Strategic Communications Consultants Services

The Vendor is required to provide strategic communications consultant’s services for include:
1. Communications strategy and support
• Provide ongoing advisory services, message development, content planning, campaign planning, and strategic counsel to staff.
• Develop and maintain a comprehensive communications and engagement strategy for the department and individual plans and projects, including goals, audience insights, key messages, tactical approaches, timelines, and key performance indicators (KPI).
• Conduct audience research aligned with department strategic plan and equitable engagement guide with a focus on reaching residents to engage in planning work and accessibility planning.
• Produce messaging documents, editorial calendars, campaign briefs, talking points and other related documents based on the needs of department staff.
2. Public relations support
• Develop press releases, advisories, talking points, story pitches, and media materials.
• Spokesperson preparation, Q&A development, and rapid response support for emerging issues.
• Strategic consultant to department board staff when dealing with media inquiries and interest.
• Monitor media coverage and provide earned media reports with metrics, sentiment, and other key indicators.
• Coordinate timely, consistent messaging for sensitive or fastmoving situations pertaining to confidential, sensitive or public information.
3. Website maintenance and technical support
• Assist in administration of montgomeryplanning.org and montgomeryplanningboard.org and provide technical troubleshooting, performance monitoring, and security updates.
• Develop new tools and tactics to advance department web goals.
• Implement UX/design updates, templates, and components consistent with approved brand and site themes.
• Consultants and research to department staff.
• Deliver standard operating procedures, training, and documentation to support internal capability building.
4. Media and communications training
• Develop and deliver training curricula for spokesperson skills, media interviews, presentations, and more.
• Conduct workshops, small group training, and one-on-one coaching with recorded practice sessions and feedback.
• Provide job aids, templates, and quick reference guides to reinforce learning.
• Offer refresher sessions and maintain a training calendar aligned with staff needs.
5. Video and design support
• Creative development, storyboarding, scripting, and design concepts for video, animation, and graphic materials.
• Produce and edit videos (field capture, b-roll, audio, motion graphics), including captioning, transcripts, and accessibility features.
• B-roll, audio, motion graphics), including captioning, transcripts, and accessibility features.
• Create graphic design materials such as reports, fact sheets, maps, social media graphics, and advertising campaign collateral.
• Deliver reusable templates (social, print, presentations) aligned with brand guidelines.
• Manage and deliver source files, rights documentation, and organized asset packages.
6. Data gathering and research for communications support
• Design and implement research plans, including objectives, methodology, sampling approaches, and timelines.
• Conduct statistically valid surveys with representative sampling, accessible formats, multilingual options, and full data analysis.
• Plan and facilitate focus groups or listening sessions, including recruitment, guides, moderation, and thematic analysis.
• Synthesize all findings into actionable communications insights, delivering reports, raw data, and stakeholder presentations.
7. Promotional campaign support
• Develop integrated advertising campaign plans, including objectives, audience targeting, messaging, creative concepts, channels, timelines, and KPIs, across digital, social, print, and outdoor platforms.
• Execute paid advertising buys (e.g., social media, google ads, programmatic, print, radio) with precise demographic, geographic, and interestbased targeting; include multilingual variants where needed.
• Produce campaign creative assets consistent with brand standards and tailored to platforms and audiences.
• Monitor and optimize campaigns in real time, adjusting creative, targeting, spend levels, and placements to improve reach, engagement, and conversion metrics.
• Provide postcampaign reporting summarizing impressions, clicks, conversions, cost efficiency, and recommendations for future campaigns.