You don’t need a large budget or a lot of time to make your project “stick” in the minds of those within your organization.  With a little ingenuity, you can get people engaged in the mission of your project and have a lot of fun too.  Here are three things we “did right” in a recent  enterprise project that captured stakeholder attention and brought excitement to our project:

• Involve the entire company in a project naming contest
• Communicate project messages frequently and in unexpected ways
• Put some creative thought into the “project completion” celebration

I was working with a pharmaceutical company that was struggling to communicate real-time project information across locations and allow leadership to view the progress of projects across departments and for drugs in various stages of development.  We found an Enterprise Project Management (EPM) solution that would meet the company’s needs, received funding approval, and presented the project to the executive team.

In the middle of my presentation, the CEO stopped me and asked, “What’s the name of it?”  I proceeded to explain the different technologies that made up the solution, and he responded, “No, this project needs a name!”  Rather than name the project ourselves, my team decided to hold a company-wide naming contest.  We saw widespread awareness of the project as a critical success factor, and wanted to generate a buzz before kickoff.  We sent out an email to everyone in the organization saying, “Help us name our project!”  We gave some very general guidelines (This project will help improve company-wide project communication and collaboration) and offered a $100 gift card for the person with the winning idea.

The contest was an immediate success, and nearly everyone in the company submitted at least one idea - Some submitted five or more!  The submissions were clever, very funny, and thoughtful (I mean, who doesn’t like P.I.E., the project information exchange?).  We asked the executive staff to select the winning name, and the name Mercury (the god of communication) was chosen. 
Aside from a great name, we were able to reap significant rewards from our naming contest.  Since all of the suggestions came from outside the project team, there was a level of interest in the project across the whole enterprise.   Further, the executive leadership team was responsible for choosing the winning name.  Not only did this keep our project top of mind with the executive board, the board got a chance to see the level of enterprise wide participation and interest in the project firsthand.   Everyone knew that “Mercury” was on its way, and they wanted to see what it was.

Once the name was chosen, we decided we needed a face to go with it.  We were able to find a great picture of “Mercury” online: a simple, blue smiley-face with a winged hat.  He became our logo and mascot.  We included his smiling face in our team communications, and, eventually, within the web-based solution itself.  The Mercury “character” made a transformative technology personal and friendly.

Once the project was underway, we knew we needed to keep the project “top of mind”.   Our strategy was to grab attention by communicating our message in unexpected ways.   One week, we selected a number of magazine photos with famous (and not so famous) people on them.  We then replaced the celebrity faces in the photos with images of project stakeholders throughout the company, attaching cartoon captions on the ads.  One featured a Manager saying, “I can’t wait to see what Mercury will do for my department!” while playing basketball with one of the Directors (and George Clooney).  The Director was shown responding, “Yeah, I’m pretty excited too.”

Early one morning, we taped up the doctored photos all over the building, and the response was immediate.  People were walking from one department to another to see the different photos, and who on their team would be “featured” from each department.  The clippings were hilarious, and spurred even greater buzz.  The level of interest also pushed our team to ensure we were successful; we knew we had to deliver a good product on-time and under-budget.  We sacrificed a lot of nights and weekends to make sure everything was done and done well.  It was an exciting time, and everyone on the team was focused on making this project successful.  

As the go-live date was approaching, the team decided we should celebrate in a unique way.  We planned a birthday party on the day that Mercury would be “born”.  The day of go-live, we sent out an email telling everyone that cake and ice cream would be served at 1pm in one of the conference rooms to announce the birth of Mercury.  We brought in blue balloons, candy cigars, streamers, and had a party.  Everyone came (seriously, who doesn’t like cake and ice cream at work?), and our CEO said a few words congratulating the team and communicating his enthusiasm for the new project management system.  Naysayers at the beginning of the project were happily stuffing their faces with cake and celebrating the success along with the rest of us.  It was a great moment, and a project the entire team could be proud of.  We delivered a solution that brought tremendous benefit to the company; and we couldn’t have done it without the end to end support we received from our fully engaged stakeholders.  It’s amazing what a little creativity and resourcefulness can do!