Case Study

How Icon Agency reached 18 million people in CARE Australia's 'Her Circle' campaign

Overview

Icon Agency was approached by CARE Australia to amplify the communications efforts of their Her Circle campaign, specifically around International Women's Day (IWD) 2022 and 2023. Icon Agency engaged with Medianet to assist them in reaching a mass media audience to drive media coverage for their client.

17.87M traditional media reach

14 pieces of quality coverage

30% press release open rate

828.8K influencer reach

About Icon Agency

Icon Agency is a creative, PR and digital innovation agency based in Sydney, Melbourne, Canberra and Brisbane. Founded in 2002, Icon's model is adapted to the disruptive forces reshaping modern marketing and communications; the declining influence of paid media; direct-to-consumer brand marketing; the rise of e-commerce; and the experience economy.

Icon Agency was approached by CARE Australia to help amplify the communications efforts of their 'Her Circle' campaign specifically around International Women's Day.

Gearing up for CARE Australia's Her Circle campaign

CARE Australia is a not-for-profit that supports women around the globe to save lives, defeat poverty and achieve social justice. Their Her Circle campaign was centred around the ideology that when a woman escapes poverty, she brings four others in Her Circle with her. The main objective of the campaign was to increase awareness of CARE Australia as a brand, and the issues they work to address. To do so, Icon Agency needed to engage a new, previously untapped market identified as both male and female Millenials aged between 25-40 years old.

The solution

After getting 3 high-profile ambassadors involved, Icon Agency decided to lead the announcement of the Her Circle campaign with a media release. At this point, they had used Medianet before to generate earned media for other clients and were confident that this would work again for CARE Australia.

With the press release now prepared, Icon used the Medianet press release builder to structure and set a schedule date for the release ahead of time before reviewing the 200+ pre-built lists they had available to them. Using the original targeting strategy identified for the campaign, Icon narrowed it down to 9 targeted lists with 2,665 media contacts in various subject areas including; Women's interests, Youth, and Lifestyle & Society.

But the outreach wouldn't stop there. Newswires have long been one of the most effective methods of getting a story into the hands of journalists and Icon knew that this would be necessary to get the exposure that CARE Australia needed. With Medianet's deep connection to the media, Icon opted to broaden their reach by also sending the media release across a network of newswires and online channels managed by media companies such as Newscorp Australia and Nine News.

The media release proved to be highly impactful and was picked up by Medianet's Editorial Team to be pitched directly to some of Australia's largest newsrooms. This was further supported by the inclusion of the release in the daily NewsMatch Alert, a summary of the most newsworthy press releases of the day.

The results

Icon's first press release to announce the campaign achieved a 97% delivery rate and a 30% open rate. The success of the release, among other media engagement activities, led to 14 pieces of quality media coverage for CARE Australia, including articles on Women's Agenda, POPSUGAR, and the Sydney Morning Herald. Given the high profile of the outlets interested in the campaign, CARE Australia's Her Circle campaign reached 17.87 million viewers with a further reach of 828,800 viewers from influencer engagements.