Communications
Tia Stewart, Communications Director
Communications has facilitated success for the club on several fronts this season, from communicating the great work our portfolios contribute to the community, to delivering projects of our own.
Board updates
Communications has facilitated greater transparency of board meetings and decisions with the emailing of board meeting minutes throughout the season.
The club successfully leaned into its public Facebook page this season, leveraging regular patrol status updates and profiles of our best and brightest members — thanks to Max Eldridge and the Lifesaving Services team — to substantially increase our audience.
We’ve been able to utilise the greater community profile this affords us successfully promote our fundraising events such as the Bass Coast Series aquathons.
New website woolamaibeach.org.au
We designed and launched a new website this season, giving us greater flexibility to responsively reflect club news, inform of upcoming events and facilitate registrations and payments. With portfolio contributions, this will continue to be built out with helpful club resources and an events calendar to become the reliable, go-to resource for our members and the public. Thanks to Greg Harbour for setting this up.
Bass Coast Series marketing
A substantial increase in digital marketing for Bass Coast Series — and a profile article in The Age, thanks to Ron Nicholson — saw a record number of entries in San Remo Channel Challenge.
Despite an unprecedented postponement of the event due to dangerous conditions, even the number of competitors at the rescheduled event rivalled previous years. This is a significant achievement and helped mitigate the financial risks involved with re-running such an event and its duplicated costs.
We also branded, mechandised and marketed the inaugural Little Penguin Dash with outdoor, press and digital advertising. Thanks to Greg Harbour for goosing our marketing in this area.
Clubbie Clobber
Our uniquely-branded and accessibly-priced club merchandise line saw further success in its second season, reflecting our fantastic club spirit with a unified and cohesive suite of retail-quality items that our members are proud to wear.
The board endorsed our strategy of keeping our retail prices affordable to members by purchasing more than one season’s worth, qualifying us for lower unit prices. Safe storage of stock over winter is thanks to Jason Close who initiated the build of extensive lockable storage cupboards throughout the clubhouse and Darrell Clark for building them. Stocks were not affected by the clubhouse flooding incident.
Our custom-coloured hoodies, black longsleeved t-shirts and baseball caps proved to be winners this season.
We also added a couple of new lines by popular demand, including trackpants and towel hoodies, specifically designed for our challenging range of conditions.
Huge thanks to Fi Blackmore for retailing our large range of items throughout Nippers and at so many club events to ensure as many members as possible had the opportunity to purchase their favourite items. Thanks also to Greg Harbour for designing and managing production of the range to ensure desirable, high quality and value for money garments.
Clubbie Clobber brought in around $28,000 this season, now one of our club’s major income sources.
60th Year Presentation Night
Communications team took on Presentation Night for our 60th year.
With an innovative strategy of celebrating directly after the end of season to encourage greater attendance by new young bronzies and SRC recipients, as well as Nippers! and their families, we sought and received support from Silverwater Resort San Remo to hold the event we deserved at a price all our members could comfortably afford.
The team of Annie Coleman, Shannah Anderson, Jay Haig , Grace Saxon and Troy Ross, supported by Greg Harbour, designed and delivered what has been consistently described as our biggest and best Presentation Night — fitting for our 60 year anniversary.
The pricing and format of the evening were in response to consultation of our younger members who desired less formal speechifying and more opportunity to meet and socialise across the different facets of our diverse family, so rarely to be found in the same room at the same time.
Deftly and entertainingly MC’d by Club Vice Captain Annie Coleman, the 200+ attendees were treated to a moving and professional video snapshot of the club’s 60th year by Jackson Sinclair, as well as a brilliantly written and animated claymation movie of the Nippers experience by Hailey Cameron and Lachlan Bain.
Thanks to Shannah Anderson for turning around the evening’s awards in an accelerated time and Silverwater Resort San Remo for their support of the evening.