Laura Rohde

Buying insurance remains high on many a ‘To Do’ list, including my own until a friend of mine who worked at L&G convinced me the culture of the company was genuinely customer-centric. I used that insight to write this series of online articles and infographics that ask and answer direct questions, to help people arrive at the right choice.

The Times uses attractive offers to bring subscribers in. The full digital pack can be had for just £1 a month – for the first three months. After this, the price goes back to normal, which is when subscribers start to fall away.

We devised a programme of tailored emails to new members, detailing the many benefits they could now enjoy. By speaking to them personally and deepening their engagement with The Times, we were able to reduce churn by over 50% on the previous year.

Levi’s wanted to take news of its bike wear range, designed specifically for cyclists directly to the ‘fixies’ (fixed wheel bikers) - a discerning, influential two-wheeled subculture. We created a contest/social media/website but also added a piece of good, old-fashioned direct marketing: Spoke cards. Fixie riders compete in Alleycat races, and contestants identify themselves with 'spoke cards', designer postcards lodged in the spokes of their wheels, and are saved as status symbols.

For an audience that doesn’t normally identify with the Levi’s brand, our card had to look sharp and be authentic, no BS. We hit the ground in Amsterdam, Paris and London, placing cards in the spokes of 6,000 bikes. It was a huge success with a 23% response rate and a bike shed of awards (including Best Direct Marketing Gold at the MAA Best Awards and Gold at the IPM Awards)

Levi's Commuter was a relatively unknown range of bike wear designed specifically for cyclists. We had to introduce it to fixie riders (fixed-wheel bikers), an influential two-wheeled subculture, and encourage them to respond to Levi's -- a brand they don't normally associate with. We discovered that fixie riders compete in Alleycat races, and contestants identify themselves with 'spoke cards' -- designer postcards lodged in the spokes of their wheels -- which they retain as status symbols. We turned this into a unique media placement and targeted 6,000 fixie riders in Amsterdam, Paris and London through their own bikes.

From kids to adults, people like earning and collecting badges, so we brought Shell customers in on the pastime to encourage driving and buying behaviours. The more charming and eye-catching, the more fun to collect, so Ian Saunders and I went for playful, bold graphics that are proving to be enormously popular with customers and clients.

Creating a warm welcome for new subscribers to The Times and The Sunday Times required a light touch. The trick was to help people take full advantage of all of the many benefits while not overwhelming them with blocks of ‘more stuff you need to do.’ Imparting excitement about membership and staying in The Times ToV was all part of the puzzle and it’s gratifying that what Ian Saunders and I came up with — both text and design — is still initiating subscribers today.

Bringing people together. It’s a logical approach to business. Microsoft UK wanted to create a more engaging proposition for existing, lapsed and new customers. The One-to-One programme offered a friendly, personalised way to discuss the issues, products and services that were relevant to individual customers, with the promise that “it’s all about getting to know you better.”

Our mailer physically brought this to life. The inner showed a long table separating two chairs. If you folded the inner so that the two arrows on the dotted line met, the two chairs were brought closer together – and, in a further piece of ingenuity, the four columns of copy became two.

Ironically, One-to-One had to be suspended at a certain point due to an unexpectedly high customer response, generating more leads than could be handled as promised at the time.

Ghost writing articles for high profile executives, particularity on highly technical subjects, requires navigating topics and personalities with the deft touch of a diplomat and the careful insight of a therapist.

The Engineer article for GE Healthcare President and CEO, Reinaldo Garcia, appeared in the special issue celebrating 150 years of the prestigious publication.

Before writing the Q&A for Jean-Philippe Courtois, then the CEO and president of Microsoft EMEA, I listened to a few of his speeches to get a sense of how he spoke and researched his opinions so I could suggest directions for ‘A’s to the ‘Q’s (which I also wrote). Collaboration is key, but for it to be fruitful, trust needs to be established through the creation of a general framework for the article, and experience similar to jumping into a pond on the Heath in the depth of winter.

White papers are mini epic projects, involving boatloads of research, interviews and crafting, while also calling on sharp organization skills. I wrote many IT-focused white papers at Waggener Edstrom (now WE Communications) and Meta where I was also the Deputy Editor, responsible for managing a team of 14 fantastic writers.

Learning and exploring is one of the pleasures of the job, as is working with brilliant people who are usually very generous with their knowledge and willing to paint a clear picture of the technology involved.

This sample is the first page of a report exploring how AMD processors are used in innovative design and production work by clients like Formula 1

Being given free rein to create a series of emails celebrating the centenary of the iconic Coca-Cola bottle was a joyfully creative task. The designer Rob and I focused on playing up the bright colours, effervescent content and interesting history of this design classic, while giving it a modern flavour. And did you know, the Coke bottle is the most kissed object in the world? Sweet, but also a little bit naughty.

Seems I’ve been doing work for or about Microsoft for most of my adult life, beginning with covering the early launches of Windows for Computer Life magazine, to asking Steve Ballmer questions during another Windows launch press event in London that made him red with anger and start yelling (an uncomfortable sign that you’re doing your job right). But the absolute highlight has to be traveling around the world to find and tell the stories of people who have genuinely had their lives changed by some of the corporate outreach work the company has been involved in.

It was a project requiring sensitivity, deep listening and a lot of cultural humility. Sitting around a table in Japan with a group of women, all survivors of domestic violence (the actual Japanese term is DV), who attended basic computer classes held in constantly changing secret and secure locations in an attempt to rebuild their lives was particularly moving. Gently asking these brave women to share such personally painful stories (with the help of a particularity adroit translator and the brilliant MSFT client and current Communications Director of Gates Ventures, Joanna Fuller) had us all bonding in tears. Used internally and externally at Microsoft, our stories were picked also up in papers like the Financial Times and turned into video packages aired on CNBC.

I really love journalism. This piece for the Guardian is a nice example of my work. In a career that’s included tech and music journalism, published online, in print and on TV, I’ve been picked up in places big and small, including The Guardian, New York Times, CNN and MTV.

I’ve also been on staff at IDG News Service, CNET and Gamecenter, various music magazines and the late, great cable channel ZDTV/Tech TV.

Just because it’s weird, included is a piece I wrote about my time working as a bookkeeper for a cryonics lab. Also useful for those awkward - ‘Share something people don’t know about you’ team bonding meetings.

I had the absolute privilege of working closely with Tony Benn and his brilliant editor Ruth Winstone on a variety of projects centered around his diaries over the course of 24 years. Beyond content management, sub-editing, research, writing footnotes, documentary work and more, the most meaningful part has been a friendship I will always treasure.