Client Profile: Okanagan Science Centre

About the Client

​Okanagan Science Centre (OSC) is a nonprofit, charitable organization based in Vernon, British Columbia. Their mission is to make science education fun and accessible to residents and visitors of the North Okanagan. Their centre, located in Polson Park in downtown Vernon, provides a variety of hands-on exhibits and activities to inspire scientific curiosity for visitors of all ages. They even boast the Okanagan’s only fixed roof planetarium and offer daily shows to those interested in the stars and planets. In addition to their physical centre, Okanagan Science Centre also provides school-based education programs throughout the region.

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The Challenge

The organization operates with a lean and operationally-focused team, but lacks dedicated in-house resources to scale their marketing and brand. Their technology systems were fragmented and there was a lack of consistency around their brand visuals. Beyond day-to-day operations, the team is preparing for impactful changes that are coming on the near-term horizon. These “big moves” will propel Okanagan Science Centre to new heights, but require careful marketing and communications planning to prepare for effectively. Another challenge was the manual and cumbersome digital processes in place that needed to be evaluated. Additionally, there was an important need for communications planning to ensure all their stakeholders were clear on the exciting changes that were coming.  They identified an opportunity to enlist specialized external support to review their marketing presence and help with communications planning. And that’s where Change Bomb comes in! 

 

The Solution

Heather Ballachey, principal marketing consultant, was introduced to Okanagan Science Centre through the organization’s board chair. After meeting with Dione Chambers, executive director, it was determined that a 6-month consulting engagement would be beneficial. The objective was to provide strategic marketing and communications focus to prepare for the exciting changes and announcements coming for the organization later in 2025. Heather began by reviewing the organization’s Shopify-powered website, providing recommendations for messaging clarity and SEO optimization. A technical audit review uncovered important opportunities to align OSC’s website with best practices for search engine optimization. She additionally evaluated the options for managing online donations through Shopify, recommending the most straightforward and cost-effective approach as an interim solution. 

 

Heather worked closely with Dione on internal communications planning, ensuring that OSC team members had unified messaging for engaging key stakeholders. Finally, Heather developed a keyword and content strategy that identified key articles to develop to improve search engine rankings for the organization’s summer camp programs. She launched the blog and contributed a series of articles built on a pillar and cluster strategy. This resulted in improvements to OSC’s search rankings overall, driving more engaged traffic to their website. Heather also introduced the organization to an experienced graphic designer to produce brand guidelines and design templates for the team to use going forward. This gave the team a strong foundation on which to develop and deploy marketing materials that are truly brand-aligned.

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What's Next for Okanagan Science Centre

Heather looks forward to continuing to support Okanagan Science Centre on an as-needed basis as they prepare for the exciting organizational changes that will unfold later in 2025.

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