Danielle Seymour is the Communications Officer for Whitsunday Regional Council, a music lover, a curry devotee and a Slice enthusiast. Read on to discover her PR highlight, surprise breakfast beverage and how Slice made a difference to her job.
What is your top PR highlight so far for you at Whitsunday Regional Council?
The top PR highlight would have to be winning awards for the region – which we have been very lucky to win many over my 2½ years at Whitsunday Regional Council. Awards such as Tourism Awards for the Airlie Beach Lagoon, ‘Friendliest Town’ in Queensland for Proserpine, ‘Most Beautiful Beach in Queensland’ for Whitehaven Beach and ‘Tidiest Town’ for Airlie Beach are a really great reward for all of our staff for their hard work, and for our community.
How do you compare PR practices in a council environment compared with other PR roles in your career?
Basically if you’re the Council, it’s the media’s job to hate you and find all those nasty angles to any story! So it was quite a wake up call to move from private practice to Council – I had to grow thick skin pretty quickly! But once relationships are built with the media, this can generally be overcome.
Why did you choose Slice over other monitoring services available?
I wanted the convenience of online and instant access to media clippings. It was also a most affordable option for us.
What's the top three things you like about Slice?
-Cost effective
-Online access at any time
-Being able to sort clips into files for future reference
How did Slice make a difference to your job and/or organisation?
I’m obviously not able to listen to the radio all day, or watch the TV news every night, and there’s only one of me doing the job. So it’s great to be able to log on in the mornings to find out what stories were reported and how, rather than relying on other people to tell me a certain story was reported.
How do you qualify and quantify a solid and successful PR campaign?
Our Council does regular community satisfaction surveys, after completing a benchmarking study in 2005. We evaluate our PR success based on the results of the satisfaction surveys, with purpose built questions worked into the survey relating to communication.
How important is media exposure to the council?
Absolutely vital – in a small community where the local newspaper is the gospel, it is vital that Council communicates via the media to get its messages to its community.
Brad Pitt or George Clooney?
Definitely Brad Pitt
Wine or champagne?
Champagne (especially at breakfast!)
Hot and spicy or mild cuisine?
Hot and spicy – I could eat curry every night of the week
Feature films or reality TV?
Embarrassingly enough, reality TV
Tango or waltz?
Waltz
Easy listening or heavy metal?
Either, depending on the situation, I love all music.
Tracking the media, monitoring the message
