Pulse meets Mickey & Minnie Mouse

On May 29 2011, Disney Junior, a new multiplatform brand and channel devoted to children ages 2-7, debuted in Australia on FOXTEL and AUSTAR. The channel replaced Playhouse Disney, and consumer public relations agency, Pulse Communications, was tasked with securing positive editorial in high profile outlets to raise awareness of the launch and encourage parents and kids to tune in on launch day and beyond.

To celebrate the launch, Mickey & Minnie Mouse travelled to Australia from Disneyland for the first time in 7 years. An exclusive launch party was held at the Sydney Opera House in the week before launch, which was attended by hundreds of parents and kids. Pulse also secured a number of celebrity mums and dads to attend the launch party, including cricketer Ricky Ponting and TV star Katrina Warren.

In addition, Pulse managed a media photo call with Mickey & Minnie and excited local kids at Mrs Macquarie’s Chair. Nancy Kanter, Senior Vice President for Disney Junior Worldwide was also in Australia for media interviews in the days before launch, and Pulse secured back-to-back interviews for Nancy over the course of two days.

At the conclusion of the public relations campaign, Pulse had secured positive editorial coverage on the Disney Junior launch that reached over 8 million Australians. Coverage highlights included morning TV show The Circle, and large news pieces with photos in The Australian and the Courier-Mail.  The campaign delivered a 4:1 ROI and exceeded KPIs by almost double.

On launch day, Disney Junior rated the #1 kids channel in Australia and enjoyed 44% more viewers compared with Playhouse Junior the previous Sunday.

Starting 2011 by ‘Shopping with a Conscience’

Issues: One of Australia’s favourite charities, The Salvation Army, relies heavily on funding from its Salvos Stores across the country. However, recent research showed a decline in foot traffic into local Salvos Stores. Reasons include a lack of awareness about Salvos Stores locations, low awareness about items for purchase, and no understanding of the importance of Salvos Stores in the local community.

Insight: Salvos Stores are full of great bargains and unique, one-off items. In addition, each time Australians shop at their local Salvos Store they’re helping the environment (by buying recycled goods) and their local community (as 100% of all proceeds from purchases made at local Salvos Stores go back to The Salvation Army to help the local community). Consumer public relations agency, Pulse Communications, knew that these key factors needed to be communicated to Australia, as it would encourage people to revisit their local Salvos Store.

Strategy: Pulse partnered with Salvos Stores as a pro bono client and created the first ever ‘Shopping with a Conscience’ month, to launch during the ‘New Years Resolution’ period to encourage Aussies to “shop local and discover local” at their local Salvos Store. To coincide with the public relations campaign, Salvos Stores launched its online store – the first charity online shopping site of its kind in the country. The online shopping story was our lead angle at launch, supported by the start of ‘Shopping with a Conscience’ month.

Challenges: The week before launch, the state of Queensland experienced its worst flooding on record. This caused loss of life, wide spread devastation and severe damage to Salvos Stores in the area. The Salvation Army was heavily involved in the relief efforts, and it was therefore important we addressed this issue in a sensitive way without compromising the ‘Shopping with a Conscience’ campaign. Therefore our messaging was: Given the recent flood disaster, it’s more important than ever that Australians ‘shop with a conscience’ this month to help us help flood affected areas and victims.

Activities: To strengthen the online message and provide a cost efficient way for the charity to communicate its announcement, Pulse conducted the press conference via an online presentation program webex, which received wide praise from the client and media. To complement the webex, Pulse held a vision call at a local Salvos Store which helped generate TV coverage. Pulse also conducted an extensive ambassador engagement program of behalf of the charity, which secured key Australian identities including two TV presenters, a fashion designer, a local mayor and a famous photographer to use for media outreach and consumer engagement in-store.

Results: Pulse generated 104 pieces of coverage (more than double the agreed KPIs) in the first week alone. Coverage highlights include Channel 9 News, Channel 7’sToday Tonight and a half page feature in one of Australia’s largest newspapers, the Daily Telegraph. The public relations campaign has allowed Salvos Stores to connect with over 10 million Australians (nearly half the population) and generated an equivalent of $263,231 worth of advertising value for the worthy cause.

Ogilvy PR shortlisted for AdNews Agency of the Year

Ogilvy PR is very excited to announce that we have been shortlisted for the PR Agency of the Year in the AdNews Agency of the Year Awards. The awards recognised great work across 14 agency categories. Ogilvy PR’s entry focussed on our impressive client roster and results driven client campaigns as well as our commitment to our people through our value drive culture and industry leading training and development programs.

The Awards will be announced at Star City on Thursday February 24 in a ceremony hosted by Burt Newton.

Motorola DEFY Launch Event

Ogilvy PR’s technology and business to business public relations agency, Howorth Communications, has a long-standing relationship with Motorola and hosted an event earlier in the year, focusing on Motorola’s re-entry to the Australian market following a quiet period.  To continue this momentum, Howorth was briefed to host another event to launch its newest smartphone and hero device, the DEFY.

The DEFY is built on the Android 2.1 operating system and the handset is water, dust and scratch resistant, making it the ultimate ‘summer-proof’ phone. It also features MOTOBLUR which allows users to sync all their contacts, messages and social media applications to their 3.7” screen.

As such, Motorola was targeting a young and active audience – consumers who want a phone that can keep up with their life but that also comes with all the features of an Android smartphone. The launch event had to serve a dual purpose – to educate media on the phone but also reflect the summer-proof and fun nature of the phone.

The Motorola DEFY event was hosted at the Ivy Penthouse, known for its exclusive and young energetic vibe. Ambassador of the DEFY handset and Pro skater Corbin Harris guest presented at the event, demonstratedwhy the DEFY is perfect for him and his lifestyle, even stating “It is so tough, I can’t even break it when it drops from my pocket“.

The public relations event consisted of two sessions, the first a private briefing session to all tier one, business, TV, lifestyle consumer and trade media hosted by Motorola and Telstra spokespeople, followed by a party, which was attended by a number of celebrities and social pages media.

The first session attracted 37 attendees from key media including; Sky Business News, Sydney Telegraph, Sydney Morning Herald, T3, Women’s Health, Cleo, Channel 9, Herald Sun, CNet, 2GB, Madison and Sun Herald S.

The second session attracted 30 key celebrities including; April Rose Pengilly, Alex Needs, Lincoln Lewis, Rhianna Fish and Roxy Jacenko. Also in attendance were seven snappers and twelve prominent social pages media.

The event was covered across a range of platforms.

Twitter activity was also significant with a peak in conversation which can be attributed to event use and encouragement of the #defy hashtag, including tweets from key celebrities April Rose Pengilly and Roxy Jacenko.

Ogilvy PR receives more award recognition

Last night at PRIA’s national Golden Target Awards held in Darwin, Ogilvy PR received more recognition for excellent work.

Ogilvy PR’s technology and business public relations agency, Howorth, received a Highly Commended award in the Business-to-Business marketing category for the “Telstra Productivity Indicator” campaign. The campaign, launched for the second consecutive year in February 2010, set out to demonstrate Telstra Enterprise & Government as a leader in technology, business and productivity, as well as successfully position the company from a transactional leader to a trusted advisor offering strategic advice, industry insights and world-class technology to the C-Suite across public and private enterprises in Australia.

Impact, Ogilvy PR’s employee communication experts, together with its client, Bayer Australia and New Zealand, received a Highly Commended award in the Internal Communication category.  The team was recognised for communication excellence for the development and execution of Bayer’s B-Green project which drove and achieved measurable behaviour change across its Australian and New Zealand workforce around sustainability.  The project, steered by a specialist team operating under Ogilvy PR’s growing sustainability OgilvyEarth practice, led to a raft of energy, recycling and other initiatives and was also recently awarded the best internal communications program for all Bayer companies worldwide.

The Reputation Group, who recently joined forces with Ogilvy PR operating out of the Melbourne office, received a Second Highly Commended award in the Health Organisations category for the launch of the DrinkWise Australia campaign – KIDS ABSORB YOUR DRINKING. Designed to tackle Australia’s drinking culture, the campaign aimed to positively influence the future drinking behaviours of young Australians.

Congratulations to all the teams involved!

Launching Australia’s first Rainforest Alliance Tea by Lipton

Brief: Assist in launching Lipton Black Tea sourced from Rainforest Alliance Certified™ farms – a first for the Australian tea industry.

Challenge: Prior to the tea’s launch, Australians had a limited understanding and awareness of the Rainforest Alliance Certification™. Pulse needed to manage media skepticism and claims of “green washing” which was an issue high on the media agenda.

Insight: Australians want to make a positive contribution to sustainability and make their world a better place but any actions they undertake need to be manageable and accessible.

Creative Idea: Give Australians tips to make better, sustainable choices at home.

Campaign:  Ogilvy PR’s consumer public relations agency, Pulse Communications, released the “Sustainable Australia?” report, a 12 month study which delved into Australians attitudes and perceptions of sustainability, with support from the Rainforest Alliance.

Pulse briefed 20 key NGO and influencers in the field of sustainability on the new research and certification process. Following this, a press conference featuring key Unilever and Rainforest Alliance spokespeople was held to engage news, environment and marketing media.

Pulse invited two journalists from Notebook and the Sydney Morning Herald to visit the Lipton’s first certified tea plantation in Kericho, Kenya.

To increase longevity of the story as a new angle in phase two of the public relations campaign Pulse focused on one of the key findings from the “Sustainable Australia?” report which revealed Australians are confused about sustainability and how to take action. In order to overcome this, Pulse gave Australians the tools to act sustainably by engaging key women’s/sustainability bloggers by getting sustainability expert Katie Patrick to develop the Lipton “Make a Better Choice” pack which will included top tips for Australians to act sustainability in the home.

Outcome:

• Over 13 million people have been reached through consumer and trade media coverage including key pieces in mx, Sydney Morning Herald, metro radio 2UE and a five-page feature in Notebook
• Pulse successfully managed to overcome any “green washing” claims and negotiated two positive stories with Julian Lee, Marketing Editor of the SMH, including a key news piece in the front section of the paper
• Twenty NGOs and key influencers were engaged on the certification process and the launch announcement received wide support
• 50 pieces of consumer and trade media coverage has been secured including key pieces in metro newspapers
• Every piece of media coverage secured featured at least one key message and over 85 per cent of coverage featured two key messages around Lipton’s commitment to sourcing tea with the Rainforest Alliance
• Over 7,000 Australians engaged in the blogger micro-contest therefore becoming involved in the sustainability concept, and Lipton’s partnership with the Rainforest Alliance

Plan International: Because I am a Girl Campaign

Challenge: To assist community development NGO ; Plan International Australia in launching its third annual report; Because I am a Girl: The State of the World’s Girls 2009 and raise the profile of Plan International in Australia with maximum media, corporate and consumer support.

Insight: Women make 81 percent of the charitable decisions in the home however women want an emotional connection with the charity they support.

Idea: To differentiate Plan’s Because I am a Girl campaign from any other NGO campaign, Ogilvy PR’s consumer public relations agency, Pulse Communications, coined the term ‘the gender-rational poverty cycle’.  A two- phased call to action was designed to demonstrate how breaking this cycle in developing countries by investing in girls would ultimately benefit everyone – men, women, boys and girls.

Influence:

• Pulse secured 66 pieces of  coverage including SBS TV, National 9 News, ABC Radio National , The Australian, AFR and Nova 96.9 FM
• Key features appeared in long-lead lifestyle media: Notebook, Marie Claire and Vogue
• The campaign was commended in the 2010 PRIA State Awards, Community Relations category

Ancestry Gillard/Abbott Family Trees

Challenge: To capitalise on the interest and broad media attention surrounding the 2010 Australian Federal Election, Ancestry.com.au set Ogilvy PR’s business and technology public relations agency, Howorth, the challenge to find an opportunity to get the family history website into the debate.

Idea: Research the family history of the two main candidates to discover their family pedigree and to investigate if there was anything in their family history that may have formed the basis for their political ideologies. This would create an interesting news angle, with human interest, and quite different from the traditional election coverage.

Insight: Research undertaken by Ancestry.com.au unveiled that for the first time in over 87 years, Australia’s elected Prime Minister would not be Australian born, with both Gillard and Abbott both from the UK.

Campaign: Working closely with Ancestry.com.au to research and pitch this unique insight to the media, Howorth negotiated an exclusive opportunity with Channel Nine’s Today Show. This was followed by both print and radio outreach, with many interviews conducted under embargo.

Results: The media outreach resulted in more than 44 ‘on message’ stories, including radio, television, print and online. Highlights included a five minute live-to-air TV interview on Australia’s highest rating morning show, the Today Show. The team also secured a full page feature article in The Daily Telegraph and an 18 minute interview with 2GB radio in Sydney.

In total the public relations campaign reached more than 3.4 million Australians, highlighting the value of taking a topical news issue and finding a related new insight.

Australia – Who Do You Think You Really Are?

Issue: As the generation gap widens and the population ages rapidly, Australia is in the midst of an identity crisis. Traditionally, family history has been passed down by our grandparents, however, as they pass away, so does their knowledge and many adults now know surprisingly little about their family history. To assist in closing the gap, Ancestry.com.au has worked over the last four years collating the Australian, Birth, Marriage and Death Indexes.

For the first time ever online, the records of those who were born, married or died in Australia from 1788 through to 1985 have been assembled into one fully searchable database.

Challenge: Researching a family tree has typically been a difficult process, involving long hours poring over microfiche in libraries and requiring a significant financial investment to obtain the necessary records. Additionally, this has traditionally been the activity of older generations. The launch of this collection makes it easier to research your family tree, and because of the depth of information included, generates mainstream appeal.

Insight: Through research it became clear that Australians did have a passion to discover where they came from and who their ancestors were. However many did not know much, if anything, about their family tree past their grandparents.

Creative Idea: With the information available in the collection and results from the research, the public relations campaign idea focused on asking Australians to rediscover “who they really are”, in order to drive a renewed interest in genealogy.

To bring this theme to life, Ogilvy PR’s business and technology public relations agency, Howorth, dug through the collection to uncover multiple human interest stories which would resonate with modern day Australians. The allure of ‘celebrity names’ was used to help Australians understand the depth and breadth of the type of records available.

By asking ‘who you really are’, it encouraged speculation of famous connections, including the Murdoch Family (Head of News Corp), Sir Donald Bradman (Famous Cricketer), Henry Lawson (Poet) & Edmund Barton (Australia’s First Prime Minister).

Campaign:  The public relations campaign featured a strong overall communications programme which included a digital and online strategy, backed by strong radio and print coverage to help drive discussion about family history and to set the news agenda on launch day.

Under embargo, Howorth negotiated a series of radio, print, online, TV and newswire exclusives with Australia’s most prominent and influential journalists. Additionally, Ancestry.com.au actively used Twitter and Facebook to promote where and when you could hear Ancestry.com.au speaking about family history – either at events or on radio. This included posting coverage and links of details of live radio interviews.

Outcome: Overall, the public relations campaign generated over 70 pieces of coverage (including 15 radio interviews) and reached over 5 million Australians during the two week campaign.

The collection launch resulted in Ancestry.com.au receiving its highest number of unique browsers to the site in one day. After the campaign, the website continued to receive a high volume of browsers and registrations – with registrations for the free trial membership increasing by 348 per cent from the previous year, and paid membership by 246 per cent.

The campaign has firmly placed family history back at the forefront of conversations and at the same time established Ancestry.com.au as the leading authority for family history.

More award wins for Ogilvy PR

Last night at the Public Relations Institute of Australia’s (PRIA) annual NSW State Awards for Excellence event, Ogilvy PR was the proud recipient of a number of awards.

Howorth received a Highly Commended award in the Business-to-Business marketing category for the “Telstra Productivity Indicator” campaign, launched for the second consecutive year in February 2010. The goals of the campaign are to demonstrate Telstra Enterprise & Government as a leader in technology, business and productivity, as well as successfully position the company from a transactional leader to a trusted advisor offering strategic advice, industry insights and world-class technology to the C-Suite across public and private enterprises in Australia.

Highlighting how tough it is to win a PRIA Award, Howorth was the only winner in the Business-to-Business category. As a result of this award, the campaign is now in the running for PRIA’s Golden Target national awards, which will be unveiled at the national conference in Darwin on 25 October.

Ogilvy PR’s employee communication experts at Impact, together with its client, Bayer Australia and New Zealand, were category winners in the PRIA’s NSW Internal Communication category.  The team was recognised for communication excellence for the development and execution of Bayer’s B-Green project which drove and achieved measurable behaviour change across its Australian and New Zealand workforce around sustainability.  The project, steered by a specialist team operating under Ogilvy PR’s growing sustainability OgilvyEarth practice, led to a raft of energy, recycling and other initiatives and was also recently awarded the best internal communications program for all Bayer companies worldwide.

Pulse Communications added to its reputation of being Australia’s most awarded consumer PR agency, by taking thome two awards from the Public Relations Institute of Australia’s (PRIA) annual NSW State Awards for Excellence event.

Firstly, Pulse received a Commended certificate for the successful Because I am a Girl campaign for the global-not-for-profit, Plan International which was based around a series of in-depth reports into girls lives in developing countries. The campaign aimed to raise awareness of the need to invest in girls to break the global intergenerational poverty cycle and encouraged Australians to support Plan projects.

The second Commended recognition was for launching Australia’s first Rainforest Alliance Tea by Lipton. This consisted of generating awareness of Lipton’s commitment to the international NGO whilst minimising any potential claims of green washing by media and influencers.

Congratulations team and fingers crossed for more recognition!

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