In August last year, we were asked by Rachel Christmas from Temora Medical Complex and Craig Sinclair from the local council, ‘can you make us a video, so we can attract more doctors to our town?
Our answer? “Of course! But how are you going to get it to work for you?”
This marked the start of a beautiful journey. Or should we say, Quest!
With no Facebook presence, and no time or experience to manage it themselves internally, Blue Clay took the reins. We workshopped campaign names and landed on the Great Quack Quest. It was fun, quirky and well, captured the essence of the community to its core. Then came the strategy. How were we going to get the attention of doctors across Australia and the United Kingdom and South Africa? This isn’t an uncommon issue across regional Australia. How can we hook them and showcase the town? A music video with locals should do the trick!
So began 5 months of preparation. We launched a Facebook page and started building the audience. We targeted locals who would become our local ‘sneezers’, and doctors and med students in the above geographic locations. We then got them engaged with content created to address key messages pre-identified and mapped out, and competitions to get the emotional buy-in.
We got the local media excited for the music video launch and the community backing our quirky quest. We knew for this to be as great as we knew it could be, this had to be a group effort. And it was. Right to the last frame.Then there was the icing on the cake…And we had all the right ingredients...A catchy tune by world-class music production house, 66 Music; super talented leads – Samantha Williams and Garrett Kelly, fantastic choreography by Jordan Kelly, a cracking production crew from Blue Clay with all the top-end ‘movie toys’ to make it pop, and the most important ingredient – a passionate community!
The three-day shoot saw around 100 locals from Temora take to the street to sing and dance up a storm. Despite the heat, long days and a demanding director, everyone pushed through, believing the end result would be worth the work. And it was…
Wednesday March 6, 2019 at 6pm. The World Premiere.
Over 100 people filled the Temora Hotel while thousands lined up online for the premiere. Within 24 hours, we’d had 25,000 organic views across Facebook and YouTube with over hundreds of shares and even more comments. By Friday evening, we’d featured on Channel 9’s Morning Show, ABC national News and Channel 10’s, The Project. Then there was the long list local tv crews, radio interviews, print and online coverage – local, national and international!
8 days later, we’d reached nearly 70,000 views across our owned platforms. This doesn’t take into consideration other media outlet uploads which we are still trying to tally!Behind all the fun, there was of course a serious message we hope continues to be discussed. Regional and rural communities need more health care workers. In fact, they need more skilled workers across a lot of industries! Country Australia isn’t a charity case. It’s thriving, and they need people with heart to help them continue to thrive.
So, if you’ve been considering a Country Change (another great initiative we're thrilled to be part of), or you have a business or skill that could benefit a regional community, be sure to give it careful consideration. Because one thing the Great Quack Quest proves, country community spirit is second to none.
