This campaign is an annual gig here at Red PR; the team knows the drill well. We’ve proudly been working with the Queensland Fire and Rescue Service for five years to promote the ‘Don’t be a fool, change your smoke alarm’ campaign. So, six months ago in November we kicked into gear for our 2013 promotion and began ferociously working on what turned out to be my first full blown start-to-finish campaign.
Fast forward through three months of meeting, planning, writing, planning, meeting, planning (yes, there was more!) editing, agreeing, disagreeing, convincing, accepting, spruiking….. and we finally arrived at March where all the fun began!
As the campaign was a state-wide community awareness initiative, the pitch applied to almost every media outlet across Queensland – TV, radio, newspapers, online – and in every single location! This means a lot of work for us gals here at Red, and a lot of communication between the client, us and the media. Fortunately, we had fantastic support from the firefighters at Queensland Fire and Rescue Service and a great uptake from the media.
It seems we do live in a state where messages of community safety and awareness still mean a lot to media outlets and they’re willing to help out (those firefighter pictures don’t hurt either!).
Across the state the Red PR team secured an incredible amount of coverage with the campaign featuring in around 90 newspapers, 50 radio stations and every television channel with Seven National News, Channel 10’s The Project, WIN News and Seven Local News all covering the story from Brisbane, Toowoomba, the Sunshine Coast and Wide Bay to Rockhampton, Mackay, Townsville and Cairns.
We were also incredibly lucky to have the Queensland Reds boys back on board again this year, with props Greg Holmes and Albert Anae, winger Rod Davies, flanker Beau Robinson and lock Radike Samo all donating their time and efforts to take part in the campaign. Thanks to them, we had a huge response from the community with social media posts going viral on Facebook – some reaching 75,000 people with 460 likes, 91 shares and 18 comments (the greatest response Qld Reds have ever had!).
After we hit April 1st, when the campaign peaked, things changed quickly. The planning was finished, the pitching pitched, the story covered. The client moves on to another project and the Red team kicks off on another campaign. This is what they call post-campaign depression (it’s a real thing – don’t judge!). So we’ve got about a six months until the ‘Don’t be a fool, change your smoke alarm’ campaign comes onto our radar again – until then I hope you all continue to enjoy the firefighter pictures J I’ll be sure to provide you with more next year!
