Facebook evangelism: Vatican uses social media to reach a modern congregation

Pope2You online TV, a Vatican Facebook app, YouTube channel and an iPhone app signal the bold entrance of the Vatican into the world of social media. 

Monsignor Paul Tighe, Secretary of the Pontifical Council for Social Communications will be in Darwin this month to talk to public relations professionals from around Australia about the opportunities the World Wide Web and social media has presented to the Catholic Church.  

“We recognise that a church that does not communicate ceases to be a church,” said Monsignor Tighe. 

“Many young people today are not turning to traditional media like newspapers and magazines any more for information and entertainment.” 

“They are looking to a different media culture and this is our effort to ensure that the Church is present in that communications culture.” 

At www.pope2you.net you can watch videos of the Pope’s latest homilies and speeches or watch a live feed of activity in St Peter’s Square via satellite.  

The Pope’s Facebook application gives Catholics the chance to ‘meet the Pope on Facebook’ and send virtual cards with messages from the Pope to their friends.  

“New technologies mean that priests have the possibility to reach people that maybe traditionally they wouldn’t have been able to reach,” said Monsignor Tighe, live to camera on another Catholic video sharing website, all.gloria.tv. 

All.gloria.tv shares videos from Catholics around the world, from the Pope himself to US President Barrack Obama. The site even offers an online dating service for Catholics.  

“The priest is, at the heart of his vocation, a communicator,” said Monsignor Tighe. 

 "Communication of the Gospel must be at heart of the ministry of a priest and I am pleased to work in the Council that has a mandate to harness the potential of the media - new and old - as a means of evangelisation." 

Monsignor Tighe will be speaking at the 2010 Public Relations Institute of Australia National Conference at the Darwin Convention Centre along with representatives from Virgin Galactic, James Hardie and BBC Australia.  

PRIA National President Robina Xavier said the Vatican presentation fits perfectly with this years’ conference theme, PR in a Different Space.  

“All of the conference keynotes, workshops and panel discussions will inspire and encourage participants to do what they do best in a different space or from a new perspective,” Ms Xavier said.  

The conference includes eight keynote addresses and forty speakers over nine streams in a line-up that promises to get public relations and communication professionals ‘all hot under the collar’, according to Ms Xavier.  

“There’ll be case studies including that from Jessica Watson’s Manager Andrew Fraser on her round the world voyage and the BBC’s Louise Alley on bringing Top Gear to Australia. 

The 2010 Conference program includes a Gala Dinner and the 2010 Golden Target Awards Ceremony that celebrates PR campaign best practice at a national level. 

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Media are welcome to attend all events at the conference at the Darwin Convention Centre from 25 to 26 October 2010.  

For more information on the PRIA Conference visit http://www.acevents.com.au/pria2010/.  

To arrange an interview, or to attend one of the keynote addresses, please contact:  

Janelle Rees at Creative Territory on 8941 9169 or at janelle@creativeterritory.com.

Taking Crisis Communication training to a new level with iPad

For some time Creative Territory has been offering workshops about communicating in a crisis. With our extensive experience in handling crises in the Northern Territory in particular, we’ve developed a good understanding of how communication can make or break your reputation when things go wrong.

But in delivering our training, something has always been missing – the consequences. Most crisis training includes some type of scenario exercise, but they are virtually all linear. The scenario plays out the same regardless of what people decide in the workshop itself. While they promote discussion, there are no consequences for choosing the right or the wrong path.

For six months we’ve been working on a way to get some real interactivity into the mix, so people could make choices along the way and see the consequences of those choices.

Thanks to the iPad, and a lot of work scenario planning, we’ve developed a way. And the feedback has been amazing. See Recovery in action with a free demo at this link.

Here are some comments from our first workshop, held in Alice Springs last week:

“We’ve only been going for two minutes and I’m already more engaged in this than I have ever been in a workshop before.”

“The iPad delivery is cool. We were all sitting there waiting for our turn to play.”

“At first I wanted a whiteboard to write everything down on, but then I realised we didn’t need one.”

“It’s great that there are consequences for what you decide. It makes it more real.”

We’ve called our new workshops Recovery, because we teach our clients that this is where your decisions need to be leading whenever you are faced with a real or potential crisis. The decisions you make and the things you say in the heat of the moment can have a lasting impact on your reputation and bottom line.

Recovery is presently undergoing trials in the Northern Territory and Queensland, with plans to launch it in Darwin in October.

International and Galactic Speakers Announced

Stephen Attenborough, Head of Astronaut Relations for Virgin Galactic, has been announced as one of the keynote speakers for the 2010 Public Relations Institute of Australia National Conference.

Other speakers announced for the conference include:

-          Sean O’Sullivan, Public Relations Manager of James Hardie

-          Andrew Fraser, Managing Director of 5 Oceans Media (media campaign manager for Jessica Watson’s solo around the world voyage)

-          Jeff Bullas, Founder of JeffBullas.com

-          Anne Gregory, Board Member of the Global Alliance of PR and Communication Management

To find out more about these and more than 40 other speakers visit http://www.acevents.com.au/pria2010

 

 

Is your advertising dollar buying you new business?

Advertising can be one of the most expensive elements of marketing your business. It can be highly effective, but the return on your investment will vary widely depending on your business, product and audience targeted.

The Benefits

• It is highly visible and seen/ heard by a lot of people
• It reaches customers who don’t already know about you
• Imparts new information to those who do (such as special offers and discounts)
• If done well, can have high recall
• Places you into people’s consciousness, even if they don’t need your services right now.

The Pitfalls

• It can be expensive to make the ad and then run it (depending on the media chosen)
• It will not reach people who are not watching and listening to the place where your ad is.

Is advertising for my business?

Before you consider advertising, you need to have a thorough understanding of your target audience and what they watch, read and consume. Try asking some of your existing customers where they heard about you. Have they seen any of your latest advertising? What magazines do they read? What radio stations do they listen to and when? What other advertising have they noticed?

Which advertising works best?

There is no easy answer to this question. It really depends on where your customers are at. But some media is better at some things than others, as shown below. We've used examples of Northern Territory media to demonstrate.

Newspapers: Examples include the NT News, Darwin and Palmerston Sun, Centralian Advocate and regional weeklies such as the Katherine Times, Territory Regional Weekly and Eylandt Echo. Newspapers have a short shelf life but high circulation. Depending on the publication, they can be really cheap to advertise in. You pay more for Saturdays and Sundays, colour and specified pages. Be aware that public notices cost more per column centimeter than regular advertising and the ad size is smaller. At the same time, public notices offer highly qualified traffic – people looking in the cars section are actually looking for cars. Newspapers are best for imparting lots of information. Design and layout of your ad will be an additional cost of between $100-$500 depending on size and style.

Magazines: Examples include Darwin Life, Resident, Intensity, fishing magazines and Top End Arts. Magazines generally have a longer shelf life, which means your ad is seen for a long time. Most magazines are also directed as specific target audiences, so readers are better qualified. Some magazines also offer complimentary editorial if you buy advertising. Design and layout of your ad will be an additional cost of between $400-$1500 depending on size and style.

Radio: Examples include HOT 100, MIXFM, Territory FM, KIKFM, Larrakia Radio, 8HA and Sun FM. Each individual advertisement on radio is relatively cheap, so you run a lot of ads. Set a budget and ask the radio station to design a campaign for you. Production of your ad will be an additional cost of between $100-$1000 depending on style, voiceover, music and sound effects used.

Television: Examples include Channel Nine, Southern Cross, Imparja and Channel Ten Digital. Television advertising can be expensive, but ask your salesman to work to a Budget. Less watched shows can be much cheaper to advertise in, along with morning and daytime timeslots. Production costs vary wildly – from as little as a couple of hundreds of dollars to over $100,000. Most businesses can make a simple but effective advertisement for $1000-$3000. Beware of special approvals needed for TV advertising and allow plenty of time for production.

Online: Examples include news websites like www.ntnews.com.au, Facebook and Google AdWords. Online advertising is cheap to produce and run. With improvements in targeting, they can also bring you very qualified inquiries. First consider whether your audience is online.

Free Not for Profit Workshops a Great Success

Creative Territory's free workshops for not-for-profit groups have been a great success, with around 100 people attending 14 workshops in Darwin and Alice Springs over the past five months.

Director Tracy Jones said delivering the workshops to attendees was a privilege.

"Not-for-profit groups are able to deliver PR campaigns on a shoestring with passion for their fuel," she said.

"It has been great to work with so many dedicated and inspiring people."

Details about the new workshop series will be released soon.

Book this week for the national public relations conference in Darwin

The national conference of the Public Relations Institute of Australia is being held in Darwin in October with the theme PR in a Different Space.

With early bird prices expiring 30 July, now is the time to get online and book your space.

Go to http://www.pria.com.au to book your spot now!

 

12 Ways to Improve Your Profits

By Janelle Rees

Over the past few months at Creative Territory we’ve downed our blogging pens while we’ve been busy developing the Marketing Health Check – a 12 point checklist to help local businesses pinpoint simple and cost-effective ways to turn their marketing dollars into increased profits.  Here’s a sneak peak from Section One of the marketing health check:

TARGET AUDIENCE

Who is your target audience? Consider:

- Primary audience (most important)

- Secondary audience (not as important)

- Stakeholders (industry bodies, the media, Government, other local businesses)

Understanding your target audience is critical for ensuring your marketing activities reach people who are actually interested in the products and services you have to offer.

There are three different audiences to consider:

Your primary audience: This is your most important audience. These customers are your bread and butter, the types of people you do business with every day.

These are the people you need to make sure your marketing is reaching.

Your secondary audience: This audience is not as important as your primary audience. These are people who might not personally be interested in your products or services, but might mention them to a friend, discuss your business in a social setting or influence other people to use your business.

Your stakeholders: These are the groups or individuals who are not necessarily customers, but who are affected by your business or who have an effect on your business. This includes groups such as the body corporate in your office building, your landlord, your local council, residents who live in the vicinity of your business and more.

Why is your target audience important?

If you don’t understand who your target audience is your marketing efforts cannot be guaranteed to reach them. On the other hand, if you have a clear understanding of who you want to reach the best way to reach them will quickly become obvious.

For example, it if you are a provider of after-school care services you would not want to advertise on television during the day. Why? Because your target audience, working parents, are at work and not at home watching television.

A more effective marketing activity might be to place an advertisement in the school newsletter. Your target audience is parents of students in the location you provide after-school care. An effective way to reach those specific parents is through their child’s school.

How do I know who my target audience is?

When you are identifying your target audience, think about gender, age, geographic location, income level, preferred leisure activities, their profession, their media activities (do they read magazine? Watch particular TV programs? Are there certain times of the day they listen to the radio?) and anything else you know about them.

It can be helpful to think of a specific individual who has all the characteristics of someone in your target audience.

Did you find this helpful or know someone who would? To access the complete Marketing Health Check including a worksheet to help you identify the characteristics of your target audience contact us today. We’ll arrange a time to meet with you to go through the health check in detail and provide advice specific to your business.

Creative Territory

think outside the circle

T: 08 8941 9169

E: darwin@creativeterritory.com

Author’s corrections – how can you slash your agency bill?

By Tracy Jones

One of the most hated terms in the marketing and public relations world is “author’s corrections”. We hate charging for them, our clients hate paying for them and our designers hate doing them.

Having got that off my chest, I’ll admit that they’re an inevitable and necessary part of our business. But there are ways to make them far less painful for everyone involved.

What are author’s corrections?

Author’s corrections are changes made to the instructions, the scope of the project, the text or the photos you have supplied after work has commenced.

Examples:

Your agency writes a radio script. You request changes. They make the changes and you sign off on the script. This will not incur author’s corrections. However, if you continue to change the script, you may be charged additional costs. If you change the script after your agency has produced the commercial, the costs will obviously be much higher.

Your agency designs a poster. You like the design but want the logo and heading bigger. The agency makes the changes and sends it back to you. At this stage you have not been charged author’s corrections. You approve the second design, but then ask the agency to replace two of the images and change the words in the heading. This may incur author’s corrections because you have made changes to the original instructions.

Why do they cost so much?

It seems simple on the surface to change one or two words. Unfortunately, in many cases this can be a time consuming process. For example:

• If you change the words in a 30 second radio commercial script, you might make the commercial longer than the original 30 seconds. We will need to test the new script to see if it fits in the timeframe and may need to edit other sections of the commercial to reduce the length.

• Graphic design files are very large. That’s what makes them such high quality once they are printed. These large files take time to load and also to save changes. By the time a designer locates the file (which is often stored off the server on a disk because of its size), loads the file, works on the changes, saves it and creates a low resolution copy for you to view, it can take up to 30 minutes to make a minor change. That’s why we ask you to send through all author’s corrections in one go if possible.

• If you add new words to a brochure that has already been laid out, you can push words onto a new line and make the document longer than it was previously. This can bump photos out of place and make columns spill over onto new pages. Once we’ve added the new words we need to check the document to make sure that hasn’t happened. If it has happened, we need to take the time to fix it.

How can I reduce the costs?

• Make sure your text, headings and image choices are approved before you send it to your agency.

• For projects that require design, filming or audio, organise approvals before your agency proceeds to the production stage. It is much easier to change a word in a text document than to reshoot a TV commercial.

• If your agency is working in a text document, consider updating the document yourself rather than marking it up and sending it to the agency. That way you won’t be paying for the agency to make the changes.

• When you receive a draft make sure everyone provides their changes at the same time. Send all the changes through to your agency at the same time. It costs more for the agency to change five words on five separate occasions than to change all five at the same time.

• If your agency sends through something that you are not 100% happy with, tell them what you like about it and what you don’t like about it. This will make it easier for them to get it right.

Most importantly, if you are worried about author’s corrections talk to your agency about it. Any good agency will be happy to provide advice on how to keep costs down.

Don’t just blog it – think about it.

I recently read a blog that suggested PR agencies were not practicing what they preach because only a quarter of them had blogs.

As a PR agency with a blog, you might expect me to agree with this line of thinking. But I don’t.

Blogging is just ONE strategy that a PR agency – or anyone else for that matter – may use to communicate with its target audience. Others include Yellow Pages, advertising, networking, media, newsletters, e-newsletters, website … shall I go on with my list?

My own agency has a blog but we don’t use Yellow Pages or hard copy newsletters. I know of other agencies that do use newsletters and advertising but not blogs. We each choose the right tools for our product and our audience.

Similarly, we strongly recommend that some of our clients use Facebook but not others. We recommend TV advertising for some campaigns but not others.

Not every tool is appropriate in every circumstance and blogging is no different. So how do you choose?

I always start with the same questions:

· What do you want to achieve?
· What are your key messages?
· Who do you need to talk to?
· What will push their buttons?

Don’t waste your money on activities that won’t achieve your goals. Put your time and energy into ones that will.

It's time to fight the spin.

By Tracy Jones

There’s nothing like a bit of “spin” to excite the media and the Opposition.

But is the Government’s investment in public relations really throwing money down the drain as today’s Northern Territory News suggests?

The News revealed $9 million of taxpayer money was being spent in marketing and communication units across Government.

When the uninformed call marketing and communications professionals “Spin Doctors” and question our value to society, we need to remind them of the difference these disciplines make to everyday lives.

Imagine where we would be if no-one ever “spun” the horror of AIDS?

I remember when AIDS first came to light in the eighties and the panic and uncertainty that took hold as people began to realise there was a new and vicious disease emerging in the world.

While the medical community fought the disease with research and pills, another weapon was unleashed - public relations.

The "Grim Reaper" advertising was highly controversial. People were shocked by the rawness of the message. But it did work. It made us sit up and think. And take notice. And act.

Yes, AIDS remains a terrible disease and - like most diseases that take hold - seems to be taking the worst toll in developing communities without access to the medical assistance, the drugs and (dare I say) the public relations channels of more affluent countries. PR did make a difference - a big difference - to the impact of AIDS in our community.

Every single day the Government sends us messages about issues we need to know about.

Just this week we’ve been informed about the availability of dozens of jobs, free dietary advice for healthy living, free business events, how to save energy, a car park closure, how to become a foster parent, joining the Youth Round Table, volunteering to help out at the museum and ways to get into home ownership if I am on a low income. And that’s just in the NT News.

That doesn’t count the websites, newsletters, meetings, mailouts and direct contact undertaken by Government every day.

Government has a duty to inform its citizens about these issues. It has a responsibility to undertake social marketing in the areas of community health and welfare, road safety and substance abuse. It’s hardly surprising that the Department of Health and Families is the biggest spender in this regard – I’d be affronted if they were not.

Marketing and public relations play an important part in our community. These activities raise money for important medical research, convince us to donate blood, warn us about the risks of travelling to certain countries, show us why we should report suspected child abuse and help us make choices that will change our lives.

One of the key roles that often comes under attack is that of the press secretary. But let’s not undervalue the role of the press secretary in helping Ministers and Opposition members contribute to public debate. And seriously …. I’d love to see how newsrooms would get their stories without the work of the much-maligned media minder.

There’s no doubt there are some questionable pieces of “marketing” that make us wonder about the appropriateness of Government spending our money on them. Rather than tarring all PR and marketing activity with the same well-spun brush, it would be far better to question the value of individual activities.