Communications Champions - Frankston City Council

Location: Metro Melbourne
Population: 139,511
Years involved in Garage Sale Trail: 1
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Frankston City Council came on board with Garage Sale Trail in 2018 with plenty of enthusiasm for delivering a successful communications plan. The team worked collaboratively and structured their approach so that regular catch-ups ensured no opportunity was missed and they could remain on top of how registrations were performing. 

Taylor McVean, Communications Co-ordinator at Frankston City Council provided some insight into how they' worked internally and promoted the program to the community. Learn More.

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Who is delivering the program at Council?
Communications drive promotion but work closely with the Waste team to ensure messaging is appropriate. We catch up regularly, chat through angles, possible opportunities and basically keep stock of how we are travelling. This also ensures Garage Sale Trail is fresh in our minds and promotion doesn’t drop away.
We also regularly touch base with our Environment team who also promote to their audiences digitally and in-person at their events, and keep our Customer Relations team informed so they can be promoting the event when calls come through the call centre.

How have you approached promotion of the program?
Changing the angle of the pitch ensures we can appeal to a wide audience in our community. Maintaining media interest has worked well for us too. The messages we have highlighted include;

• Environmental benefits
• Money making benefits (average household makes $370 over the weekend-long event)
• Money for Christmas
• It’s time to clear out the shed
• Profiling individuals who have joined up
• The story behind the event – its origins
• The number of people already signed up to host a trail – join them!
• An alternative way to spring clean
• How the event is a great way to get amongst your community and make connections
• It’s a great way for the family to work together and for the kids to make some pocket money selling unwanted toys etc.
• It’s a family affair!

Have there been any out of the ordinary costs involved in delivering Garage Sale Trail?
Not really. We just make sure we are utilising all our communications channels regularly and vary the content and images.
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How much time are you investing each week?
Each Officer dedicates around 30 minutes to a few hours each week to promoting Garage Sale Trail.

What areas of promotion have you focused on?
Channels we have used include:

• Local newspaper (we have a weekly page 4 story)
• Social media – Facebook and Twitter
• Local community social media pages such as Facebook groups. We provide content to them to post and also post to pages ourselves
• eNews – and utilising other eNews across Council
• Media releases (with arranged photo ops)
• Staff intranet
• Frankston City News (bi-monthly council newspaper)

Frankston City Council Media Examples