Challenge
Do you have a convict ancestor? If you did, would you know? In its first project for Australia’s leading family history website, Ancestry.com.au, public relations agency Howorth led a PR campaign to launch two new convict-based historical record collections to the public. These records (the Convict Registers of Conditional and Absolute Pardons, 1791-1846 and the New South Wales Certificates of Freedom, 1827-1867) complete the journey from arrest to release of almost one third of all convicts transported to Australia.
With more than 2.3 million criminal and convict records now available online, Ancestry.com.au made the entirety of its 15-part Australian Convicts Collection accessible for free for eight days in January 2010. With the door to the past wide open, Howorth had to convince the public to come knocking.
Insight
Howorth constructed a public relations campaign, tied into Australia Day, to get consumers thinking about how their families originally made it to the Lucky Country, before encouraging them to dig down into their own pasts.
Creative idea, relentless execution
Howorth knew it needed a high-profile partner for the campaign launch, so secured a national News Limited exclusive for Australia Day itself, which resulted in coverage in all news.com.au sites across Australia. Metropolitan radio talk back programs were also targeted with embargoed material so they could incorporate the story into the weekly plan. Following this initial coverage burst, the release was then issued to all other media.
Outcomes
The response locally for the convict collection was overwhelming, with more than 200 pieces of coverage, including breaking news online across Fairfax and news.com.au, and radio news bulletins. 20 radio interviews were conducted across commercial, AM and community radio, from the ABC to 2GB, with some stations syndicating the interviews across their networks and regions to raise coverage levels even further. Print coverage included major pieces in the Hobart Mercury, Canberra Times and Sunday Territorian. Through social media engagement, public relations agency Howorth also generated 21 ‘Tweets’ on the open Convict Collection indexes, with some of the influential Twitter users having over 1000 followers.
As a result of the PR campaign, Ancestry.com.au received their highest ever unique visitors for a single day on Australia Day (25th January 2010 ).
Gratifyingly, the client was thrilled with the results; “The Howorth team achieved results well beyond our expectations. This is a great start to our relationship,” said Debra Chesterton, Managing Director, Ancestry.com.au.
