Civic provided strategic advice and support to a municipal council considering the future of its residential aged care facilities.

Failing to appropriately communicate with aged care residents and their loved-ones, staff and the community had the potential to undermine the sale process and cause significant, long-term reputational damage to council.

The Royal Commission and COVID coinciding with the consideration of a sale added an extra level of complexity – and union and media interest. A transparent approach to communications saw all questions answered and all requests for meetings accepted and reflected the commitment council had made to the community and helped neutralise opposition to council’s plans.

Over the past decade, social cohesion, community resilience and preventing violent extremism have been priorities for governments around the world.

When one of Australia’s largest state governments wanted to develop a campaign to respond to these issues, it turned to Civic. From conception to completion, Civic developed a campaign that brought together research, communications, media, stakeholder and community relations, web, social and digital, events, public relations, TV, radio and print advertising and issues management in to one integrated strategy built around the concepts of belonging and contribution.

Tracking research showed that following campaign implementation, there was a significant increase in the proportion of people who considered the contribution of multiculturalism and diversity. Pleasingly, there had also been a significant increase in respondents indicating they felt a sense of belonging.

Since 2017, Civic has acted as public affairs adviser of record for a major Federal Government owned not-for-profit organisation.

Operating in a contentious area of public policy, the client works with a national stakeholder network that includes all levels of government around Australia.

As an embedded public affairs adviser, Civic has advised on communications, stakeholder engagement and media relations during a period of extraordinary change and growth in the organisation and its work.

Civic provides communications risk management advice on major national communications campaigns and has developed and implemented national stakeholder engagement programs to support multi-million-dollar funding programs.

Working together with the client’s executive and board, Civic provides advice on all aspects of communications, from speechwriting and copywriting, to issues and reputation management, creative campaigns, government and stakeholder engagement and internal communications.

Civic was the driving force behind a national advocacy campaign to secure increased funding for the treatments of one of the nation’s most common life-threatening diseases in the lead-up to the 2019 federal election.

The relentless advocacy of medical practitioners, patient advocates and local communities, supported by Civic, helped secure tens of millions of dollars to build treatment centres in locations across regional Australia.

Following the re-election of the Government, ongoing engagement with communities, doctors and members of parliament continued to help raise awareness of the benefits of therapy and reinforce the essential role it plays.

Following a period of change, one of Victoria’s most prominent emergency services called on Civic to review, update and redraft its engagement plan.

The organisation had identified the need to develop a stakeholder engagement strategy that would better enable it to identify and work with stakeholders across emergency services, government, business and the community.

To inform the development of the engagement strategy, Civic interviewed 25 staff members from across the organisation, gaining a deeper understanding of the strengths and weaknesses of its existing engagement approach and what changes those who would be responsible for implementing the strategy thought were needed.

The implementation of the engagement strategy effectively supported the arrival of a new Chief Officer, assisting him in understanding the organisation’s key stakeholders and how best to form relationships with them.

In early 2020, an NDIS registered disability support services provider detected a cyber intruder had accessed two of its email accounts and potentially launched a phishing attack targeting more than 2,000 case managers. The provider’s legal counsel called on Civic to provide communications and issues management advice.

Civic worked with legal counsel to develop a communications and stakeholder engagement strategy that included a notification and recovery plan that would ensure the National Disability Insurance Agency, as well as those whose privacy had been breached, were notified of the incident and kept informed of the investigation. Care was taken to ensure emails, scripts, statements and customer service FAQs were drafted in a way that met the client’s legal obligations, mitigated reputational risk and aligned with the client’s brand voice and communication style.

Once the notification process was complete, Civic was engaged on an ‘on-call’ basis to provide ongoing counsel and communications advice on the client’s recovery and positioning strategy.

Civic Data created an automated and personalised user experience for our client, which was ultimately deployed across more than 15 brand centric websites to maximise consumer, commercial and b2b products. Simple plug and play functionality means all stakeholders can work independently with the new solutions; reducing the client’s need for external consultants. Our principal consultants scoped, defined, and designed the migration of this entirely new enterprise analytics solution which targets audiences with exponentially more accuracy – meaning greater impact, effectiveness and, ultimately, return on investment