Stonewall
Stonewall is a LGBT rights charity formed in 1989 by political activists and others lobbying against section 28 of the Local Government Act. The controversial law stated that a local authority "shall not intentionally promote homosexuality or publish material with the intention of promoting homosexuality" or "promote the teaching in any maintained school of the acceptability of homosexuality as a pretended family relationship." Stonewall exists with the aim of creating social change and acceptance without exception.
Meltwater Helps Stonewall to
Be more strategic
Pull relevant and bespoke insights
Stay aligned
Challenge
Understanding impact
Stonewall focuses much of its efforts on key objectives: empowering individuals, transforming institutions, changing and changing hearts and minds. "My role involves ensuring Stonewall's key messages and research reach targeted media outlets to meet our organizational objectives."
Part of that involves ensuring that Stonewall talks to LGBT media, while at the same time, having separate conversations with trade press, regional outlets and both tabloid and broadsheet national news. "Without knowing where we have secured coverage, it's impossible to demonstrate ROI (in terms of having a Press Office) and understand the impact we've made in terms of campaign progress and achieving specific objectives for those campaigns. For example, if local news outlets are equally talking about the Rainbow Laces campaign."
Stonewall also needed to find a way to spot trends in coverage data. "It's important to set realistic but challenging KPIs; this can be difficult without data to guide you."
"People can often underestimate the impact of PR, or can't understand it's relevance to a campaigning organisation, and media monitoring tools allow us to showcase our successes and justify our existence. Our company name has many associations, such as the Stonewall Riots and football club Stonewall FC, however neither of these are associated with us. Meltwater's fluid Boolean search enables us to pull data that's only relevant to us. Our account manager was very patient in ensuring searches and data insights were bespoke."
Matt Horwood, Senior Communications Officer
Solution
Showing success
Stonewall uses media monitoring to keep track of when and where it's mentioned in the media - be it in print, broadcast or online. "People can often underestimate the impact of PR or can't understand it's relevance to a campaigning organization. Media monitoring tools allow us to showcase our successes and justify our existence." Stonewall also uses Meltwater's reporting feature to understand its position, so it is able to set future goals.
"Meltwater's online media monitoring tool search function is simple to use. I like the fact that the tool offers a collection of similar words to search for." Meltwater clients often use the 'similar words' function to inspire them to think differently about what it is they are (and should be) searching for. Stonewall also talked highly of Meltwater's media monitoring tool search capability. "Our company name has many associations, such as the Stonewall Riots and football club Stonewall FC, however neither of these are associated with us. Meltwater's fluid Boolean search enables us to pull data that's only relevant to us. Our account manager was very patient in ensuring searches and data insights were bespoke."
Stonewall then distributes the secured coverage in the form of newsletters to key internal stakeholders. "Newsletters help us stay aligned from a company perspective. Having the ability to cherry-pick content is great, since we send a number of newsletters out to different audiences, and so it's important that each is tailored and relevant." Stonewall particularly likes the fact that newsletters can be branded and split into categories, for example organizational mentions and general LGBT news stories.
Summary
Meltwater Helps Stonewall to
Understand the landscape
"Meltwater has helped us be more strategic and less reactive when it comes to securing coverage. We can now build a better picture of the media landscape as well as our own position."
Gather relevant information
"Meltwater's fluid Boolean search enables us to pull data that's only relevant to us. Our account manager was very patient in ensuring searches and data insights were bespoke."
Keep stakeholders informed
"Newsletters help us stay aligned from a company perspective. Having the ability to cherry-pick content is great since we send a number of newsletters out to different audiences, and so it's important that each is tailored and relevant."
