Strategic campaigns case study · Thumbtack · 2025
Launching Thumbtack's New Mission
A year-long internal campaign to introduce, activate, and sustain Thumbtack's new mission across a 1,300-person company. From a single Employee Kickoff announcement through 12 months of programming, manager enablement, and pro and customer storytelling.
- Company
- Thumbtack
- Scope
- 1,300 employees
- My role
- Strategy and execution
The situation
Thumbtack introduced a new mission: Help homeowners and home professionals accomplish more. Employees needed to understand what it meant for the company and how their work connected to it. Employee Kickoff introduced the mission. We planned a year of communications to keep that connection visible.
My role
I owned the communications strategy and execution, including the launch campaign, the year-long programming calendar, the manager enablement cadence, and the pro and customer storytelling series. I also collaborated with an external creative partner on the intranet takeover and asset development for launch week.
The strategic decision
Before launch week ended, we had a 12-month content plan in place: monthly pro and customer videos, a recurring employee series featuring people across tenure and function, and quarterly talking points managers could use with their teams. The previous mission felt too far removed from employees' daily work. I wanted each communication to make the connection clear through the work happening across the company.
The channel plan
- Teaser phase: Teaser campaign in newsletter and company Slack channels, including a branded Wordle as a mission clue on the final pre-launch day.
- Launch day: Employee Kickoff. Intranet takeover with Mission Control as the single source of truth. CEO mission essay published live.
- Day after launch: Intranet badge awarded to all Employee Kickoff attendees.
- First week follow-up: Newsletter mission follow-up. Manager Hub launch with activation guide, discussion prompts, and year-ahead preview. First manager newsletter published.
- Ongoing: Monthly pro and customer video series at all-hands. Recurring employee series. Quarterly manager cascade. Mission tie-ins to spring campaign, company events, and AI initiatives.
What I built
We built an intranet landing page called Mission Control as the primary source of truth for the new mission. It included our CEO's essay, the Employee Kickoff replay, pro and customer pages, and Zoom backgrounds. The Manager Hub activation guide gave managers structured tools to bring the mission into team meetings immediately after launch. The monthly video series created a sustained connection between the mission and the people it was built around, Thumbtack's pros and customers. The employee series paired people across tenure and function to keep the mission feeling human and grounded throughout the year, no matter your role.
Ongoing work
The campaign is still running. We continue to look for ways to connect our communications to the mission.
The broader lesson
The monthly videos, employee series, and manager talking points gave us regular opportunities to connect the mission to employees' work throughout the year.