Caltex & Starlight: Spreading Miles of Smiles
The Challenge
The Starlight Children’s Foundation teamed up with long time supporter, Caltex in the single biggest initiative ever undertaken by the two organisations: The 50 Towns in 50 Weeks tour.
What We Did
In what was affectionately referred to as Australia’s ‘happiest road trip,’ Captain Starlight, the human face of Starlight, completed a year long, 40,000 kilometre journey around Australia, spreading laughter and smiles to children in even the most remote locations. Peer developed a comprehensive national and local media relations campaign and stakeholders communications program to highlight and celebrate the journey’s many milestones.
Benefits to Client
- Reinforced Caltex's commitment to Australia and the communities in which they opperate
- Mobilised Caltex's nationwide network of retailers, resellers and business partners
- Created a celebration for Caltex employees to mark the homecoming occasion
Results
From Gove to Grafton and Albany to Alice Springs, Peer secured a swag full of media coverage. Sunrise waved the van goodbye from Sydney; 9am with David and Kim hitched a ride in Bega; Jules Lund made a pit stop on Temptation; The Today Show and Steve Jacobs welcomed the van into Wollongong; and national daily newspapers and magazines captured snapshots throughout the epic journey.
The 50 Towns in 50 Weeks tour visited thousands of seriously ill children in the country’s regional areas and raised almost $80,000 through community fundraising events –its year-long media relations program brought the tour highlights into loungerooms Australia wide.
ING DIRECT: Paint Your Palace
The Challenge
ING DIRECT challenged Peer to launch its newest brand, ING DIRECT Home Loans. In iconic ING DIRECT style, the idea needed to be big and original. No tolerance for copycat concepts, ING DIRECT enjoyed straying from the status quo.
Ultimately, our objective was to secure widespread media coverage to hail ING DIRECT’S presence in the competitive and crowded home loan market.
What We Did
Peer brought ING DIRECT Home Loans into Australian living rooms by negotiating a viewer competition with Australia’s Gold Logie winning TV program, Rove Live.
Would you paint your house the most vibrant shade of ING DIRECT orange for $200,000? In the “Paint your Palace” promotion, the winning entrant had to paint their house orange - live within the 90-minute Rove Live broadcast - to win this life-changing amount of money.
At the show’s conclusion a giant orange billboard declared… “ING DIRECT Home Loans are here”.
Benefits to Client
- Viewers throughout Australia were left in no doubt as to ING DIRECT'S presence in the Australian mortgage market. By reaching well over on million Australians, it was hard to deny the publicity value of the "Paint Your Palace" promotion.
- This unique competition, carried out under the glare of national television, provided money-can't-buy branding opportunities.
The Results
The competition achieved the objective of securing high profile national media coverage. The big picture shows that ING DIRECT Home Loans has helped the company’s retail mortgage loan book rise by 26.3 per cent to $26.4 billion during 2006.
BPAY: Celebrating A Decade of Australian Innovation
The Challenge
November 15, 2007 marked the 10th anniversary of the country’s fastest growing bill payment service and one of the nation’s most recognised brands - BPAY. The client asked Peer to develop a multi-tiered PR campaign to thank their stakeholders and communicate its accomplishments to the wider Australian public.
What We Did
The launch of a single bill payment service adopted across the entire banking sector still remains a world first, so three specific 10th anniversary initiatives were developed within the context of ‘Australian Innovation’.
Benefits to client
- Created an occasion to formally thank its stakeholders for the success of its collective journey
- Established the brand’s innovation credentials within the context of Australian inventions
- Continued to build brand awareness
Results
10-Year Anniversary Event
BPAY’s status as an Australian innovator was showcased alongside this country’s other key inventions, such as the Hills Hoist, the Victa lawnmower, the bionic ear, Aspro and Aerogard. And fittingly, James O’Loghlin, the host of ABC TV’s New Inventors series, hosted the evening. The occasion’s significance was captured by the Australian Mint, which was commissioned to produce a one-off commemorative BPAY coin that was given to each guest.
News & Views Newsletter
The specifically-themed 10-year anniversary newsletter provided a 360 degree view of the brand’s successes through the eyes of BPAY employees, billers, financial institutions and consumers.
Media Relations
Press releases were crafted for three media audiences; general news, personal finance and IT. Placements were secured in the Daily Telegraph, The Sydney Morning Herald, the Courier Mail, The Brisbane Times, Adelaide Advertiser and The Age.
Travelex: Making Holiday Budgeting a Breeze
The Challenge
Travelex asked Peer to develop a PR concept that would help protect and reinforce the pioneering position it had created for its Cash Passport product. Virtually peerless in the market, ANZ and CBA were preparing to launch prepaid cards specifically to the travel market, and Visa and Mastercard had multi-million dollar debit card campaigns underway.
What we did
The first of its kind, the Travelex Holiday Budget Barometer provides travellers with an essential budgeting guide for the world’s top 10 international holiday destinations. It enables travellers to compare the value of certain cities by comparing the costs of the most important “B’s” of holiday living expenses: a Beer, Burger, Bed and Breakfast.
Benefits to Client
- Generated valuable column inches communicating Cash Passport’s international convenience and ease
- Reinforced Travelex’s authority as the world’s travel money specialist
- ncreased awareness and sales of the Cash Passport
Results
Full-page media coverage was achieved in the Sunday Telegraph, Australia’s largest selling Sunday newspaper, as well as all other News Limited newspaper travel sections. Peer even took the Travelex Budget Barometer to live television, with an interview conducted on Sunrise, Australia’s highest rating breakfast television program.
ING DIRECT: Moulin Rouge
Challenge
The ING Foundation was formed to raise funds for worthy Australian charities, and Peer was asked to launch this new and unknown corporate charity endeavour.
What We Did
Peer transformed Sydney’s magnificent State Theatre into a little piece of 1880s French glamour for the inaugural ING Foundation Gala Dinner, A night at the Moulin Rouge.
Peer organised the event on behalf of ING Group Australian-based business, with all proceeds from the evening going towards the ING Foundation’s four partner charities – Barnardos, Redkite, UNICEF and The Spastic Centre.
Australia’s favourite breakfast TV host, David Koch, helped guests to understand the benefit the evening’s proceeds would bring, by speaking frankly with each charity representative.
Peer coordinated a range of sponsors to contribute to the French-themed event, which saw 270 corporate guests uniquely seated on the theatre stage for a night of fine French food and breathtaking entertainment.
Hosted by a gregarious ‘ringmaster’, the evening was a bustling slice of the Moulin Rouge including a tissue artist, choreographed dancers, the high energy Can Can, opera singers and several roving performers. The evening was simply Spectacular, Spectacular!
Benefits to Client
- By raising money for important causes in a country in which they do business, the ING Group of businesses were able to give back to the community.
Results
With a ticket price of $1,000, the event was able to raise almost $140,000 that was distributed across four non-profit organisations.
Unilever: Creating TV Stars
Challenge
Unilever Australasia asked Peer to create an out-of-the-ordinary event for an internal employee launch of the newly-created product - the Dove Shampoo and Conditioner Hair Care range – that incorporated the company’s new ‘Enterprise Culture’
What We Did
At cinemas in Melbourne, Sydney, Auckland and Wellington, some 2500 of Unilever's Australian and New Zealand employees gathered to watch a special edition of the popular television show, Sale of the Century (Temptation), filmed especially for Unilever.
The pre-recorded program recreated the atmosphere of a TV studio and featured Unilever employees as contestants, Unilever products as prizes, and visits to the "gift shop" to launch the company's newest product, Dove Shampoo and Conditioner.
The program’s “famous faces” were our Unilever Australasia board members. Prizes behind each ‘face’ were prizes relevant to Unilever.
The four contestants played for a children’s hospital in their capital city and any cash won was donated to that contestant's charity.
Immediately following this special internal screening of Sale of the Century, employees gathered into teams and took mini samples of the new Dove Shampoo and Conditioner product to the streets, asking consumers to complete a short questionnaire.
Consumers were given a free sample of the new product, with Unilever donating $1 for each completed questionnaire to the relevant city's children's hospital.
This unique Gold Star event concluded during the afternoon, with all employees listening to a recorded message of thanks from Unilever Australasia's Chairman via the buses' tape deck on their way back to work.
Benefits to Client
- Dimensionalised Unilever’s new corporate culture initiative via a new product range
- Generated instant Dove brand champions – internally and externally
- Included a sampling opportunity to build grassroots word-of-mouth
Results
The event was described as one of Australasia’s largest product sampling exercises which helped lay the foundation for the success of the most important brand extension for Dove since the launch of the Dove Cleansing Bar in the 1950s.
Bankcard: A Revolutionising Piece of Plastic
The Challenge
The owners of Bankcard launched the brand and the product in 1974 to introduce Australians to credit cards. 30 years later, the product had achieved what it set out to do.
Bankcard asked Peer to implement a comprehensive communications plan to help ensure an issues-free exit of Bankcard in Australasia, while assisting the migration of those active customers to their own bank’s preferred, alternative credit card.
What We Did
The strategy that informed all the tactics was to position the closure of Bankcard as an opportunity, by celebrating its success rather than mourning its demise.
The implementation needed to address the concerns of all key stakeholder’s, including participating banks’ corporate affairs departments, credit card services departments, Bankcard’s one million cardholders, Bankcard merchants, media and the general public.
The development and implementation of a comprehensive issues management plan addressed the communications activities of all the stakeholder group.
These activities included:
- A media protocol process for handling all media enquiries
- Specific ‘holding’ and ‘if-called’ media statements and call centre statements
- Media training of the scheme’s most appropriate media spokespeople
- A media announcement press release
- An Australasian-wide media distribution list
- A stakeholder mailing to all relevant politicians, regulators and industry bodies as well as selected consumers and community groups
- Other critical written materials included a key message document, a Q&A document, draft newsletter copy, customer letter templates, customer letter templates, call centre scripts, etc.
Benefits to Client
- Seamless, swift and issues-free communications planned simplified the product’s exit from the Australasian market
- Minimal disruption to key stakeholder groups ensured continued positive relations
- Maintained the brand’s positive heritage
Results
This multi-audience approach to the brand’s exit ensured that the same messages were communicated through various channels, and focused on the success and legacy of this ‘Australian first’. Importantly Australian consumers who relied on their Bankcard were given the opportunity to migrate to other options, minimising any inconvenience that Bankcard’s closing may have caused.
ING DIRECT: Million Dollar Goal
The Challenge
As one of Australia’s fastest growing retail banks, attracting over 1,000 new customers nationally, ING DIRECT needed an excuse to celebrate its eight-millionth global customer in a big way. Such a celebration was going to require a massive idea, so that ING DIRECT could celebrate this milestone in style.
What we did
ING DIRECT gave Aussie hopefuls a chance to reach their savings goals in an instant by providing a chance to win $1 million in cash with the launch of the ING DIRECT Million Dollar Goal kick-off.
The challenge for contestants – they needed to kick a goal against internationally renowned goalkeeper and one of the world’s best ‘savers’ Peter Schmeichel at Old Trafford, home of the English powerhouse Manchester United. With three attempts each, contestants had the opportunity to win cash prizes for each goal kicked, and on the third a chance to win $1 million in prize money.
Money raised from defeated kicks would be donated to The Malcolm Sargent Cancer Fund for Children. Peer worked closely with the Herald Sun, Daily Telegraph and Channel 10’s Rove (live) program, to deliver a compelling media promotions campaign.
Benefits to client
- Established ING Direct as an exciting and creative brand
- Heightened visibility and brand recognition across popular media channels
- Provided measurable outcomes and tangible return on investment
- Appearing on Rove (live) provided access to a captive audience
Results
The ING Direct Million Dollar Goal was televised live via satellite on Rove (live) and became the most talked about competition in mainstream media across the country. It attracted an incredible amount of media interest, creating a huge amount of buzz. Interest on the Rove (live) site alone reached an all time high, with visitation to the site increasing by 700%. Internet commentators at The Australian thought the promotion was so successful, it warranted a feature story on the success of the promotion in the Media section of the newspaper.