Promotion and advocacy
This year provided us with the opportunity to undertake new initiatives and optimise our marketing and communications efforts to reach to new schools and educators.
Branding
Anniversary branding was developed to acknowledge our 20 year history. Minor updates were made to the SDERA logo and tag line to better align it to our mission and provide more variations for use. An audit commenced to identify materials depicting old branding, logos and messaging.
Marketing
New merchandise and marketing collateral was developed to promote our growing range of services and highlight our points of difference. Some existing materials were updated to include new information and fresh imagery. Email marketing continued to promote upcoming workshops and special events to educators.
Communications
Our quarterly communication, SDERA News, continued to provide schools with information about resilience, road safety and drug education. To reduce printing and design costs we reduced the newsletter to 12 pages and encouraged recipients to register for the electronic version.
Website
A focus for this year was to improve the content on our website and increase web traffic. We developed an electronic order form to make it easier for educators to order resources online. Further changes were made to electronic forms in an effort to reduce the time required to cleanse data for reporting purposes.
To grow our database and social media following we developed a subscription form to allow people to register for e-news and visit our social media pages. To improve our website performance we completed an audit and began tracking our performance, monitoring top performing pages and search terms and making changes to improve our search engine optimisation. This lead to an increase in website traffic.
Social media
Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and Vimeo continued to play an important role in our marketing and communications strategy. Regular posts and targeted advertising on Facebook and Twitter encouraged website visits, workshop and event registration and engagements with stakeholders. New video content was uploaded to YouTube and Vimeo to support new initiatives and promote partnerships with stakeholders.
Media
Increasing earned media opportunities continued to be a focus this year. We worked proactively to generate news by inviting media to events, generating media releases and making new contacts.
Events
We attended a number of conferences and community events where we had the opportunity to engage with new and existing stakeholders. Some of these included the ACHPER WA Annual Conference, the Joondalup Learning Community Conference, the Alcohol and Other Drugs Conference, the Positive Schools WA Conference and the Generation Next Conference.
Road Safety Week
We held an event at Springfield Primary School to celebrate National Road Safety Week and acknowledge the importance of road safety education. To raise awareness for road safety students decorated yellow ribbons with road safety messages and displayed these around the school. Students received a visit from the Acting Road Safety Commission, Iain Cameron and Izzy, the Smart Steps road safety mascot.
SDERA Conference
On Wednesday 27 June we held our inaugural conference, Destination Wellbeing, at Rendezvous, Scarborough. It was an extremely positive and affirming day for SDERA and delegates alike. Two hundred and fifty educators from primary and secondary schools across the metropolitan and surrounding areas were eager to expand their knowledge and skills. Delegates heard from three keynote speakers, attended interactive workshops, received free resources and had the opportunity to network with others. Feedback was overwhelmingly positive and resulted in many new engagements with schools.
Awards
We were extremely proud to win an award at 2017 Injury Prevention and Safety Promotion Awards. CHAT was awarded for Outstanding Achievement in Injury Prevention, Early Intervention, Treatment and/or Recovery. CHAT was also a finalist in the 2018 National Alcohol and Other Drugs Excellence and Innovation Awards.
Ambassadors
This year we welcomed four new youth ambassadors to help advocate for school-based resilience, road safety and drug education. These young people were all finalists in the 2017 Young Achiever Awards for their commendable work in the areas of health and wellbeing. In addition to our new ambassadors we continued to have the support of Professor Donna Cross from the Telethon Kids Institute and Kylie Catto, President of the WA Council of State School Organisations. Learn more about our ambassadors.
Promotions
To grow awareness for SDERA and to encourage road safety education for students in early years, we supplied all primary schools in WA with a storybook for Pre-primary classes. That’s the Sound the Street Makes by Danny Katz was sent to schools with information about our Smart Steps program. This promotion was strategically timed to coincide with the start of Term 1. We worked closely with the Road Safety Commission and the Hon. Michelle Roberts MLA Minister for Police; Road Safety to launch the promotion at St Paul’s primary school on the first day of term.
Sponsorship
We continued our sponsorship of the Health and Wellbeing Award in the 2018 WA Young Achiever Awards. The sponsorship provided us with over $400,000 in positive media exposure across WA. We also received earned media coverage in numerous regional and metropolitan newspapers and websites. Congratulations to Scott Guerini for winning the award.
Partnerships
We continued to partner with a number of government and non-government organisations, agencies and service providers involved with road safety and drug education to deliver better outcomes for children and young people. Read more about our partnerships.