Family Project was launched during New South Wales’ extended lockdown in 2021, to help foster connectedness for families in what was a stressful and disheartening time. The project was a charitable initiative designed to help support the mental, emotional, and physical wellbeing of families through inspirational and clinically supported regular family projects and activities. 

The Objective

Family Project was launched by Gidget Foundation Australia and commissioned by the NSW Government. MediaCast was engaged for an ongoing PR support to promote the project which ran from September to December in 2021. The campaign aimed to create awareness of Family Project’s activities and targeted towards families across NSW through TV, radio, print and digital outlets. The key objective was to drive traffic to the Family Project website and to position Gidget Foundation as thought leaders in this space. 

The campaign launched in September 2021 to coincide with NSW’s extended lockdown from June to November. Family Project’s activities were aimed at children and designed to keep them engaged with creative tasks while studying from home. The activities were also released to help take a load off parents who had run out of ways to keep their children occupied while in lockdown. The free and easy to access activities included learning Aboriginal art painting, doing origami, learning colours in sign language, creating a worm farm and much more. 

This wide array of activities helped to inform our messaging which was centred around togetherness, connection and encouraging activities that will help broaden children’s minds. The activities would help families to get through a time together by staying engaged and imaginative. Family Project sourced expert and celebrity talent to be part of the campaign including Emma Watkins, Jane de Graaf, Erin Molan, Tom Williams, Tim Davies, Arabella Gibson, Amelia Walker, Derek Ebbs and Sarah Tooke. 

There were also educational stories for parents which aimed to reach families of all types with children of all ages. These stories included “What to pack in your birthing bag for hospital”, “Tips for Dads working from home during COVID” and “6 tips for grief and loss”. We also launched several stories that aimed to reach families including multicultural, Indigenous, LGBTIQ+ and single parent families. 

Even when lockdown restrictions were lifted in NSW, Family Project has continued to stay relevant and newsworthy by becoming a thought leader in advice for parents navigating post-lockdown life. 

Overall, across the course of the engagement, MediaCast secured 575 items of coverage and reached 25 million Australians across the country. The coverage was made up of 20 stories across 136 print and digital articles, 416 radio and podcast items and 6 pieces of TV coverage.

Print and digital highlights included an opinion editorial that ran across the Australian Community Media network of 116 digital outlets, Mama Disrupt, Mosman Daily, Wentworth Courier, North Shore Times, Mama Mag, Belonging Early Years Journal and multiple features on What's On Sydney.

Television highlights included Channel 9 Sydney News, three features on Today Extra, including one for Halloween which also syndicated to 9Honey, plus an interview with Amelia Walker on Sky News which syndicated to The Australian online and News.com.au.

Radio highlights include 2GB, 5 stories featured in the 2SM news bulletins, 4 stories on the Luke and Susie Show, Bumma Bippera Media, Advice for Dads podcast with Amelia Walker and Derek Ebbs, PakMag Parents Podcast and SBS Radio Sydney.