26 October, 2009 posted by Leigh Exelby

 

‘HELLO FROM EARTH’ FROM NATIONAL SCIENCE WEEK AND THE TEAM

 

shac has been hard at work throughout August working closely with the Department of Innovation, Industry, Science and Research to successfully roll out Australia’s largest national festival, National Science Week.

 

Each year shac is engaged to undertake media, promotions, event management, talent securement, sponsorship securement and coordination and design for a range of national collateral.

 

Celebrating its twelfth year in 2009, the festival ran from 15 – 23 August, welcoming a million participants who took part in over 1000 events across the nation.

 

A driving force of the annual event each year is the National Tour, involving a tour of each state and territory by

 

 

internationally renowned scientists. These Tour guests help to inspire and motivate Australians about science and raise the profile of science within the community.

 

shac is heavily involved in bringing the National Tour to fruition each year; responsible for sourcing, attracting and managing international talent; coordinating the event itinerary and managing day-to-day logistics and

promotion for each of the Tour guests. This year, shac was fortunate enough to secure four high profile international scientists - NASA Astronaut Megan McArthur; Australian environmentalist Tanya Ha; well-renowned theoretical physicist Lawrence Krauss; and Canadian palaeontologist Scott Sampson. Each of these scientists attracted a vast amount of media interest and proved extremely popular with audiences throughout the country.

 

shac also had a major role in coordinating media and promotions at a national level. Our team developed a strong media and promotional strategy that was rolled out throughout the festival with great success, increasing awareness of National Science Week and participation levels at events.

 

shac’s work contributed to a 19.5% increase in media outcomes, with National Science Week featuring on several TV shows including Mornings with Kerry Anne, the 7pm Project, It’s Academic, the Today Show and the 7:30 Report. Over 2,003 media items were generated nationally, including over 100 international media items, resulting in coverage valued at more than $8.9 million for the festival.

A particularly successful initiative that shac helped to develop and promote was ‘Hello From Earth’, a web-based program providing people with the opportunity to send a message to potential intelligent life beyond Earth.

 

‘Hello from Earth’ was widely embraced by the global community, with over 25,000 messages registered on the website from every country around the world. On Friday 28 August all 25,000 messages were beamed to the nearest Earth-like planet outside our solar system likely to support life, Gliese 581d.