Record result for 2014 WA Day campaign

June 13 2014, 9:45 am | BY Martin Trevaskis | No Comments

CELE19700L-Facebook-Post_1_BLOG.jpgWestern Australians celebrated this year’s WA Day (June 2) like never before through an integrated communications campaign focused on building a sense of pride in the State.

The campaign asked Western Australians to tell their story around the key themes ‘We are Awesome’, ‘We are Proud’, ‘We are Spectacular’ and ‘We are Celebrating’, with 4.3 million people on social media engaging around the campaign and entries coming in from across the globe.

Formerly known as ‘Foundation Day’ the public holiday was changed in 2012 as part of the State Government’s move to be more inclusive of all Western Australians.

Highlights of the 2014 campaign included:

  • More than 15,000 people turning up to The Perth Cultural Centre for the Come out and Play event.
  • David Flanagan was announced Western Australian of the Year for his work in building Atlas Iron to become Australia’s fifth largest iron ore exporter.
  • The social media campaign focused around using the hashtag #WADay to tell our WA story broke all records from last year with 4.32 million people ‘reached’ across Facebook, Twitter or Instagram.
  • State of the Art Music Festival had their largest attendance with 3,000 tickets sold and 8,000 attendees.
  • The Western Australian media, with The West Australian and Channel 7 as media partners, ran in excess of 150 media stories ranging from opinion pieces of leading Western Australians to a nostalgic look at what WA was in years gone by.
  • The West Coast Eagles celebrated the Indigenous Round by running a WA Day poll to find out the greatest Indigenous Eagle since their inaugural year.
  • The finale of the inaugural WA Signature Dish, a regional cooking competition, was a highlight of the Come Out and Play event.

Celebrate WA’s mission is to promote WA Day and encourage West Australian’s to think about everything that is great about Western Australia. The key WA Day long weekend events are organised and promoted by Celebrate WA including the Western Australian of the Year Awards, State of the Art Music Festival as well as the family friendly Come out and Play in the Perth Cultural Centre.

This year through a partnership with the Buy West Eat Best program the inaugural WA Signature Dish, a regional cooking competition, was also held as part of the WA Day celebrations to support farmers, growers and producers in showcasing our amazing local produce.

Celebrate WA chief executive Patria Jafferies said that she was pleased that people walked away from each event with a sense of pride about being Western Australian.

“We are delighted by results of the WA Day campaign, the increase in attendance at our events and how people wholeheartedly embrace our State.” she said.

The campaign was managed by lead agency Clarity Communications with event partners Bain Media (Western Australian of the Year Awards), The Event Agency (State of the Art Music Festival) and SHEDcsc (Come Out and Play).

Head of Communications Strategy at Clarity Communications, Andrew Mathwin, said cross platform integration was key to the success of this campaign which achieved more than 19 million online impressions.

“Western Australia continues to be a leading adopter of social and digital media per capita and it’s great to see Western Australia embrace this campaign in the online space. You’d be hard-pressed to find a campaign that has captured the imagination of WA-based brands, business and people right across this State to the levels we’ve seen,” he said.

Last year the social media campaign was awarded the Social Media Campaign of the Year by the Australian Web Awards and this year the social success eclipsed all benchmarks set in 2013.