Taurus engages over half a million Australians to Clean Up
Award winning campaign registers highest number of cleanup sites
Clean Up Australia is a Not-For-Profit that inspires and works with communities to clean up, fix and conserve our environment. It is the organisational body behind the nation’s largest community event, Clean Up Australia Day (CUAD), encouraging communities, schools and businesses to organise their own Clean Up event. The CUAD campaign aims to both educate the public to bring about long term positive behavioural change but primarily motivate participation in the event.
A mature brand in need of fresh ideas
Following the previous year’s landmark 20th anniversary celebration, the 21st CUAD was faced with reigniting fresh interest for both dedicated and new volunteers. For an event that was in danger of looking tired, it was essential to engage Australians across the nation to register to actively clean up as the commitment of volunteers to CUAD is core to the campaigns success.
Taurus was tasked with building awareness for the mature brand and for an event that was seeing a decrease in growth rate. This challenge involved reigniting passion and involvement as well as dealing with advertising creative poorly suited to developing PR angles.
It also required generating and maintaining media attention over five months – while competing with the largest sequence of natural disasters in Australia’s history and the event’s first ever fatality.
PR objectives included
- Drive registrations for sites across Australia
- Increase community reach
- Create greater involvement by stakeholders internally and externally to Clean Up eg media, sponsor and volunteer involvement
- Encourage actionable change aligned to key messages
Campaign goals
- Register more sites than 2010 (7073 sites)
- Ensure coverage across all media
Showcasing the community heroes to spearhead the campaign
Research was key to providing Taurus with news hooks throughout the five month build up. Taurus studied previous year’s campaigns to determine successes and failures and held strategy meetings and brainstorms with Board members and sponsors to involve them to the campaign’s advantage.
The research was linked, releasing local statistics in every region visited and providing Clean Up Australia’s Co-Founder Ian Kiernan with a different hook in each area.
Around the clock communications to maintain the buzz
Taurus pitched nationally to all media (proactive and reactive) and utilised social media engagement to achieve business and schools support. Taurus also assisted with educational events, crisis communications and driving support from site representatives, councils and ambassadors.
Keeping focused amidst campaign crisis and national disasters
Major Challenges Faced
Tragically, in 2011, the first ever fatality occurred during a clean up. Taurus worked to ensure this did not affect participation and the media was given the facts.
This was not the only challenge – throughout the course of the campaign some of the worst natural disasters in Australia’s history occurred. This included Cyclone Yasi hitting on the day of the Sydney launch at Sydney Aquarium.
Strong issues management expertise ensured Taurus were on message and sensitive to these disasters and that the Sydney launch was a success.
“Taurus made a strategic decision to mobilise regional Australians and engage them by targeting local media to get to the grass roots with the support of research. Site coordinators and volunteers were utilised as ambassadors to profile throughout the campaign and they became the campaign’s media heroes.”
– Sharon Williams, CEO, Taurus
Taurus PR support boosts participation and reignites awareness
As a result of the PR support Taurus provided, CUAD maintained their reputation and awareness and interest in the 21 year old event was reignited. This translated to 565,631 volunteers removing an estimated 16,449 tonnes of rubbish Australia-wide.
Outstanding Campaign Results
- Taurus increased the number of sites to 7,479. Over 400 more than 2010 and a record for the last four years.
- Taurus achieved 3,258 pieces of coverage across print, online, TV and radio.
- Major media wins included The Circle, The Project, Kerri-Anne, The Australian and all state newspapers and TV news channels, including national news attention for the schools program for the first time.
- A great radio response from national youth stations such as Triple M and Nova to talk back such as ABC, 702 and 2GB and variety of regional volunteer stations.
- Taurus upped the ante for Clean Up online via the use of constant tips, assistance with updates, monitoring, tweeting during Q&A as well as overall increase in social media presence and online engagement.
- Sponsor participation – McDonald’s and Commonwealth Bank on Sunrise.
What Taurus did for Clean Up Australia
- Taurus increased the number of sites to 7,479. Over 400 more than 2010 and a record for the last four years.
- Taurus achieved 3,258 pieces of coverage across print, online, TV and radio.
- Major media wins included The Circle, The Project, Kerri-Anne, The Australian and all state newspapers and TV news channels, including national news attention for the schools program for the first time.
- A great radio response from national youth stations such as Triple M and Nova to talk back such as ABC.
- 702 and 2GB and variety of regional volunteer stations.
- Taurus upped the ante for Clean Up online via the use of constant tips, assistance with updates, monitoring, tweeting during Q&A as well as overall increase in social media presence and online engagement.
- Sponsor participation – McDonald’s and Commonwealth Bank on Sunrise.
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