footage for CCW and partner use. Steve Utaski of Remedy Pictures as the Director of Photography and editor for these videos.

These videos captured career connected learning programs such as apprenticeships, high school, and university programs. We developed three title based videos and were translated to Spanish, Vietnamese, Chinese, and Russian. We worked with CCW and numerous partners to identify talent who were real students and young adults participating in those programs. Our team developed the scripts, worked with CCW and their partners to secure filming locations and video releases, created the graphics, and edited the final video. The title based videos can be found here:

• Career Connect Washington Programs and Outreach title based video #1

• Career Connect Washington Programs and Outreach title based video #2

• Career Connect Washington Programs and Outreach title based video #3

Along with the title based videos, we developed interview style videos and a selection of interview videos can be found here:

• Career Connect Washington Programs and Outreach interview video #1

• Career Connect Washington Programs and Outreach interview video #2

• Career Connect Washington Programs and Outreach interview video #3

Website work
Team Soapbox has provided annual communications support to Career Connect Washington (CCW) since 2022. CCW’s statewide, coalition-based network of education and employment agencies and advocates grew quickly over a short period of time and needed strategic communications support to think about what outreach activities and materials could support their most urgent needs.

Team Soapbox led an extensive discovery period that included in-depth stakeholder and audience engagement with CCW’s regional network partners. An important project that resulted from the discovery period was an extensive navigation and content overhaul of the CCW website in Wordpress. It was clear that CCW partners and audiences relied on the website to support career connected learning promotion, but the current version of the website was not best serving their needs.

Our goal was to improve user experience and make online resources for network partners more findable and sharable online. Team Soapbox worked with our client team and their existing website developer to remap the entire website architecture based on user journey and experience, creating clear pathways for different CCW audiences to find information they were seeking.

• We wrote new page content to clarify CCW’s key offerings around career connected learning.

• We redesigned page layouts through a wireframing process that incorporated more photos and visual content.

• We built a new section of the website for CCW partners, transforming a PDF marketing and branding manual into a usable, navigable hub of resources to support partners’ outreach.

• We established a more active public blog, creating an editorial calendar of “current news” content to make regular website content updates.

 CCW’s partners gave rave reviews for the refreshed and relaunched Wordpress website, saying that information was more easily findable and re-shareable with students, families, and other audiences seeking career learning information.

Career Connect Washington (2023-2025)

In 2023, Career Connect Washington (CCW) continued their partnership with Team Soapbox to provide ongoing annual communications strategy and support to CCW's growing statewide network of career learning partners, while also taking on specialized communications work for the Washington Jobs Initiative (WJI). Building on the foundational work completed in 2022, CCW needed continued strategic communications support to strengthen their network partnerships, engage tribal communities and employers, and amplify the impact of Washington's Good Jobs Challenge investment through WJI.

We expanded our approach to include two workstreams: continued CCW communications support and dedicated WJI communications development. This dual approach allowed us to maintain momentum on established CCW initiatives while building new communications infrastructure for WJI's sectoral partnerships and stakeholder engagement needs.

Our work with CCW and WJI from 2023-2025 included a wide range of communications:

Continued CCW Network Support:

Building on our 2022 website overhaul and video production, we developed a quarterly newsletter campaigns that grew engagement from 39.73% to 45.55% open rates – significantly above industry averages. To compliment the newsletter development, we created blogs that highlighted CCW’s impact across the state. We created targeted materials for Tribal engagement including a dedicated Tribal webpage and guide for resources. We developed employer engagement materials that include a registered apprenticeship handout and career connected learning program fact sheet. The employer materials highlighted career connected learning program’s value proposition and impact for employers.

Legislative and Policy Support:

We provided annual legislative materials updates for both 2024 and 2025 sessions, updated handouts that positioned CCW's work effectively for policy audiences and funding purposes.