30th January 2000

Low-Key Advertising

In September 1999 a propagation initiative was presented to centres in Australia to trial "low key advertising". The Australian LKA Project Team provided guidelines, which included several protocols to follow (eg. having a solid aspirant program in place, responses to 'fliers' would be carefully monitored and communicated back to the project mgr). The Gold Coast team saw that we were eligible to take part in the trial. The idea was embraced with enthusiasm!

Several weeks were spent carefully researching suitable venues to display the fliers. Examples of two fliers (the project team has provided three templates) were printed and deliberated over. The preferred venues were public libraries as they had noticeboards that were neutral and well maintained. One person volunteered to oversee the displaying of the fliers and has spent many hours visiting the venues and liaising with the head librarians. He has also provided them with the brochure, "Elan Vital - An Introduction".

Once the fliers are on display, a centre is committed to the event. This posed a predicament for the Gold Coast recently when the satellite broadcast was announced for the same date and the introductory event had been advertised for two weeks. The event went ahead at 5.30 pm and arrangements were made to accommodate the satellite broadcast as well. We have displayed the fliers in eleven locations for three introductory events - November, December and January and are doing so for February. (We decided to use the same flier so that the displays/library personnel would become familiar with them; will trial a different flier in the future). Each location has been visited ten to fourteen days before the event to liaise with the head librarian and deliver the flier and then again immediately after the event to remove it. The person carrying out this task does it with utmost care and dignity.

The planning team is very aware of the need for good training in PR now that the public may attend advertised events. In our action plan for 2000 we have listed PR training as a priority for all people involved in local events and are organising training in the near future.

A few people have attended the events due to seeing the fliers for the December and January introductory events. The real boon has been the thrill among the people with Knowledge - this whole project has rewarded everyone and energised the introductory events. At the introductory plus learning more event in November there was a total of three guests; in December eighteen guests and in January twenty six guests. (Some of these people attended both the introductory and learning more events in the one month.)