Veda Launches 2011 “Credit Management in Australia” Report

The challenge:

Veda enlisted Howorth to develop and execute a two-week media strategy to release the results of its 2011 Credit Management in Australia, a report providing insights into how global and local economic factors are affecting the credit management processes of Australian businesses. Veda conducted the survey amongst 220 credit managers from a cross-section of Australian industry. Veda works closely with a large proportion of Australia’s credit professionals which gives the company a detailed understanding of local credit management issues within a national and global context.

Our approach:

The hot topic in Australian media in the week and days leading up to the launch of the report was the announcement by the Reserve Bank of Australia to drop interest rates in December and whether the big banks would pass it on – which was seen as a welcome relief to businesses – especially small and medium sized enterprises – and consumers.

The Howorth team spotted the opportunity to capitalise on the announced rate cuts by linking the credit management report to the topic. We worked closely with Veda’s spokesperson Moses Samaha, Head of Commercial Risk, to craft an interesting story for media on these topics. We also advised Veda to bring in a third party spokesperson, and as a result were able to work with Terry Collins, CEO AICM to strengthen our story even further.

The results:

We targeted selected business and financial media for a preview on the report setting up two interviews with Sky Business News and AAP ahead of the official launch. This resulted in 29 pieces of editorial across TV, newswires and online in the week following the release of the Credit Management in Australia 2011 report. Articles reported on the results of the report as well as giving Veda’s view on the state of credit management in Australia.

Highlights included:

• An 4 minute interview on Sky Business News with Moses Samaha;

• Moses Samaha and Terry Collins featured in tier one media targets including AAP, Daily Telegraph, The Australian, Herald Sun, The Age, etc.

• As a result from our outreach, Veda received a number of requests for more information from government agencies such as the Department of Employment, Economic Development and Innovation, and from Credit Managers across a wide range of industries in Australia and New Zealand.

Howorth unveils three new hires

On the back of continued growth, Howorth has appointed three new employees across its specialist practices. Robin Clark joins in the position of account director in the technology team, Tegan Knight in the position of account manager in the consumer and lifestyle team, and Steven Reilly in the position of senior account manager in the corporate and business-to-business team.

Howorth’s managing director, Graham White, said: “Howorth experienced a record year in 2010 and we’ve seen continued growth and momentum in 2011, adding a number of new clients and further organic growth within our existing portfolio. As a result, we’ve had to further expand the teams and we’re delighted with the new talent coming into the agency.”

Clark (pictured left) is relocating to Sydney from Weber Shandwick, London, where he has spent eight years working his way through to the position of account director, leading a number of international technology and corporate accounts including Capgemini, Microsoft Research, Microsoft EMEA and Monster Europe. Clark’s first role in PR was at Apple in 2002, when he was offered a role as a PR assistant following a successful internship. At Howorth, Clark will be working on clients that include Telstra, Intel and Hitachi Data Systems.

Reilly (pictured middle) joins from the Sydney Opera House where he has been working as a communications specialist for the past five years. Two key highlights include the Oprah Winfrey Show with Tourism Australia and the YouTube Symphony Orchestra with Google, which gained 33 million viewers, overtaking U2 as the most viewed live performance on YouTube. Other key events included APEC Australia and the FIFA World Congress.

Reilly started his career in his native Scotland and prior to coming to Australia held communications roles at organisations including the UK Film Council, Scottish Screen and marketing agency 2Fluid Creative, At Howorth, he will be supporting the management and growth of Howorth’s B2B/Corporate practice, working on a range of business-to-business and corporate clients and including reputation, sustainability and CSR-focused programs.

Knight (pictured right) has been freelancing since arriving in Australia in September 2010, including TMTE Group, Hausmann Communications and Hill & Knowlton. He has also worked as a trade marketing assistant at ninemsn.  In London, Knight was a senior publicist at Romley Davies Publicity managing PR campaigns for Universal Pictures and 20^th Century Fox, as well as press management of the BAFTA Children’s Awards and the EMPIRE Film Awards. At Howorth, he will be working on a number of accounts in the company’s Digital Lifestyle Group including Microsoft.

Howorth is part of Ogilvy PR Australia, the country’s largest and most awarded public relations agency, which has scooped more than 50 Australian and global trophies in the past two years. In 2010, Howorth took top honours amongst all WPP-owned worldwide PR agencies, winning best PR campaign of the year.

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Case Study: 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 activity 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 on their family tree pass their grandparents.

Creative Idea: With the information available in the collection and results from the research, the 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, we dug through the collection to uncover multiple human interest stories which would resonate with modern day Australians. We also used the allure of ‘celebrity names’ to help Australians understand the depth and breadth of the type of records available.

By asking ‘who you really are’, it encouraged speculation on 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 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, we 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 on when they could listen to live radio interviews.

Outcome: Overall, the 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.

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.

Microsoft Australia hosts commercial Surface launch

To mark the commercial availability of Microsoft Surface, Microsoft Australia hosted a media launch event to showcase the features of this innovative new hardware device at their Australian headquarters in Sydney on Tuesday, 9 February 2010. Surface is a new multi-touch product, developed as a software and hardware combination technology. The device allows a user, or multiple users, to manipulate digital content by the use of gesture recognition.

The launch produced fantastic results for Microsoft, with 32 key media and analysts attending the event including The Australian, SMH.com.au and CNET. Following the launch, over 40 pieces of coverage were published across a variety of online, print and broadcast outlets, including key metropolitan, consumer, technology and business media targets. Stand out pieces following launch included a five minute, live-to-air interview on Sky Business News’ Tech Report and a live demonstration of Surface on Channel 9’s TODAY program. The show’s technology editor, Charlie Brown, and host Karl Stefanovic demonstrated the Surface product and discussed its potential commercial uses.

Howorth’s primary role was to drive awareness across broadcast, consumer and IT media to strengthen Microsoft’s profile as an innovator and leader in the technology field, as well as to promote Microsoft Surface as a desirable and game-changing product to potential partners and customers. The results of Howorth’s PR strategy helped generate an extremely positive buzz around the launch event. The coverage that appeared in the days following positioned Microsoft as an innovative company and highlighted the collaborative and inventive features of Microsoft’s new Surface unit.

Following the launch, Microsoft Australia Developer Evangelist, Michael Kordahi praised Howorth’s efforts by saying, “Howorth deserve some major credit for delivering a successful launch. They not only delivered, they delivered with the highest of standards and passion. Despite the very aggressive timeframe of the launch, they provided a-class service.”

How do you get distributors x-cited about steel?

In the face of challenging economic conditions, BlueScope Steel asked the Howorth business-to-business/corporate public relations practice to help build distributor awareness of its Australian manufactured XLERPLATE® steel plate products, converting them from passive referrers to passionate champions of the range.

Steel producers and on-sellers had an extraordinarily tough year in 2009, with sales and revenues falling as global demand for steel weakened and import competition increased. While the public relations campaign needed to communicate the core brand values of XLERPLATE® (quality, flexibility, diversity), we needed to deliver these messages to a sales-savvy audience without them being rejected as marketing ‘clutter.’

Howorth’s insight was to package up new product information within a wider marketing campaign, challenging distributors to take part in ‘Operation XFACTOR’.

We took updated sales collateral, developed e-communications and a striking X-Factor website to cover off all channels, ensuring that distributors could not help but be exposed to XLERPLATE® steel.  Once the buzz had been created around the product, a three stage online competition created strong incentives for participants to review and retain key product information, with Red Balloon vouchers rewarding those who successfully completed a ‘Quest for Quality’ around the plate’s key features and benefits.

Howorth worked with Random Studio and Alpha Salmon to deliver the PR campaign, including the development and design of marketing collateral and website. Participation rates have been strong and initial feedback has been overwhelmingly positive:

“I wish our marketing department thought of this a long time ago”
“Really clever concept…”
“Appreciate all of the new info. Thanks so much”
“Quality information”

The first phase of the PR program will continue through to May 2010 – Howorth is also in discussions with BlueScope Steel about subsequent phases of the campaign.

Australia faces widening ‘productivity gap’

Australia’s productivity gap – the difference between productivity expectations and action – has widened from 29 per cent in 2009 to 34 per cent this year, according to new Telstra research.

Underlining the findings of the Government’s Intergenerational Report, the Telstra Productivity Indicator research found that improving customer service and productivity are the key priorities for Australian organisations, ranking 78 per cent and 76 per cent respectively

The Productivity Indicator also found that only 42% of decision makers measure productivity, have a target and know what that target is compared with 49% in last year’s report.

The Telstra Productivity Indicator was the brainchild of Howorth and sister agency Parker&Partners and is now in its second year.  The report has already received widespread media coverage in Australia.

For more information please visit http://www.interactivemediarelease.com/back/productivity

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