Forme Partners needed to stand out in a competitive space. Today, Narratives Work adds personality and panache to Forme's core marketing channels.

About Forme Partners

Founded by Kate Zatland in 2016. Forme Partners is a boutique executive search firm that places senior commercial leaders in scaling technology companies.

Forme has placed CEOs and C-suite executives in some of Europe's leading tech scaleups, including Motorway, Travelex, Writer Al and Nothing.

The problem

With a lean team busy executing complex searches, Kate and Forme didn't have enough time to craft a content strategy and brand position. They had interesting things to say, but they hadn't aligned on a coherent voice, and they weren't sure which distribution channel would be most effective.

"We needed an experienced outside perspective to give our brand and content a clear direction, and to help us focus on what makes Forme different."

- Kate Zatland

In a highly competitive space, it’s important for any ambitious challenger firm to stay visible and offer thought-provoking opinions to current and potential clients. Other, larger competitors could call on dedicated marketing and communications teams. Forme needed a way to cut through the noise that didn’t rely purely on volume.

Narratives Work was engaged to define a high-level content strategy for Forme Partners. The project was broken down into a few important streams of work:

• Define a clear tone of voice for all Forme Partners’ content and communications

• Create copy for Forme’s new website that would engage and persuade readers

• Plan and deliver an ongoing content calendar that would help Kate and Forme cultivate an audience and remain top of mind with potential clients

Finding a story, and tone, that made sense

Today, AI platforms have made it easier than ever to create content at scale. But scale without insight wouldn’t deliver results for Kate and Forme.

Narratives Work led discovery sessions with the Forme team to unpack the firm’s biggest differentiators and advantages. Through this process, one narrative hook – the peculiar combination of art and science found in the work of an executive search firm – stood out as a potential focal point for Forme’s market-facing communications.

“Narratives Work helped us access truths about our business, and what makes us tick, that we’d struggled to put into words ourselves. We’ve now taken those foundational principles and used them to create a playbook for how we want to speak to the market.”

- Kate Zatland

Companies like Forme are experts in their sector. They are able to discuss business fundamentals with CEOs, investors and board members, and use those numbers to conjure the right profile for a particular leader. But numbers are only part of the story.

An executive search can mean a big career shift for the successful candidate. Even if the role is a perfect fit, there may well be trepidation: about a relocation, a change in workplace culture, or a big lifestyle shift. Questions candidates ask themselves during a search process range from “Am I the right leader to execute this transformation?” to “Where are my kids going to go to school?”

The value of a great executive search firm is to blend this emotional understanding – an empathy for the risks shared on both sides of the search – with a robust commercial case articulating why the individual in question is the right leader for the client. That ineffable skill is what Narratives Work sought to crystallise in all Forme’s brand communications.

Landing on the right channels

Having landed on Forme’s guiding style and tone, the next consideration was where to focus efforts. With Kate already building a growing following on LinkedIn as a CEO and leader, Forme’s company-level communications needed to offer a complementary take on shifts affecting the tech sector, with space for longer-form insights. 

After conducting a mini SWOT (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats) analysis, Narratives Work and Forme decided to focus on email as the main delivery mechanism for long-form content.

“We knew that spreading ourselves too thin, trying to nail every channel at once, would reduce the overall effectiveness of our communications. Narratives Work helped us decide which channels would deliver the highest return on our investment.”

- Kate Zatland

Narratives Work helped shape a new quarterly newsletter, 5 Minutes of Forme. The brief was simple and tantalising: “Help us create the Paris Review of executive search newsletters.” Today, 5 Minutes of Forme is a multifaceted patchwork of data points, insights from senior leaders, and an opinionated take from the Forme team on tech’s burning issues.

The newsletter is enhanced by something that’s almost impossible for AI to automate: the insights that emerge from real conversations, with real people. Narratives Work has helped Forme plan and deliver regular interviews with senior tech leaders, producing ‘war stories’, advice and lessons that Forme’s audience can learn from.