I joined the Sydney office of Greenpeace Australia Pacific as a Communications and Media Officer. I worked across a number of campaigns, pitching stories to daily media, producing collateral and more.I was involved primarily in the oceans and whales campaigns, but also took point on the Australian communications roll-out of the Barbie and Ken social media actions against Mattel over deforestation, the HRL coal plant approval in Victoria and nuclear issues in the wake of the Fukushima reactor meltdown. I also handled the local distribution and pitching of the Greenpeace International press release when GPI executive director Kumi Naidoo was arrested in the Arctic for demanding the spill plans of the oil rig Leiv Eriksson.
Key stories placed with media included the Sydney Morning Herald’s exclusive on the Barbie campaign and a World Oceans Day opinion piece on the ABC’s Drum web site which I edited and co-wrote. The HRL coal plant rally garnered ABC and SkyNews TV coverage, ABC Radio National coverage, as well as extensive print coverage in Melbourne and the AFR. I developed strategy for an integrated oceans and whales digital campaign, worked closely with web team members to deliver features and social media, and took part in international planning for major events and campaign rollouts.
Highlights of the Barbie campaign can be seen below. I created the Storified version you see here and made the initial suggestion to create a Ken Twitter account to tweet at Barbie. What I didn’t expect was that someone sympathetic held the Barbie name on Twitter (the official account is the BarbieStyle account) and that the resulting exchanges would be so brilliant.