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.

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.

For the residents of one of Australia’s fastest-growing regions, the nearest public hospital was out of reach and out of space.

In the lead up to a recent state election, the council engaged Civic to develop a research-informed campaign to seek pre-election commitments from the State Government and Opposition to build a full-service, 24-hour public hospital in the region.

Research underpinned the development of a compelling campaign brand that raised awareness of the urgent need for a hospital, generated regular media coverage, more than 17,000 signed postcards and emails advocating for the hospital and helped forge a strong advocacy relationship between council and the community.

The campaign secured significant funding commitments and following the government’s re-election it progressed the planning of the new hospital.

In 2018, Civic was engaged by a Victorian integrity body to help communicate the findings of an inquiry into a high-profile investigative agency.

At short notice, Civic developed a communications plan to support the public release of the report and ensure consistent messaging across a range of audiences. Striking the right balance between communicating important matters of policy and public interest while respecting the views of stakeholders including the agency under investigation was vital.

A proactive and reactive communications, stakeholder and media relations plan was crafted and implemented against a strict timeline.

Spokesperson media training was provided to prepare for a program of strategic and targeted media engagement. The release of the report and its findings were well-received, casting light on important issues within the state’s integrity bodies while improving awareness of the client’s role and functions.

Civic developed an engagement plan for one of the nation’s largest local government authorities. A series of workshops with senior staff and one-on-one interviews informed this work.

Central to this work was identifying and prioritising stakeholders, their influence, importance and interest in council’s operations. From there, the focus was on identifying in what way, how often, on what issues and by whom each stakeholder should be engaged – and their feedback recorded and acted on, as required.

Ensuring there was a purpose to each engagement and that it benefited both parties – council and the stakeholder – was essential to developing strong and purposeful relationships needed to ensure effective engagement.

An internal communications strategy to raise awareness of council’s new, strategic approach to engagement was also developed.

Civic helped form a national peak body made up of the nation’s fastest growing municipalities that are home to more than four million Australians.

While each member council faced their own individual local issues, they recognised the value of working as a collective to advocate for the services and facilities fast-growing communities deserve but are beyond the remit of local government to fund.

Civic developed a multi-pronged campaign to raise awareness of the organisation and the issues affecting their members. Ten years on, the organisation is thriving.

In early 2020, Civic was retained to provide assistance in crafting messages and materials to be sent to all Australian public servants to keep them up-to-date on the impact COVID-19 was having on the public service and the changes being put in place to ensure Australians could access the services they need, when they needed them.

This work included developing messages for use by departmental secretaries and agency leaders and drafting a series of open letters co-signed by departmental secretaries.

Civic also conceptualized and developed an APS-wide newsletter, interviewing workers and crafting content for each edition and providing strategic advice on the development of editorial protocols to ensure future editions remained true to purpose.