Rotary International held its 105th annual convention in Sydney in 2014, attracting more than 18,000 Rotary club members from over 150 countries. The major communication objective of the Convention was to increase awareness of Rotary, the Convention and Rotary’s premier program to eradicate Polio.

Flagship Communications was responsible for packaging and promoting specific news opportunities to the media and key stakeholders, integrating the media campaign with social media strategies and ensuring third party advocates and Rotary International communicated a consistent set of messages to culturally and demographically diverse audiences throughout Australia. Flagship Communications, in co-operation with Rotary’s team, also developed strategic partnerships with key media organisations such as Channel 7 TV Network and 2GB radio station.

To ensure maximum publicity our approach involved  running of two campaigns simultaneously. The first campaign focused on promoting stories identified in the story plan to major media outlets. The second campaign involved working with local Rotary Clubs in Sydney to promote their involvement in the Convention to their local media outlets. Both campaigns required stories to be carefully packaged and matched to media outlets most likely to publish or broadcast the story. running a generic media campaign which focused on major media stories

This strategy proved highly successful with Rotary obtaining three times the number of mentions in the media usually achieved at their Conventions. Our premier media events which included the record breaking climb over the Sydney Harbour Bridge and Opening Ceremony achieved significant coverage in both in Australia and around the world.

Customer: Rotary International
Services: Media management
Stakeholder engagement
Category: Community