Media Relations / PR Strategy and Campaigns
In May 2024, Autism Partnership engaged Truth to help build awareness of the organisation and its important work providing intensive early intervention services for profoundly autistic children.
Autism Partnership wanted to position itself as an industry thought leader in the national conversation about autism intervention services and advocate for increased NDIS recognition and further funding for families – at a time when the Federal Government was driving legislative changes to the NDIS.
As a small, not-for-profit organisation, Autism Partnership needed a plan to help tell its story more effectively to key audiences including government, funders and families. It also needed to be able to implement its own PR program in the future.
Truth conducted briefings, interviews, research and a deep-dive workshop to determine Autism Partnership’s role in intervention services, its unique offering and the challenges facing both the organisation and its families.
Truth developed a public relations strategy to guide communications and advocacy activity. Key pillars of the strategy were media relations, issues management, stakeholder engagement and social media and digital communications.
Each stream was designed to amplify a narrative and key messages, developed by Truth to increase awareness about Autism Partnership, position the organisation as a thought leader and influence key stakeholders.
Truth identified two compelling stories for media – one based on Autism Partnership data and one based on the Federal political landscape; drafted media releases and an opinion article under CEO Shannon Eeles’ byline; and conducted media training to ensure key spokespeople were skilled to navigate interviews.
Truth also interviewed several Autism Partnership families and developed four case studies for use in media outreach and other communications and advocacy initiatives.
Through a nimble media relations approach, and in a rapidly shifting political landscape impacting the organisation, Truth secured widespread coverage, including a news story in EGN, and an opinion article in:
This resulted in a combined print readership of more than 1.19 million. The online outlets had a combined reach of close to 10 million Australians. Radio stations 3AW and 6PR followed up the print story with interviews with Shannon.
Truth developed four case studies for Autism Partnership, two of which were used in the News Corp coverage. Autism Partnership now has a compelling narrative and evidence-based public relations strategy in place to help tell its story more effectively to key stakeholders