MEDIA STUNT Blog 2 Shine Communications

So this week has been easily the most interesting experiences so far on my placement, and I think it will be hard to beat! Sine Communications has been working with the Aged Care Services of WA (ACSWA) for a few years and given that it is an election year, the organisation has been interesting in campaigning for more federal funding as WA is crucially short of beds in aged care centres. As Ruth also has a number of aged care providers for clients themselves, she came up with an idea to gain media attention by performing a ‘media stunt’. A protest was to be held outside one of the centres, where a few of the centre’s CEOs would sit in beds that would get pushed out of the front doors to highlight that lack of money these centres have to provide beds. Stephen Kobelke, CEO of ACSWA, would be speaking and we worked closely with him to organise the day. While most of the organisation and writing up on the media release on the issue went smoothly, Ruth was on edge about whether any media would show up. If there was no members of the media there on the day then it could be a disaster and in general a pointless exercise. At a meeting I attended with Ruth it was decided that if the worst-case scenario occurred and no media turned up, then they could turn the morning into a ‘networking’ event for the CEOs. Ruth also covered her back by booking a photographer to work herself, so that there would definitely be photos of the event that she planned to send to publications such as ‘The Senior’ as well as being able to use these images for newsletters, brochures etc. for her clients.
All the major media organisations were sent media releases and the day before the ‘stunt’ Ruth and I sent out media alerts, which were basically cut down versions of the media release with just essential information on it. I had sent the information to my contacts at WAtoday but still we couldn’t be guaranteed that the media would show up. We were confident that we could get a community news photographer there, as the various aged care providers who would be represented on the day are from a variety of suburbs and so stories could be run in a number of the community papers.
On the morning of the stunt Ruth received confirmation that Community News, Channel 9 and Channel 10 would all be there. On our way to the venue Channel 7 and ABC also confirmed they would be attending, which was a huge relief to everyone. We were extremely organised so the stunt went off without a hitch, all the media were there including WAtoday and the speeches and interviews that were given were fantastic, especially Channel 7, whose reporter spent the most time at the centre out of everyone and took the time to interview a lot of the elderly residents and get a great story together. It was an amazing experience for me and I was so proud of the efforts everyone went to, especially because it was so newsworthy and such a good cause. Stephen Kobelke successfully got the message across to the media that there is not enough federal funding going into aged care and that elderly people were being turned away every day and had nowhere to go to get the care they required.
That night the footage was on all news broadcasts and this story was also up on WAtoday http://www.watoday.com.au/wa-news/lack-of-aged-care-beds-leave-elderly-in-hospital-20100811-11z9i.html
The story was then tweeted by myself and Stephen Kobelke which I think was a great way to gain more coverage. I sent the tweet through to a few political campaigners I had been following who also picked up the story and retweeted it. It was interesting how much these types of social media can aid a campaign.
Today highlighted to me however something that we have been told constantly in lectures, that the success of public relations is hard to measure. We were measuring our success for this project on how much media coverage we received, however how will we ever know if this is actually successful in influencing the government on giving more money to the aged care industry?
On that note, I did receive feedback on that the story I posted in my last blog which was in regards to the dogs refuge in Shenton Park being at capacity. I organised coverage of the story of WAtoday, and the president of the refuge told Ruth that they day the story was run they received the most hits on their website ever, and eight people came in and took home dogs. I took that as indication of a successful campaign. Here is that link for those who missed it http://www.watoday.com.au/wa-news/dog-home-over-capacity-20100805-11hwv.html?autostart=1