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imageseven


As an integrated marketing and communications agency working with dozens of independent schools across Australia, imageseven needs to be well informed not just about news and opinions mentioning their often-prestigious clients and their reputations but also about trends, issues and public sentiment affecting the sector as a whole. To do that effectively, imageseven needs a versatile, customisable communications tool that enables them to react in real time — sometimes before their clients even know there’s a problem.

What happened

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Keeping across developments in the education sector in every state in Australia is a major challenge, says imageseven Managing Director Andrew Sculthorpe. It was critical that media and social monitoring captured every mention of client schools and any important developments that might affect them.

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Meltwater's media monitoring and social listening mean potential issues can be spotted before they become a problem. The platform also allows the schools to monitor how effective their own marketing and communications strategies are. This, in turn, provides proof of concept for imageseven, as it reinforces the communications strategies they’ve developed for each school.

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imageseven is able to provide monthly reporting to their clients, distilling the information into easily consumable formats through Meltwater’s dashboards and newsletters. These pull together mentions and give summaries to each school of the value and impact of imageseven’s services.

Challenge

“The previous media monitoring supplier we were working with was running into more and more issues around paywalls, so that was a key factor for us,” said Managing Director Andrew Sculthorpe “It just seems like other providers hadn’t moved with the times.”

The challenges weren’t just with suppliers, either. Some customer-side challenges could only be managed with the help of a focused, flexible, comprehensive, always-on solution. Those challenges included:

  • Threats to brand and reputation
  • The ability to be quickly reactive in a crisis
  • Issues that emerge in the media
  • The measurement of public sentiment on social media
  • Effectively using social and digital media.

Andrew said his clients didn’t always realise they needed to be able to “read the temperature of public opinion” both within their school community and beyond it. Yet having that ability would allow them to understand the mood and be on the front foot before any situation or issue became a problem. This was especially important for more prestigious schools, which he said were easy pickings for negative clickbait-style articles.nib Group occupies a large portion of earned media in their industry due to the consistent contributions of their key spokespeople to relevant breaking news. The Corporate Relations team drives positive brand reputation by staying transparent when engaging with media stakeholders.

headshot Andrew Sculthorpe, Managing Director, imageseven

The imageseven team said the fact any member of the team could talk to someone at Meltwater, whenever they needed to, was a huge (and much appreciated) benefit. “It’s reassuring to know that there are real human beings, here in Australia, who are approachable and who can proactively help. It feels like a proper business partnership. Our Meltwater account manager is a part of our team. The humanisation of this digital service gives great peace of mind.”

Andrew Sculthorpe - Managing Director, imageseven

Staying Ahead

Alissa Cass, imageseven’s digital lead, said the fact the imageseven team could quickly jump into the Meltwater platform whenever they received a call from a client about a crisis situation, and then use Meltwater to determine the severity of the situation, was a huge advantage to both the business and clients.

“It allows us to see whether it has hit, or whether it’s a really small situation in the grand scheme of things, whether it’s actually being engaged with, or whether it’s something that we need to start monitoring,” she said.

Meltwater helps imageseven to:

- Proactively monitor reputation management risks for clients

- Demonstrate to clients that their marketing and comms strategies are working

- Monitor public sentiment in real time and in regular reporting

- Ensure all media and social mentions are captured.