Fusion 2017: Conference wrap up part 2
 In Blog, Featured, News, Uncategorised

Couldn’t make it to Singapore for Fusion 2017? Never mind, our official #FusionConf2017 reporter Amanda Dennett has a summary of all the happenings for you here!

Missed Part 1?

Day Two: Thursday, 24 August

#FusionConf17 officially kicked off on Thursday at the Novotel Clarke Quay, with around 120 attendees from across the Asia Pacific region. Before lunch I’d met delegates from Queensland, Western Australia, New South Wales, New Zealand, Japan, Singapore, Indonesia, Hong Kong, India and the Philippines!

IABC Victoria was well represented at #FusionConf17. From left to right: Board member Cerise Paul-Igai, Vice President Danielle Jorgensen, Past President Adrian Cropley ABC, Immediate Past President Debbie Lemcke, Board member Sia Papageorgiou, and member Amanda Dennett.

Gabrielle Dolan, author and expert on business storytelling, gave a highly engaging opening keynote presentation. She says stories should focus less on logic, more on emotion and personal credibility, to help people hear and understand our messages.

Nick Whitehead from Viostream presented about the power of video to communicate with a range of audiences. He made data available exclusively for IABC members to access online at www.viostream.com/iabc.

Next up, an interactive learning session with Gerry McCusker on managing communications in a crisis. We worked in teams to develop communication plan and make decisions on the fly, as new issues continued to unfold throughout the session. Critical lessons were to acknowledge issues early, and to ensure official responses published online are search engine optimised so your organisation’s responses are seen above others.

For the afternoon session there were two presentation streams – it was difficult to choose between all the great topics and speakers! IABC Victoria Vice President Danielle Jorgensen presented on personal branding and the future workforce. The key lesson was to focus your personal brand on the experience of YOU! What you do, who you do it for, and the outcome.

Victor Zalakos, IABC Canberra President, presented on change management for communicators, highlighting its differences to traditional internal communications. Victor says while the audiences may be the same, the purpose of each type of communication is different. Raagulan Pathy from Facebook gave an overview of the opportunities the new platform Workplace by Facebook presents for corporate communications and staff engagement. Emma Bannister, Founder and CEO of Presentation Studio and IABC Victoria member, shared her tips on how to gain a competitive edge in your next presentation. She says: content + design + delivery = framework for powerful presentations.

Damien Batey, Head of Communications at Motorola and IABC Victoria member and Past President, presented a communicators guide to surviving the digital apocalypse. He spoke about the impact of technological change on communications, and how communicators can learn to adapt.

Ben Forman, Founder and Director of Wrestler, gave an overview of the technology that underpins virtual reality and augmented reality, and presented case studies on how it is being used to communicate with digital audiences by some of the world’s biggest brands. To close out the first day of presentations, Mukun Rajan from Tata Sons Limited, spoke about how the organisation dealt with ethical and sustainability issues in recent years to ensure the ongoing success of the company and its communications.

After a short break to get dressed in our best, conference delegates met in the ball room of the Novotel Clarke Quay for the Gala Dinner and IABC Silver Quill Award presentation. Big congratulations to the following IABC Victoria members who were awarded a Silver Quill:

Publications Category

  • Australia Post for is Career Workbooks for employees.
  • Sacred Heart Mission and Cropley Communications for 2016 Sacred Heart Mission Annual Report.

Non-profit Category

  • JAW Communications and Foundation for Rural and Regional Renewal for promoting FRRR grants to regional audiences.
  • Sacred Heart Mission, Cropley Communications and Red Agency for the Dine with Heart campaign.

Digital Communications Category

  • NBN Australia for Road Muster campaign.
  • Cropley Communications for their Career Evaluator app for communication professionals.

Communication Research and Media Relations Category

  • NAB for its brand repositioning and Rethink Success campaign.

Marketing, Advertising and Communication Category

  • Aurecon for their Just Imagine corporate blog.
  • Pesel and Carr for Caroline Chisholm Catholic College rebranding and increasing enrolments.

Internal Communications Category

  • ANZ for their MaxConnect enterprise social media platform.

Safety Communication Category

  • The Launch Box and O-I Glass for their Journey to Zero employee safety campaign.
  • Parks Victoria for its Zero Injuries campaign.

Community Relations Category

  • Transurban for their work on the Western Distributor project in Melbourne.

Social Media Programs Category

  • Telstra for its Exchange 2.0 corporate blog relaunch.

Communication Management Category

  • Saania Habeeb from Deakin University for her Topsy Turvy Day fundraising campaign idea for State Schools Relief (Student Entry).

You can watch videos from all the IABC Victoria winners on our YouTube channel.

Check out Part 3!