Dear Journalist. Our annual trade conference for X will be held on X at X. Snooze and delete.
When the Australian Market and Social Research Society (AMSRS) approached EMC with a request to generate media interest in their annual conference, there was some hesitation. Agencies had not delivered the results the Society had hoped for in the past.
The first step was to do the hard yards, and sift through the presentations and papers of dozens of conference speakers, until we identified a handful of market research papers that were topical and contained unreleased stories we could pitch as new and therefore newsworthy.
The stories were there, and when we pre-interviewed the Presenters, mostly market researchers, we found that they were good ‘talent’ for journalists; chatty, confident and positive.
A broad range of stories were found in their papers – and were suitable for reporters writing on technology, social media, news, current affairs, health, and criminology among other subjects.
AMSRS media highlights
The paper of keynote speaker and ‘international digital futurist’ Mike Walsh contained a hidden angle on the subject of Australia’s broadband network; topical enough to land him on ABC 24 TV News, Mx and 2SM.
Another speaker, Derek Jones, launched two media stories out of his new market research; about ‘What Women Really Want’, after conducting a study of 2800 Australian women.
The first story highlighted how Tony Abbott had fared when women taking part in the research mentioned his name. It’s suffice to say that launching this sort of story in the midst of an election campaign was a smart way to draw attention to Jones, and the upcoming AMSRS conference.
Jones’ second story was launched on the day of the conference; and the resulting coverage spanned the Sun Herald, Mx, ninemsn news, and 2SM among others.
And a surprise, last minute story coming out of Christine Walker’s research into ‘What People Tweet About Their Banks’ landed Walker her first ever Sky Business News interview on the same day that she presented to the conference, as well as stories in The Age, Sydney Morning Herald and the Financial Review.
There were dozens of other stories that came out of Conference, several of which mentioned the AMSRS conference taking place, with a link to the website www.amsrs.com.au
Natasha Webb, Communications Officer, EMC