Conference Attention
September 1, 2022
Each year for our annual conference, traditional and social media campaigns are undertaken to raise awareness of the important issues to be addressed by speakers.
A set of media materials were developed with speakers and a national, targeted media outreach was undertaken.
In addition, there was significant engagement through our social media outreach with stakeholders and sponsors making good use of our social media kit for the event. A social media report tracking the conference hashtag #22cfconf shows it attracted 12.1m impressions in the two months around the conference, peaking at around 5m on the conference days, with almost 1000 tweets. While most of the engagement was in Australia, it was great to see the hashtag was also used around the world – the magic of social media!
Ten of our conference speakers were involved in media interviews, with some doing as many as six interviews – and a big shout out to Alison Bentley from CIMMYT, who did three interviews within hours of landing from Mexico and then a further early morning interview the next day.
While we are still working on some radio features from the event, some traditional media highlights are provided below:
Our Chair, John Anderson, was reported across the country on ABC News Radio, and in Canberra on the ABC, while Canberra also heard from Alison Bentley live on commercial radio.
National Community and Indigenous Radio current affairs program “The Wire” produced three reports from interviews with Audrey Aumua, highlighting that tradition and science are needed to help the Pacific Blue/Green Economies, with Phil Pardey noting the decline in R&D investments and with Jenny Gordon noting the need for more ways of sharing the technological discoveries to poorer regions of the world.
A feature in the SciDev.Net, the world’s leading source of news, views and analysis about science and technology for global development, reported on seven speakers and noted “Investments in agriculture and food research are declining at a time when these sectors are facing significant risks arising from climate change, biodiversity loss and the spread of pests and diseases that affect plants, animals and humans.”
Regional Australian FM radio station audiences across the country also woke to news of the conference, with Alison Bentley’s report on issues around food security due to the Ukraine crisis here.
Alison also led the National Commercial Rural News for the day, and was reported nationally in the Australian Community News rural papers as was Philip Pardey.
Phil’s warning about cuts to agricultural R&D were also voiced on ABC Rural Country Hour (8m05s – 13m38d) as well as leading the news on Radio National.
We were pleased to get news around work in the Pacific out to Pacific audiences with Regina Nukundj being interviewed on Radio Australia Wantok (Tok Pisin) program (10m37s -18m25s)
We hope to be bringing news of further coverage, with additional features under development. Stay tuned!
