Faces of the Australian open

Challenge: Getty Images believes that mobile photography has made huge strides in a short time, so much so that the company provides its photographers with software tools that allow them to create smartphone-style images that are of high enough quality to be used by their commercial clients.

As the official photographic agency for the Australian Open, Getty Images’ team of photographers embraced the smartphone look  by applying special effects to their portraits of quirky spectators, umpires, ball boys, media and event staff.

These images became known as the Faces of the Australian Open.

Strategy: To capitalise on the hype building around the grand final match; Howorth developed a two-fold media strategy.

Part one: offer national metropolitan titles the Faces of the Australian Open album to run as an online image gallery.

Part two: provide national lifestyle tech title, CNET with exclusive access to Getty photographer, Cameron Spencer, to develop a feature on the ever-increasing popularity of smartphone photography from a professional perspective.

Results: The result saw a ¾ page article featuring Faces of the Australian Open images published on page six of the Sydney Morning Herald. Fairfax Media also syndicated an online image gallery across 24 metropolitan and regional news sites.

CNET published two stories including an online image gallery and an in-depth article on how professional photographers integrate smartphone technology in their work, featuring comments from Cameron Spencer.

In total, 27 news clips were generated from this campaign reaching a potential audience of 4,419,355 Australians.

Bride again

Challenge: When Getty Images photographer Adam Pretty won the prestigious Getty Editorial Fellowship, he grabbed his camera and prize money and headed to the Japanese town of Kesennuma – one of the most devastated regions from the Tohoku quake and tsunami in 2011.

Overwhelmed by the scope of tragedy, Adam resolved to give something back to the people by reconstructing wedding portraits of couples whose original wedding photographs were destroyed.

Adam’s Bride Again project is a strong example of the depth and power of the work of Getty Images’ photographers.

Strategy: To coincide with the second anniversary of the Tohoku quake and tsunami, Howorth approached two media outlets – Fairfax Media and ABC – with the opportunity to speak with Adam.

Both interviews would discuss why Adam chose to focus on the Japanese tsunami and uncover stories of survival and love among the families involved in the project.

The story that Howorth and Getty Images wanted to tell was that of the strength, resilience and hope of the Japanese people living in Kesennuma.

Results: Following an interview with The Sun Herald, a half page article featuring a Bride Again wedding portrait was published in the newspaper.

This piece was syndicated to 157 online Fairfax metropolitan and regional news sites including the Sydney Morning Herald, The Age and Brisbane Times as well as featuring in Fairfax’s tablet edition.

Adam’s interview with the ABC resulted in an online feature piece, exposing the news to a potential audience of 3,700,000 Australians.

This campaign generated a combined total of 159 clips and reached a potential audience of 18,022,235 Australians.

A Winning Formula: The Official Launch of Windows 8

Challenge: Building on the wave of interest and anticipation from Windows 8 Consumer Preview, the PR team was tasked to deliver a high impact, broad-reaching publicity campaign to amplify the local Windows 8 story.

Windows 8 heralded a huge brand shift for Microsoft, of which the PR campaign needed to emulate. The approach needed focus on people not product, stories over messages and product engagement over sales in order to help audiences emotionally connect with the experience that Windows 8 offers.

Strategy: With an audience spread across the entire gamete of media – from technology to consumer lifestyle and everything in between, the PR team developed an educational approach that would deliver targeted information, purely relevant to each segment before culminating in the official launch event.

In September, a series of 10 one-on-one briefings were held with the most influential people across technology media in order to ensure a well-grounded level of knowledge and understanding of the Windows 8 story in the lead up to launch.

Following this, in October five consumer lifestyle mini-events were hosted at the Ivy Penthouse. The events saw the presence of 26 key media from Australia’s highest circulating consumer glossy magazines, providing these media with a first look and touch of the new operating system.

The third phase of activity offered our influencers the opportunity to ‘touch and try’ Windows 8 through the seeing 10 RTM Samsung Slate 7 devices.

Results: All of this activity culminated in the official Windows 8 Australia launch on the 26th October 2012.

Launch day kicked off early with three pieces of solid coverage across breakfast TV which highlighted the availability of Windows 8 and Surface in Australia. The PR team worked with key morning reporters to educate them on the new product features so they could speak as ‘experts’ on Windows 8.

The tone of the coverage was very positive, with many broadcast articles positioning the Windows 8 launch as Microsoft striking back against other tablet competitors – to quote Sunrise host Andrew O’Keefe commenting “The Empire strikes back,”. News of the availability and Harvey Norman’s Midnight Madness stunt echoed across the daily news cycle and wells as the availability of devices and the different SKUs available locally.

The Australian media event commenced at 9:30 AM and saw the attendance of over 110 media from an extensive array of consumer lifestyle, broadcast, news, consumer tech and more. Media guests included the likes of Channel 7, Channel 9, SBS World News, ABC Radio National, ABC News 24, 6PR, Better Homes and Gardens, Rolling Stone, Men’s Health, The Australian, The Sydney Morning Herald, The Daily Telegraph…etc.

Key results include:

• 1457 pieces of local coverage in the first 14 days post launch
• 246 hours of broadcast coverage
• 110+ media attended the launch event

Imagine Cup Microsoft

Challenge: Student technology competitions, such as the Imagine Cup, have traditionally appealed to a narrow audience. Howorth was challenged with taking the Imagine Cup to the masses. Mainstream media coverage that told stories for the everyday Australian which generated conversations, and told the Microsoft innovation story around four key event milestones: the local finals, the Road to Sydney, the 2012 World Wide Finals, and the APAC BizSpark Entrepreneur Summit.

Strategy: Howorth focused on strategic storytelling across broadcast and key national print media. To ensure understanding of the key messages, we brought the story to life using the student’s journey and their projects to showcase the innovative solutions they have devised to solve real-world issues, and positioning the students as tomorrow’s Bill Gates or innovators.

Results: Results included high impact and broad stories on the Imagine Cup. Telling the Imagine Cup story through broadcast outlets and the student projects helped us showcase the global nature of the competition and brought media on the journey. Out of the 75 unique pieces of coverage for the World Wide Finals, 72 clips mentioned Microsoft and were in-line with corporate key messages for the competition.

Ready, set, go! Getty Images captures the action of London 2012

With the London 2012 Olympic Games in full swing it’s not just the athletes who are working hard to be at the top of their game – the Getty Images team of award-winning photographers are also in the thick of the action at the world’s greatest sporting event.

Throughout the Games, Getty Images photographers will capture the action from every possible angle at each of the Olympic sporting events as well as the opening and closing ceremonies and medal presentations.

An Olympic first

Although Getty Images has a long-standing history with the Olympics, London 2012 will be the first time that their photographers will use cutting edge 3D and robotic camera technology to capture the action.

A team of select photographers will shoot the games in 3D in addition to using custom designed robotics rigs to capture the agony and the ecstasy of the competition.

To showcase Getty Images industry leading innovations the team at Howorth devised a communications program which focused on the technology and talent behind the camera lens.

Featuring TV and print profiles of top Getty Images talent including VP of Editorial Photography Stuart Hannagan and Australian photographers Mark Kolbe and Chris McGrath, the program also targeted leading technology websites.

The results

Coverage was secured on Channel 9’s Wide World of Sports Road to London program, with a segment featuring Stuart discussing iconic Olympic images syndicated to 37 stations across Australia.

An in-depth interview with Mark and Chris in CNET Australia examined the different ways in which Getty Images is “pioneering new ways of thinking about sports photography.” CNET is one of the country’s most popular technology websites, visited by 1.8 million Australians each month.

Computerworld Australia featured an interview with Getty Images Senior Director of Editorial Photography, Ken Mainardis and Gizmodo, Australian Creative, Campaign Brief and Photo Review produced articles on the technology being used by Getty Images during the London 2012 opening ceremony.

Mark was also interviewed by the Inverell Times and The Northern Daily Leader newspapers about the 3D technology, and Chris was featured in the Sunshine Coast Daily, discussing the robotics rigs he will be operating during London 2012.

Case study: Kronos Healthcare Study

The Challenge: Kronos is a global company specialising in workforce management. As part of the ongoing public relationship campaign, Howorth was engaged by Kronos to identify a newsworthy issue outside their typical scope on which Kronos could offer a fresh perspective, which would in turn generate positive media coverage and support the overall sales drive.

The Approach: Howorth recently worked with Kronos on a case study with the Macquarie University Hospital. The study generated much media interest and as such, signalled a definite area of opportunity for the team to further explore.

Focusing on the Healthcare sector, Howorth set about creating a research campaign that would help to support future conversations for Kronos with media as well as potential customers. Supported by good customer examples, this would present a very compelling reason for media and influencers alike to listen to what Kronos had to say.

Howorth’s initial research revealed that despite healthcare being a vital part of the economy -and important to every Australian, there were significant pain points regarding the welfare of nurses and the fact that the industry had not benefited from the technology revolution that is fundamentally changing whole industries.

Howorth engaged and interviewed over 200 healthcare professionals from across the country as part of the “Nursing Pulse Check” survey regarding their concerns and pain-points about the industry. The survey examined the working conditions of Australian nurses, the attitudes they have toward their jobs, as well as opinions on technology and the future of the industry.

The research revealed that half of Australian nurses planned to leave the profession within next ten years.  With work-related stress being such a large factor, as well as nurses indicating that they extend themselves to their limits to manage their workloads, the results strongly indicated the need for healthcare management and employees to collaboratively review current workforce management methods.

The Results:  As a part of the media strategy to support the launch of the survey, Howorth proactively pitched to over 50 media targets across both print and broadcast publications by drawing upon three main angles:

• General news angle: critical shortage of nurses in the Australian healthcare industry;
• Technology angle: the ability of the healthcare industry to adopt technology such as the roll out of the recent e-health initiative;
• Health angle: dissatisfaction of nurses suffering from stress and burn-out.

Howorth secured and facilitated eight media pre-briefings, as well as six on-the-day radio interviews for Peter Harte, VP APAC for Kronos.. These briefings resulted in a total of 119 pieces of coverage. This includes ninety-five pieces of coverage across broad spectrum of news, health and technology publications, including The Daily Telegraph, Canberra Times, The Age, News.com.au and Courier Mail. A further twenty two pieces of broadcast coverage were secured in the form of live radio Q&A, news grabs and pre-recordings. In addition, the survey findings featured on two top tier free-to-air and pay television news broadcasts.

Ancestry.com.au – Solomon Family Reunion

It all began with one man – Samuel Moss Solomon.  He was the father of Emmanuel and Vaiben Solomon, brothers who were transported to Australia after being charged with stealing some clothes.

Fast forward 194 years and the Solomons have left a significant mark on this country. A classic story of a ‘convict made good’, Emmanuel Solomon was a member of parliament, a philanthropist and benefactor to the arts. His descendants have also had a strong impact on the history of Australia, with one nephew holding the record for the shortest stint (one week) as Premier of South Australia and then going on to become one of the founding fathers of Darwin. Another descendant helped write the Australian constitution, five fought in Gallipoli, and one perished on the Titanic.

On March 10-12, 2012, a reunion of the Solomons and associated families took place in Melbourne. The organisers credited Ancestry.com.au for helping them to build their extensive family tree and the reason they were able to find and contact so many family members. Brad Argent, content director, Ancestry.com.au was invited to speak at the reunion.

Our approach:

The Howorth team wanted to share the Solomon’s story and build mainstream interest family history category in general. Given that Monday was a public holiday in Melbourne, and there was the potential for media interest to be light, the team pre-pitched the story as an exclusive to Channel 7’s Sunrise and followed up with a media alert which was issued to local Melbourne media.

The results:

In total, 108 pieces of TV, radio, print and online coverage were achieved from this campaign with a reach of over 1.7M impressions.

Highlights include:

-              Brad Argent, Ancestry was interviewed on Sunrise along with other members of the Solomon family. The piece was also re-played nationally on Channel 7’s 4:30pm News

-              Brad was also interviewed by Channel 7’s 6pm News who also attended and covered the reunion

-              The Age came to the reunion and spoke with family members

-              The event organiser, Jenny Cowen, was also interviewed on Radio National Breakfast the morning of the event.

Imagination for business – a thought leadership project for Canon Australia

Challenge: Howorth has been working with Canon’s corporate and business imaging communication teams  since the end of 2010. In 2011, Canon asked Howorth to develop a campaign that would support one of their core company values – imagination at both the corporate and the business imaging divisional levels.

Our work: It was clear this project would be more than a media relations campaign. The team at Howorth researched the concept of imagination and looked at existing data on imagination and productivity in the workplace. We found a team at UNSW that had proven a link between imagination and learning effectiveness in school children – but the phenomenon of ‘the imagination effect’ had never been proven in a corporate setting.

Canon formed a partnership with the School of Education, UNSW. We designed an experiment for members of Canon’s business imaging sales team to see what effect engaging the imagination had on the effectiveness of a new training module. Participants were split into two groups and completed multiple choice tests on product knowledge before and after an e-learning program. Both groups were given different learning instructions. The imagination group was instructed to use their imagination to learn concepts and procedures about a Canon product and the study group was instructed to use traditional study methods.

The results were extremely interesting – for the first time, the imagination effect was proven in a corporate setting. In fact, the imagination group made significantly more learning gains than the study group with the imagination group’s test results improving by 63% compared with 29% for the study group.

Concurrently, we commissioned a survey of 400 senior decision makers at medium and large organisations across Australia to investigate the state of imagination in business. The survey found that despite the fact those organisations that value and harness imagination were also the highest earning companies, across the board, imagination ranks last on a list of 15 workforce characteristics valued by employers.

Results: The research findings were published by Canon in a report titled Imagination for Business, stating the case for adding imagination to the managerial tool box. Additional content was produced for a microsite, www.imaginationforbusiness.com.au.

The story captured the imagination of business, HR and other vertical media, with more than 30 in-depth media articles published on the topic. The UNSW professors are also planning to present their academic paper at a number of international cognitive load conferences later in 2012.

But perhaps most importantly, the thought leadership exercise resulted in a real change in the way Canon will deliver its training modules as part of ongoing learning and development programs, because Canon now has a low cost way to make training more effective for their workforce – the application of imagination.

Canon’s Extreme Imaging competition – putting imaging science on the news agenda

The challenge:

Canon Inc operates five research and development facilities around the globe, one of which – CiSRA – is located in Australia at Canon’s North Ryde campus.

CiSRA contributes imaginative technologies, intellectual property and customer insights to Canon – in fact many of the components found in Canon’s leading consumer and business technologies were created in the Australian facility.

In addition, the profile of imaging science in Australia is quite low, despite the groundbreaking work being completed within Australian Universities.

CiSRA enlisted Howorth to help communicate CiSRA’s role in the Australian science and technology landscape, promote the study of imaging science and improve the status of CiSRA as an exporter of science and technology innovation both at home and in the region.

Our approach:

A great public relations opportunity arose with the launch of CiSRA’s Extreme Imaging competition. To promote and celebrate Australian innovation, Canon offered a series of prizes to tertiary students and their supervisors for innovative work in the field of imaging science.

The competition was open for students developing a new technique or equipment to produce images as part of their supervised research project – be it in medicine, physics, engineering, information technology or other academic disciplines.

Howorth devised a PR strategy to communicate the opening of the Extreme Imaging awards to potential participants in the education sector, and then publicly profile the winners in order to achieve the goals of raising the profile of both CiSRA and the imaging science sector.

The results:

Once the winners were announced, Howorth reached out to CiSRA’s key media such as science and technology targets and university media units as well as local, regional and major metropolitan media. Working with the winning students to harness their personal story, we created lots of excitement around local imaging science innovation.

CiSRA held an awards ceremony at the Sydney Observatory – rewarding the winning students and treating guests (including journalists from New Scientist, Cosmos and Science Illustrated) to viewings of Jupiter and Venus through the Observatory’s telescope – a fun and educational night for all!

The media outreach resulted in 54 pieces of editorial across various publications including Sydney Morning Herald, Cosmos, The Age, Tech World, National Geographic, The University of Sydney website, Canberra Times and local publications such as the Hornsby Advocate.

For more information about CiSRA, see the 2011 award winners or to apply for the 2012 competition when it opens, see http://www.canon.com.au/Extreme-Imaging.

Telstra Productivity Indicator 2012

Next Page »