Amplify Media/United Methodist Publishing House
Amplify is the United Methodist Publishing House’s multimedia platform. It allows churches large and small to discover, customize, and share diverse resources that encourage deeper discipleship and equip churches to pursue their mission with greater impact.
BACKGROUND & OBJECTIVES
The United Methodist Publishing House (UMPH) has been supporting the United Methodist church with trusted resources since 1789. More than 200 years later, UMPH was closing its Cokesbury bookstore locations and saw the need to transition fully into the digital space.
In line with the vision of Chief Revenue and Customer Experience Officer Audrey Kidd, UMPH wanted to team up with a partner with whom the brand could walk through this process from beginning to end.
UMPH came to 5by5 with this comprehensive transition in mind, seeking expert guidance through strategy and research to inform the next chapter of the organization.
STRATEGY
Our partnership with UMPH began with strategy as our team dug into UMPH’s family of brands, Cokesbury and Abingdon Press. We worked closely with leadership to bring clarity to who these brands are individually and define their audiences, creating solid foundations from which to move forward.
RESEARCH
Establishing these brand foundations allowed our team to move into the research phase, where we began exploring what those audiences wanted and needed in a digital content provider, what already existed in the space and determine what additional research was needed.
Our research team began a process called “design thinking,” a means for creative problem solving that engages the eventual end-users from the beginning, determining their mindset and needs from Day 1. This allows the brand to uncover what their audience truly wants, surface unmet needs and learn faster as it iterates ideas and experiments with solutions, taking in feedback along the way. Through this process, brands can reduce risk and innovate a powerful solution they may never have come up with otherwise.
Going through this design thinking process with UMPH, 5by5’s research team had the unique opportunity to create a panel of more than 60 of the brand’s key constituents, engaging them regularly as we designed a digital content platform to meet their most pressing needs, including bringing them all to Nashville to experience the first prototype.
Our team also conducted research on a wider scale to determine the wants and needs of the target audience, discern gaps and strategically define operations moving forward.
Results & Implementation
Based on the research, in 2019, 5by5 helped UMPH create and launch its new multimedia platform, Amplify, which allows churches to discover, create and share diverse resources that encourage deeper discipleship and equip churches to pursue their mission with greater impact. Our strategy and creative teams worked together to establish a strong brand with clear messaging as well as a website, digital advertising campaigns, videography, and other assets to support its launch.
Over the last two years, our relationship with UMPH has become a uniquely collaborative, trusted partnership that continues to inform the organization’s future through research, strategy, and implementation.
