Communications and Marketing

Developing a Brand Presence

A unique brand presence is one of your organisation’s most important assets so it’s worth spending a bit of money to get it right. A good brand will help reflect the organisations identity, help build trust, and recognition.

Engaging a marketing agency to work with you to develop your brand is essential. The next steps are ensuring that the organisation maintains consistency across all collateral and platforms including logo, typeface, colour scheme and placement.

Some CRCs intend to become permanent bodies from the start, in which case a brand identity is more important than a temporary organisation. In some cases, a strong brand identity might be seen as competitive to your members. Communications and marketing professionals naturally try to maximise the spotlight and attention on the CRC itself but the CRC exists for the benefit of its members, so their perspective needs to be considered.

Website

Lay the foundations of a good website by creating a good structure first. For a typical Cooperative Research Centre, consider the following structure:

Home Page

• Include mission statement and tag line
• Include a place for people to download prospectus or other relevant information
• Consider carefully the imagery being used is reflective of your messaging and is royalty free
• Include who we are, call to action is clear (ie how to get in touch)
• Include newsletter/update registration link (if including)
  

About

• What will the CRC do. how was it established
• History/Background
• What is a CRC
  

Governance

• Board Members
• Team Members
• Partners
  

Research Programs

Blog | News | Updates

• Can be used for repurposing for newsletter and social media; can include video content, CRC progress, industry update
  

Ensure the whole website is on brand.

Stakeholder Engagement Strategy

Stakeholder engagement is a process that organisations follow in order to listen to, collaborate with, or inform (or a combination of all three) their existing stakeholders. This process entails identifying, mapping and prioritising stakeholders to determine the best tactics for effective communication while making the best use of available resources. Stakeholder engagement helps organisations to proactively consider the needs and desires of anyone who has a stake in their organisation, which can foster connections, trust, confidence, and buy-in for your organisation’s key initiatives. When done well, stakeholder engagement can mitigate potential risks and conflicts with stakeholder groups, including uncertainty, dissatisfaction, misalignment, disengagement, and resistance to change.

Some key principles to keep in mind: Engage early and of often, set clear goals, build relationships, ensure openness, pursue inclusivity.

The stakeholders in a CRC can be wide-ranging. Often, a CRC works on behalf of a whole industry, but only a small subsection of that industry will be directly involved in the CRC, and even less will be financially contributing. the industry participants and the research participants may have separate, even competing, objectives and the needs of individual researchers and students must be understood. The Commonwealth government is, of course, a major stakeholder (as well as State Governments in many cases), but will not be an actual member of the CRC. These issues are critical to a successful communications program for a CRC - who is your audience, or audiences?

Social Media Policy 

Social Media activities are considered public as it is possible for content to be shared beyond intended recipients, despite the availability of privacy functions. 

Social media interactions includes written or electronic comments, or posts or any profile which can identify you as part of the organisation. 

A Social Media Policy should be in place for all forms of social media interaction; including social networking sites (eg Facebook, Instagram), professional networking services (eg LinkedIN), video and photo sharing websites (eg YouTube), microblogging eg Twitter), forums and discussion board (eg Google Groups), online collaborations (eg Wikipedia), podcasting and blogs.

Please see CRC_Social_Media_Policy_Example

Social Media Strategy 

A social media strategy outlines the purpose behind using social media for your organisation. It helps to ensure consistency of brand and messaging across the board. It also describes the organisation’s social media goals, objectives and metrics used to measure engagement and success.

• Brand awareness
• Brand reputation
• Engagement
• Conversions

The strategy can also outline type of content, timing and number of social media activities to be undertaken and under what platform.
The Social Media Strategy should also take into consideration the Social Media Policy.

Media Release Process

It is recommended to engage a public relations / communications organisation to get the most impact from your media release

The following is an indicative guide for the process of media releases and media opportunities.

Step 1:  Organisation pulls together relevant content/facts/information re the specific media opportunity
Step 2:  Organisation shares these materials with PR Company
Step 3:  PR Company reviews and ask any key questions 
Step 4:  Draft media release (2 pages tops) is prepared
Step 5:  Organisation reviews the draft and makes any changes/edits
Step 6:  Final release is approved
Step 7:  PR Company checks with Organisation they have a spokesperson & provide any background briefing/s required
Step 8:  PR Company identifies the key media outlets/journalist/s to pitch to
Step 9:  PR Company pitches out the story to the selected journalist/s
Step 10:PR Company wait for the story to run/appear!

Prior to the above steps, ensure the Stakeholder Engagement Strategy is up to date and upon signing an NDA with your selected PR agency.