There are so many reasons why PR organises events, along side marketing teams. For starters, it creates original content, generates momentum, builds relationships and inspires journalists to learn and write stories about your organisation.
Hosting events is one of the many ways Perth Media attracts media attention for your company. This is a slide which is part of an education presentation to Quorum in Perth on Tuesday morning. Explaining why PR is important. - Cate Rocchi
New investment brochure completed for Bryah Resources. This is an example of what Perth Media does for its clients.
As Western Australia experiences increasing business activity, Perth Media’s clients are releasing more news. Here are our top recent results:
1. A successful Media Conference, organised by Perth Media, for Blockhead Technologies in August, 2020. Perth business reporters saw $300,000 of gold bullion on display. A presentation was made by Blockhead CEO Greg Leach, and representatives from ABC Refinery also attended. Coverage included Stockhead - Gold Fraud is on the Rise but New Tech Is Helping Stomp it Out, S&P Global, Miningnews and Business News featured New Tracing App for Gold.
2. Acuris and Stockhead covered Bryah Resources ongoing results and deal making while Paydirt featured the junior explorer substantially in its annual Diggers and Dealers Preview edition.
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Source: ABC Refinery
Software Company – Blockhead Technologies – and Australian gold processor ABC Refinery enter partnership to trace gold bullion.
Virginia Aden, Chief Executive of Sudbury Community House
Photo: Perth Media‘s Sophie Minissale
Mirrabooka-based Sudbury Community House, in Perth, has an innovative new empowering program to encourage public contributions and engagement.
Budding entrepreneurs, local firms, socially-minded people and those skilled in arts and crafts such as cookery and embroidery will have a role to play in the new five-year Empowering Communities Program in Sudbury House.
Virginia Aden, Chief Executive, says the new initiatives take a holistic approach that can lead to successful treatment of mental health issues, alcoholism, drug dependence, crime and domestic violence.
“It’s about humanising people who need help the most,” she says. “We are trying to move away from a deficit model of poverty and helplessness. We want to empower people to have a strength-based approach to make them respect and believe that every individual is more than capable of contributing to their own development and wellbeing and that they have the solutions to their problems. Sudbury House just needs to offer support.”
Already, a student from Perth Modern School is utilising modernised kitchens at Sudbury House to prepare edible cutlery as part of a project targeting mental ill-health.
Ms Aden is excited by the developments happening so early in the life of the program, which launched in July this year.
“Just seven per cent of our running costs at Sudbury House come from public funds,” says Ms Aden who revitalised the 33-year-old facility after her arrival in 2011. “Seventy per cent of our clientele are refugees and migrants. When they arrive, they already have been traumatised in refugee camps.”
Sudbury House's main source of income is a modern early learning centre run by qualified staff catering for infants from six weeks of age to six years. Revenue generated by the facility's Learning and Development Centre pays for open-door services that include the drop-in centre, support groups and an information and referral hub.
Yet it is not enough to meet demand for services that Sudbury House provides as an organisation in the not-for-profit sector.
To rectify that scenario, the centre successfully applied for funding from the Department of Communities’ Empowering Communities Program, and received $1.5 million for distribution over the next five years to 2024. Funds will:
· Stage year-round activities in The Mirrabooka Square, to raise awareness of partner organisations and demonstrate the community’s self-belief.
· Act as an incubator for small groups to meet in safety to discuss day-to-day needs, supported by mentoring, coaching, computers and photocopying.
· Hold annual workshops to share community ideas about evolving needs. Some will be developed into programs, supported by partner organisations.
· Tackle unemployment by registering local skills such as cooking, artwork, craftwork, dance and music; then look at micro finance and social enterprise.
· Offer grants to five community members to help plan and implement poorly resourced grass roots projects and ideas affecting streets and suburbs, with a view to raising finance.
Ms Aden says Sudbury House demonstrates that problems are manageable by collective action. “Let’s start a conversation that leads our people to their own solutions, giving them a solid base from where they can flourish and grow into their place in the community. We can literally give power back to these people,” she says.
“Our Sudbury family includes people of Aboriginal descent with whom a strong relationship has been respectfully built through their Elders.”
Ms Aden said program outcomes would be measured against impact, not attendance in hope to address two critical questions – have we changed anyone’s life and are they any better off?
Ms Aden oversaw the transformation of Sudbury House from a single room drop-in centre with a childcare annexe on the verge of closure in 2011 to a thriving community hub whose presence is so important to many. Ms Aden has worked with the peak body, Linkwest, and the Department of Communities (formerly known as Department of Local Government and Communities) to see SCH take shape as a multi-purpose facility renowned for a welcoming atmosphere.
This article is one of many featured in 'Adapters', a series in WA Business News exclusively for Perth Media clients, profiling news of innovative small businesses, start-ups and not for profits.
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Perth Media consultant Torrance Mendez, a seasoned professional and one-time news reporter, this week begins a new Adapters podcast series, interviewing small businesses and organisations about their history, products, dreams and innovations.
He will be working this afternoon from our partner recording studio at a Vic Park location.
The first guest is Jackstar Bookkeeping’s Jackie Roufail!
Mark Horwood of Captivate Connect
Not all Australian companies understand the importance of customer experience, warns Perth entrepreneur Mark Horwood who is changing how businesses around the world relate to clients.
He says customer experience quantified a person’s emotional response in dealings with a company or organisation, and most major US corporations had hired a director of customer experience.
“We need to look at some of the reasons that this is important, that a customer ‘feels’ an emotional attachment to a business,” Mr Horwood said.
His firm, Captivate Connect, developed new technology to defeat frustrating on-hold phone calls by helping organisations to interact with consumers who were waiting to speak to a staff member.
Mr Horwood says businesses and organisations must exceed consumer expectations to enjoy the benefit of positive customer experiences.
He noted the evolution of commerce with disruptors, such as Uber Eats and Amazon, and commoditisation, in which products or services became indistinguishable from similar ones.
Mr Horwood continued: “Do you ’feel’ any emotional connection to Amazon or the Uber Eats delivery person? Nope. Can you remember the name of the restaurant from which the Uber Eats bag emanated? Nope.”
He said commoditised products had thin margins and were sold by price, not brand. Typically, ever cheaper and common technology was sold by more suppliers who lower prices even further.
“So, when a business does not want to be seen as ‘the same as everyone else’ – chasing prices to the bottom and squeezing margins – what can it do,” Mr Horwood asked.
“It must make the business different in the mind of the customer,” he explained.
“To do this, it needs to create a connection – not an Uber Eats bag type of relationship, but one where the customer forms an emotional connection. One that is memorable long after price is forgotten.”
Mr Horwood said a five-star restaurant that met customer expectations had done just that. But a pasta joint in the suburbs that exceeded customer expectations might be more memorable.
“Which of these two restaurants are you going to bother rating on Google,” he asked. “Which will you tell your friends to go to?”
He went on: “Larger corporations have the most to give and the most to gain from improving customer experience as generally they are not too good at it.”
Mr Horwood singled out being kept waiting on a telephone as a pet hate. “Why do they do that in this day and age of modern technology when there are so many caller preferred options,” he asked.
Captivate Connect’s world-leading phone technology offered entertainment to people on hold as well as information, a quiz, several genres of music and, importantly, a podcast, download of the company app being called and option to be called back.
The internet helped Captivate Connect establish a bigger customer base in the US than Australia.
“From a business perspective, you gain from this new service not only from having improved customer experience, but higher Google ratings and, of course, the business database grows from every number that requests the quiz or app or podcast link,” Mr Horwood said.
He said customer experience differed from customer service. The latter concerned human interaction and directly supporting customers but was only one aspect of dealing with customers.
“Customer experience is the sum of the entire customer journey with your business,” he said.
For more information go to: www.captivateconnect.com
This article is one of many featured in 'Adapters', a series in WABN exclusively for Perth Media clients, profiling news of innovative small businesses, start-ups and not for profits.
Marina Herlihy of Marina’s Ambrosia
Perth businesswoman Marina Herlihy is rebuilding her thriving skincare and cosmetics firm after realising that her company must take responsibility for eco-friendly social change.
Ms Herlihy wants to appeal to a new market, despite returning annual profits of 20 per cent year on year from Marina’s Ambrosia, the brand of organic personal care items she launched a decade ago.
“Each day I get between 10 and 20 customers who want to know if I use biodegradable packages,” Ms Herlihy says. “These customers are generally in their early 20s to mid-20s and many of them won’t buy if the packaging isn’t sustainable.”
She identifies these inquisitive young people as drivers of future business growth and has decided to meet their demands or risk being wiped out in today’s new world of environmental awareness.
“I’m budgeting for my products to be made in biodegradable packages for a relaunch in the new year,” Ms Herlihy says.
Her range of organic products will be offered in organic packages, including bamboo. “My products come from the Earth and soon you will be able to return them to the Earth,” she says.
Ms Herlihy said plastic harmed the planet and everyone must work against it. A sustainable business must have sustainable products, she reasoned, and cancelled her existing packaging order.
“If I don’t do this now, then changing to biodegradable packages later will become a huge demand that will be overwhelming. And if my products don’t shift off the shelf there won’t be an income. And that is where brands fall down.”
Some customers wanted refills instead of repackaging but that approach was costly, inefficient, impractical and did not always work for mail order items.
Initially, she planned to offer organic packaging within 10 years but was acting now because of a sense of urgency driven by a new generation of customers.
Redesign costs surprised her. She retains a designer in South Africa having been intimidated by quotes for work in Australia. “I couldn’t afford in Australia the calibre of the work that I will get in South Africa,” Ms Herlihy says.
Customers can expect products packaged in bamboo and cardboard. Old labels in black, white, silver and green are likely to be displaced by biodegradable ones in earthy bamboo tones.
Products would either be recyclable or biodegradable.
Ms Herlihy says the need for change was driven by plastic – a cheap, ubiquitous product that was hard to break down. She hoped scientists could one day produce a chemical bath that could dissolve plastics acceptably. “We cannot stop plastics, but we must slow their advance,” she says.
Some recyclable products posed problems. Glass, for example, was disliked for skincare and cosmetics packaging because, if dropped in a bathroom, it could shatter or break a tile.
Similarly, cardboard could be compromised by moisture. Marina’s Ambrosia was successfully selling deodorant in cardboard tubes with waxed-paper linings. “Everybody loves it,” Ms Herlihy said.
Bamboo packaging held great promise because, like wood, it was recyclable. Ms Herlihy had found a supplier in Indonesia who farmed sustainably and did not employ child labour.
Ms Herlihy, a mother of four who trained in naturopathy, founded her company after inventing what is now her bestseller, Organic All Over, a body lotion that successfully treated her bad skin.
Marina’s Ambrosia has a catalogue of more than 100 products with a global customer base.
For more information go to: www.marinasambrosia.com
This article is one of many featured in 'Adapters', a series in WABN exclusively for Perth Media clients, profiling news of innovative small businesses, start-ups and not for profits.
"Partners in Grain WA recently held a Summit that had limited opportunity for participants to attend and was not open to the general public, however the importance of the event being held and the learnings coming out of it were relevant and valuable to the wider industry. Engaging Perth Media was instrumental in gaining state and national exposure of the Summit, its key achievements, awareness of our organisation and our ability to exceed sponsors expectations. Cate Rocchi’s PR skills turned our relatively small event into a positive national news story for the farming sector and wider agricultural and business sectors."
Erin Green, coordinator, Partners in Grain WA
There are many interesting projects we have worked on, including the SFFC several years ago promoting truffles and many other producers in Western Australia.
“The Southern Forests Food Council values Cate’s talent in engaging with our producers to tell their unique stories of people, place and produce, creating great exposure for Genuinely Southern Forests.”
Media results included articles in The Australian newspaper, Augusta Margaret River Mail, Perth Now, AAP, SBS News, ABC Regional, Farming Ahead Online, The West Australian, WA Business News, Busselton Dunsborough Mail and RM Williams magazine.
Laura Bolitho, Office Manager, Southern Forests Food Council Inc
Blockhead Technologies - Supply Chain Intelligence Redefined
“Blockhead Technologies saw excellent success from the engagement of Perth Media to assist with the design and distribution of a press release that announced a global customer would be leveraging our software solutions.
Nationally, we featured in some of the top mining news publications, and internationally we saw reach in the media in Canada, Russia and also Yahoo News. We are excited to continue reaching a global audience thanks to Perth Media’s excellent network.”
Josh Horneman - Advisor, Business Development, at Blockhead Technologies
Media results included feature articles in Mining Global (London) and Acuris’ Mergermarket.
