The Partnership team at MEDA needed to get the policy document in front of specific government decision-makers and keep visibility building after the event, before momentum faded. My contribution as the Communications lead on this project was a phased distribution plan: submission, amplification, and ongoing circulation, with content built for each audience and channel it needed to reach.
The plan was to drive substantive government engagement with the policy recommendations while positioning MEDA as a credible convener and thought leader in the Canada-Africa trade and development space. Every piece of content was built around that goal and mapped to a specific audience. The primary audience received an in-person delivery of the document: Global Affairs Canada officials and two parliamentary committees. Secondary audiences such as policy media, think tanks, and academic institutions were reached through LinkedIn and curated email lists.
From there, a full content suite was written to carry the document through each phase of rollout: a news post framing MEDA’s role as convener and submitting organization, platform-tailored social posts for LinkedIn, Twitter, and Instagram, leadership commentary drafted for MEDA’s President & CEO, and email communications to event participants and stakeholders. Working alongside the CEO’s Communications Advisor, this campaign also secured her an op-ed placement in The Hill Times. Each piece was written to a specific voice and purpose, from formal government correspondence to social captions inviting participants to share their own contributions.
At the halfway point of the rollout (ongoing as of Fall 2026), the campaign had drawn roughly 17,200 total impressions and about 420 engagements across LinkedIn, Instagram, and Twitter/X. LinkedIn drove the vast majority of both reach and engagement, with an average engagement rate around 20%, well above typical benchmarks.
Because this is a key opportunity for increased visibility for the organization, the design brief was built to keep it unmistakably a MEDA publication. Direction was given to the design agency to feature MEDA’s own brand system: with its main colour and gradient carrying the core content and the organization’s signature leaf shapes used to frame imagery and call out quotes.
Each of the report’s five policy pillars was assigned its own accent colour from MEDA’s palette, giving readers a visual cue for where they were in the document without breaking from its consistent page template. Event photography from the evening was directed to run throughout as contextual background, framing the content.
The one page built outside the agency’s hands was the “About MEDA” spread, which I designed myself: closing out the report using MEDA’s own photography. It stands out as a full-page, ad-style spread, but stays consistent with the report’s overall visual language.
