Clean Up Australia Day

PRIA Award

Clean Up Australia Day 2011

Last night the Taurus team won the PRIA State Awards for Excellence - Environmental category for our work on the Clean Up Australia Day 2011  campaign.

This is a huge achievement for not only my team, but for myself - this is the first award I've won for my work in Public Relations.

Back in October 2010, Taurus was approached by the CEO and Communications Manager of Clean Up Australia to take on this 5 month campaign. It was going to be a challenge because this year would be it's 21st year in operation. Coming off a widely recognised 20th anniversary, we weren't sure if we would be able to top last year's efforts.

As a team, we agreed that this would be something we would like to take on although this would be a not-for-profit cause - very different from our usual B2B  rates. For me, I wanted to execute a campaign that I'm passionate about - cleaning up after ourselves.

One of the most irritating habits I find in people is our reluctancy to look for a garbage bin when we have trash. Instead, people throw things out of their moving vehicles, drop things as they are walking especially in parks and beaches, and worst of all - these actions are done with no hesitation or afterthought for the effects on our environment and wildlife.

This campaign would be the equivalent of America the Beautiful, Red Ribbon Week or AIDS Awareness Day having to mobilise an entire nation to get up and represent for this cause.

To get our strategy right, we first brainstormed with the Clean Up team on our theme and PR plan for the next 5 months. Avoiding cliche's or gimmicks, the 21st year's campaign should drive a call to action and take this issue seriously. We came up with the theme "Do your bit...to clean up the environment" and ran with it.

First, we tapped into the long leads (magazines and diaries) in the first 2 months. After our long media summer break of 3 weeks, we reevaluated the next 3 month lead up to 6 March - Clean Up Australia Day. The closer the date got, the graver this work seemed to be. We were responsible for not just driving awareness around the nation, but hitting specific targets of thousands upon thousands to actually register for a clean up site.

By February, it seemed like time was our enemy. Ian Kiernan, the Founder and Chairman of CUAD (and once the 5th most trusted person in Australia!), and the comms team began their nationwide media circuit to boost momentum for the 6th. While they travelled from city to city, we were their comms team at Sydney headquarters. We set up the interviews, wrote media alerts and releases, pitched for more interviews and plugs. We were their round the clock media team. There were times we would come into work knowing we had at least 5 hours of Clean Up focus for the day, but then were thrown 2 more releases to write before the day was over ready for distribution the following day. Our days turned into nights in the last 2 weeks before the big day. We were writing, proofing and preparing for the next day's shenanigans. We did all this in addition to all our other client work.

In the last few days before Sunday the 6th, we were allowed to go into the back end of the registration website so we could prepare media for clean up hot spots on Clean Up Australia Day. Seeing the numbers climb each day, even each hour became our greatest motivation to raise awareness. We desperately wanted to beat last year's number. We checked the site with intensity. With each radio spot, TV advert and press clipping, we saw these numbers rise getting ever so closer to last year's figure.

On Sunday the 6th of March, my colleague and I went to Kirribilli at the crack of dawn to help set up the live feed for Channel 9's The Today Show's weather team. Every major channel and station was covering Clean Up Australia Day, but here was a live feed for the morning audience to see the great clean up effort at Bradfield Park.

Afterwards, we returned to the office where our team was preparing for Ian Kiernan and the Clean Up team's press conference in Brisbane with their Mayor Campbell Newman to announce the statistics from the effort and motivate the nation to join.

This year was a big year for the Clean Up effort. Back in January, Queensland was hit with massive floods, which destroyed three quarters of the state. Following the floods, Cyclone Yasi hit, hurting Australian farming - bringing bananas cost to nearly $20 per kilogram! The start of 2011 dubbed it the year of natural disasters.

6th of March was a rough day for me. I was not in the best condition to be working on the busiest day of my PR career. The night before, I celebrated my first Mardi Gras in Sydney and had a couple hours of sleep. Too bad Sydney had to leave more rubbish for Clean Up teams to clean up the next day. Constant research through Clean Up databases, pitching and interview scheduling fueled by cookies and chips was how I pushed past the hangover and lack of sleep.

At 4pm that Sunday, we wrapped up our work and locked the office. Our mission was over and we had gone beyond our target by a few hundred. Exhausting, but worth it.

The following 2-3 weeks, we had a few follow up interviews and post-Clean Up features. The further away the event was, the fewer requests there were.

After the campaign was over and we debriefed with the Clean Up team, I got to write my first case study on our work. It was not just satisfying, but an honour to write on the work I did.

Months later, the Public Relations Institute of Australia or PRIA (main PR body) published their deadline for awards submissions. We collected all of the great memories of the campaign and wrote a 2000 word submission on our objectives, achievements and highlights. For the second round, we were allowed to submit press releases and a video. We gathered all of our footage from the launch day at the Sydney Aquarium, media circuit and videos I took of kids cleaning on the day and created a video, which included snapshots of the 25+ releases we wrote, distributed and pitched.

Now we have our sights set on the National Awards. Win or lose, this was one of the best professional experiences I've ever had. I wouldn't trade any of those long days where we were expected to drill out releases on areas of Australia we had never heard of. I will always cherish the team I worked with - no one could be better fit. Most of all, I'm glad I had the chance to do this. Not everyone will experience this type of campaign in their career and I couldn't be more proud. Next year, I hope to be on the other side, actually picking up rubbish.

Clean Up Australia Day Highlights

Courtesy of Taurus Marketing