Photos for the Future

Photos for the Future by HISTORY (Astro channel 555) is an initiative aimed at creating a lasting visual record of life over the past century in Asia. Through an online archive, participants will be able to “donate” photographs along with a story caption to be shared with future generations as well as general public viewing.

Our goal in PR was to execute an effective “call for participant” programme to drive public awareness and generate submissions in regards to this initiative. We relied on both traditional and new media as our PR tools of choice with each channel of exposure giving us very different results.

Through traditional media, it was like a shotgun effect; wide coverage but less focused. People seem to “know” about the initiative but the submission rate was not as expected. On the other hand, with online media, although the publicity reach was lower, the submission responses were higher. What we really needed were smaller but more focused activities centred at capturing the attention of a specific group. With online media, results were positive because users could just follow the link without the hassle of manually typing the entire URL out.

We also started to work on various print media partnership opportunities aimed specifically at a certain group such as youth or photography. We needed to be focused and we realized that wide coverage or even high ROI may not necessarily translate into desired results sometimes.
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Lest we get too excited with online media, we need to understand that both NEW and OLD can exist within the same media ecosystem. We just need to have the right mix and focus.

Be part of HISTORY. Go to www.historyasia.com and submit your Photos for the Future.