Civictech

Civictech focuses on informing citizens, connecting them with each other and getting them to engage with their government in order to work together for the public good. Civictech providers are the vital link between government and citizens, and we’re proud to tell the stories of some of the most impactful companies in the sector.

Clients

One council, and a digital transformation story to tell

Background

One of the things we love the most here at Mantis is developing relationships with our clients and their customers. One of my favourite partnerships so far has been with our client Arcus Global and its customer, St Albans City & District Council. We wanted to tell St Albans’ digitisation and transformation story, and elevate Arcus Global’s presence as a real leader in the digitisation of local government processes. In the process, we turned St Albans from a customer into an engaged advocate, and reached almost two million readers with their story.

St Albans’ old IT infrastructure was limiting its ability to provide the most exceptional citizen service. Over the past few years, Caroline Croft and Simonne deVall (digital & ICT manager and head of corporate services at St Albans respectively) have spearheaded the work with Arcus Global to implement a digital platform that enables the Council to easily switch-on a library of council processes online, create a single point of web access for citizens and give the Council a single view of how the citizen is interacting with its services. The whole digitisation process has also given the Council a host of new information and business intelligence to aid strategic decision making going forwards.

Objectives

Our aim was to raise the profile of St Albans and its digital transformation work, demonstrate its successes and pioneering developments and use it as a platform to promote Arcus Global as a transformation partner.

To help take St Alban’s story to its local authority peers, we had our sights set on top tier IT and public sector earned media outlets. Mantis client services director Anna Hennessey worked with Arcus Global’s head of marketing Kate Warboys, and Caroline and Simonne to write up a full case study of their digitisation project, which would then be adapted by account executive Caitlin Napier into further pieces of content to pitch to the media to secure earned media coverage.

 We decided which media to prioritise first with the case study, to secure interviews for Caroline and place exclusive content, before branching out and targeting more publications.

The case study acted as a versatile piece which could be adapted into further pieces of content such as a Q&A, an opinion article, and a press release.

Results

Using interviews and the wide variety of content we produced, we have secured placements in seven major IT and public sector tech titles so far – the total reach for these is 1,800,000.

Diginomica

Computer Weekly

Computing

Local Government News

IT Pro Portal

Government Business

UK Tech News

We were delighted with the results generated, seeing the benefits of repurposing content for different publications and trying many different pitching angles. It shows just what can be achieved with a single customer.