Case study: Publicising industry award ceremonies

Master Builders Australia WA: Housing Excellence Awards

The Brief

Hunter Communications was engaged to compile a communications strategy and implementation plan to elevate the profile of Master Builders Association’s (Master Builders) awards program from previous years and subsequently raising the profile of Master Builders within the wider industry.

The Objectives

• Raise the profile of the awards nights beyond previous years, positioning the event as the ‘industry’s big night out’.

• Increase the focus on Master Builders as leaders in the industry, committed to representing the views and interests of its members and the building and construction industry.

• Position Master Builders as a leading industry body that recognises its members for their industry leading work.

• Show appreciation for association members and acknowledge the current climate of the building and construction industry as well as other industries.

• Leverage finalists, winners, sponsors and judges as key talent across owned and earned channels.

• Build hype around the awards nights in the lead up to the event, as well as during and post awards nights, across multiple channels.

• Generate positive and pro-active media coverage for the awards, both pre and post event, in consumer and industry publications.

The Strategy

Hunter recommended and implemented a multi-channel approach to raise awareness of the 2021 Bankwest Housing Excellence Awards. Core to the implementation of this strategy was a content capture day, which allowed Master Builders to capture powerful visual content of talent for use across owned channels. This video was also used as a key piece of content for the big screen on the awards night.

The implementation of this strategy was developed into three phases that focused on the key campaign milestones: pre-awards, awards night and post-awards.

• The pre-awards phase focused on driving hype and engagement with the Master Builders brands using stories of key talent across all channels including judges, sponsors and past winners.

• The awards phase focused on the winners at the awards night and their position within the industry, with the happenings of the night serving as a secondary focus. Key communications throughout the night provided educative content and drove awareness of what the Master Builders brand stands for including live streaming to social media, interviews with key talent (judges + Minister for Housing) and ongoing posts throughout the evening.

• The post awards phase consisted of media relations and engaging with the winners of the awards to secure media coverage across key titles, pulling out specific storylines.

The Results

In a two-week period, Hunter achieved:

• 20 pieces of media coverage which reached an approximate cumulative coverage of over 1.2 million.

• Additionally, coverage landed on multiple homepages across titles including The Market Herald, Perth Now, Community News, City West and Western Suburbs Weekly - significantly increasing the reach beyond 1.2 million.

• Followers across Facebook, Instagram and LinkedIn increased by an average of 1.6% over this period. ​

• The engagement across social media channels increased by an average of 201%​

• Across the 20 pieces of coverage, 100% of the sentiment was positive. ​

• Key messaging was picked up/mentioned across 100% of the achieved media coverage.