One of our biggest jobs in 2018 – 2019 was winning the pitch for the National Disability Insurance Scheme Commission that reminds participants and providers that the Commission is here to play watchdog and ensure that participants have their needs met. Given the enduring criticism over the NDIA’s contempt for participants and ineffective providers trying to gouge the system, the Commission is very much needed however very little is known about the Commission itself and also what differentiates it from the NDIA.
The ‘Speak Up’ campaign was created with the objective to set a clear understanding of the NDIS Quality & Safeguards Commission as an independent regulatory body with the power to take action and to ensure participants feel confident they will be heard and supported. We won the pitch with the reassuring tag: “If you need to speak up, speak to the NDISC,” with appealing and humane portraits of participants who were at the heart of the campaign.
Over the next year, we worked on executing the campaign which was then released in June 2019. Videos, photography, interviews, portraiture needed to be executed in line with the agency’s changing needs and expectations. Each person featured in the ‘Speak Up’ campaign had their own unique story of empowerment and embodies self agency. More emphasis was put on using the campaign to elicit support and understanding from concerned providers and participants and on building the community the NDISC wanted for their online platforms. We hoped to encourage participants but also carers and providers to speak up if needed. Ultimately the NDIS Quality and Safeguards Commission campaign was created to set up a space and a community online for people to not only be informed but to feel empowered, supported and respected.
My responsibilities as a senior lead writer included:
- Writing all collateral and copy for all assets including posters, brochures, social etc.
- Creating the concepts, stories and final scripts (approved by client and talent) for the videos
- Working close with our production house and supervising production especially around the videos
- Approving all final art before being released to client
- Managing talent especially due to the sensitive nature of their disabilities
- In-depth research and understanding of their stories, their disabilities and management of their time and energy
- Edits, revisions and last minute changes to scripts, and collateral
- The entire social strategy down to days, time and content released with all copy written by me
The opportunity not only to work as a lead writer with a government agency on a major campaign but also to work with both CALD audiences and participants with especially sensitive disabilities was rare and invaluable to my development as both a creative and as a person. I am still extremely proud of this opportunity and cannot wait to see the results. There has already been talk, given the success of the campaign’s launch, of an event launch in December on National Disabilities Week/Day at the NGV.
POSTERS
SOCIAL
Having written the entire social strategy, our aim was to reach and engage with our primary audience of participants, carers and family members via Facebook while LinkedIn provided an opportunity to inform providers that we are working together (not against them) for better outcomes.
VIDEOS