Elizabeth O'Connor

The UK/Australia Season 2021-22 was a landmark cultural exchange between the UK and Australia. A collaboration between the British Council and the Australian Government’s Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, The Season is a vibrant programme spanning theatre, film, visual arts, dance, design, architecture, music, literature, higher education and a public engagement programme. Designed to strengthen and build cultural connections, the Season theme is “Who Are We Now?” and will reflect on our history, explore our current relationship, and imagine our future together. The Season started in September 2021 and concluded in March 2022 in Australia and will conclude in December 2022 in the UK.

I developed the strategy and implemented the UK public communications campaign for the Season. Sitting in the Australian High Commission in the UK’s Public Diplomacy team, I am managed the £120,000 campaign budget covering outdoor, print and digital advertising as well as overseeing the pr and media buying agencies helping us to deliver the strategy. I manage relationships with more than one hundred stakeholders in the UK and Australia to ensure Season and DFAT messages reach the public through our partner channels.

Our UK and Australia public communications campaign reached more than 14 million people through an outdoor, print and digital campaign and our pr strategy has secured coverage for the Season with the Guardian, BBC, The Times, Daily Telegraph and more – reaching more than 500 million.

Agencies: AKA and Bolton & Quinn.Website: ukaustraliaseason.com

I was the Communications lead for the global UK Government-funded Conflict, Stability and Security Fund’s (CSSF) East Africa programme. CSSF is a cross government fund which supports and delivers activity to tackle instability and to prevent conflicts that threaten UK interests.

I developed and implemented the first dedicated communications plan for CSSF in the region, which helped generate and secure media opportunities and coverage for UK ministers and High Commissioners/Ambassadors across the region as well as for the UK’s Foreign, Development and Commonwealth Office and Ministry of Defence social channels.

One of the highlights of the role enabled me to plan and oversee a global virtual seminar on COVID Misinformation in East Africa in partnership with BBC Africa.

The Royal African Society is an inclusive Pan-African membership organisation based in the UK that aims to facilitate equitable relations between the UK and Africa through insight, dialogue and events in the fields of academia, business, politics, arts and culture.

Through their events, programmes and online channels they reach a network of more than one million people in the UK and Africa.

Since 2017, I have provided marketing and pr consultancy for their two major London festivals – Film Africa and Africa Writes. I developed the marketing and PR strategies, oversaw staff, managed relationships with partners and venues as well as implementing the marketing from emarketing and social media through to media partnerships.

Some of my highlights have included selling out opening films and performances for both festivals at the British Library and British Film Institute, and securing and managing festival partnerships including gal-dem, Facebook, Granta and others.

The Royal African Society
Film Africa
Africa Writes

Images: The Royal African Society

Design is all around us. It never stops. We just don’t always notice it. The museum that never closes opened on the 24 November 2016.

The Design Museum in London is the world's leading museum devoted to contemporary design in every form from architecture and fashion to graphics, product and industrial design. Looking to expand its space and programme, the museum relocated to High Street Kensington from London Bridge in 2016.

The relaunch marketing campaign ran across digital, print and out-of-home sites in the month leading up to opening and attracted 60,000 people to the museum in the opening fortnight with hour-long queues during the opening weekend. Over target, this represents one third of the previous museum’s annual audience.

Creative agency: Gravity Road
Media buyer: AKA

Read more about the campaign's success
The Design Museum

Images and film: The Design Museum

As part of an ongoing partnership with British Council, Livity Africa conceptualised events around innovation and collaboration in the creative industry in South Africa, Africa and the UK. In collaboration with the British Council, Livity Africa managed these events and activations – from panel discussions to live performances – inviting young people to engage, exchange and connect with like-minded people across both continents.

The collaboration produced Creative Futures (a three-day programme of interactions built around visiting UK and pan-African creatives and their local counterparts from South Africa), a live music series featuring UK and SA headliners, Future Music, and Creative Hustles, a series of workshops and panel discussions connecting aspiring and established creative professionals.

I oversaw the marketing, pr and social campaign for the series, achieving the following results.

#CreativeHustles

1100 young people physically attended 13 hustles in 2013 and 2014 featuring over 60 creative professionals as speakers or facilitators. Each hustle reached over 1.5 million people in person at the events, online or through media coverage.

#CreativeFutures

We reached more then 6.5 million people through #CreativeFutures with almost 1,000 people attending events, 4 million being exposed through media coverage and 2 million through digital and social media.

#FutureMusic

In 2013, 2,500 people attended 8 live music events in Cape Town and Johannesburg.  UK and SA headliners included Actress, 2 Bears, Reason, The Brother Moves On and Christian Tiger School and I estimate we reached more than 11 million people through our media and marketing activity. For the climax of the Future Music series, we collaborated with the UK's Roundhouse to run a nationwide competition for SA's emerging artists, with the winner selected to headline the UK festival - Roundhouse Rising.

Livity Africa
Future Music
 

Images and film: Livity Africa and British Council

Rich Mix is East London’s independent cinema arts venue. It's aim is to be a place where the communities of the world, who are the citizens of East London and beyond, can come together to experience and make world class art and feel that it’s a place where they belong. 

I was the head of marketing and media from 2010 to 2013 and part of the senior leadership team responsible for achieving Rich Mix’s outstanding performance in the 2012 financial year, increasing annual footfall by 25% to 150,000. 

In addition to promoting over 350 arts and culture events a year as well as the daily cinema programme, I managed the development of a new website with online ticketing integration and increased annual traffic by 20% in 2012. During my time at Rich Mix, I increased the mailing list by 50,000 and oversaw our customer database (Partonbase) of over 100,000 including establishing membership and loyalty programmes.

To grow and retain audiences, I implemented a formal audience development programme, using face-to-face and online surveying, Mosaic profiling and postcode analysis to inform marketing strategy and programming.

I built relationships with local people, organisations and media which helped us to engage with 10,000 more people from our local community than the previous year. To achieve this, we introduced a strategic partnership with Tower Hamlets libraries and Idea Stores. The Film for a Fiver campaign offered local residents with a library card £5 film tickets on non-peak days (Monday and Tuesdays). The joint initiative introduced new audiences to the library and increased ticket sales for Rich Mix. More importantly, the cheaper ticket price offered greater cinema access for lower income families in the borough.

Rich Mix

Images: Rich Mix

As part of my Masters of Arts at the University of Witwatersrand (Johannesburg), I published a research report which explores the motivations for, and barriers to, young people attending and consuming live music in small to medium venues in Johannesburg.

With the average age of South Africans being just 25 years, young people represent a large, existing and potential new audience for live music venues looking to grow new audiences. Yet there are challenging racial, spatial and economic legacies of apartheid which live music venues need to overcome to reach out to more young people. Young South Africans are often described as one entity, defined by their ‘race’, age and education level.

This research uncovers new insights into what motivates young South Africans to attend live music from socialising with friends to deeper emotional connections with music and artists. Broader themes such as young people’s desire for authenticity, uniqueness and self-identity are explored in the context of live music as well as their preferences for open spaces and freedom of movement during their live music experiences. This research explores how to segment South African live music audiences based on motivation and consumption patterns, to understand if it could help inform future audience development strategies in South Africa. Live music venues’ understanding and practice of audience development has been analysed to better understand how embedded the arts marketing profession is within the sector and what appetite there could be for the introduction of a motivation-based audience segmentation tool.

Finally, the report reflects on the findings and makes recommendations on how live music venues could authentically engage with young audiences; what measures could be taken to cultivate more artistically-led, but audience-focused venues; and ultimately, how to attract more young audiences to their venues.

Read the report

This research was also the basis of It starts with a heart beat, a research report published by Concerts SA and the University of Witwatersrand.

Read It starts with a heart beat

Images: Live SA

Fear and Love: Reactions to a Complex World was one of the opening exhibitions at the new Design Museum and featured eleven new installations by some of the most innovative and thought-provoking designers and architects working today.

Primarily targeting designers, creatives and the tech sector, the marketing campaign focused on digital, ambient and legal flyposting campaigns in east and south London.

Media and marketing partnerships were established with Wired, RIBA and Tech City.

Creative agency: OK RM
Media buyer: AKA

Fear and Love: Reactions to a Complex World

Images and film: The Design Museum

Now in its ninth year, the Beazley Designs of the Year awards and exhibition celebrates design that promotes or delivers change, enables access, extends design practice or captures the spirit of the year.

The 2016 Beazley Designs of the Year was one of  the opening exhibitions at the relaunched Design Museum. Aimed at a more general audience with an interest in design, the marketing campaign focused on digital, ambient and out-of-home channels. Media partnerships with The Times and Dezeen extended the reach of the marketing campaign securing over £200,000 worth of print and digital advertising.

We worked with the exhibition 2D designer Studio Hato to align the emojicon design concept in the exhibition with the campaign creative.

Creative agency: Studio Hato
Media buyer: AKA.

The Design Museum

Images: The Design Museum

Cycle Revolution was the closing exhibition at the Design Museum's previous location in London Bridge. The marketing challenge was to attract a new specialist audience in the final months before the museum temporarily closed for six months.

Cycling enthusiasts were the primary target audience who were reached through digital, ambient and out-of-home marketing channels. Four versions of the creative connected with different members of the cycling community from urban riders to thrill seekers. A key part  of the strategy was establishing reciprocal marketing partnerships with cycling media, events and organisations in order to cost-effectively reach those audiences. More than 50,000 attended the exhibition over six months meeting its visitor and income targets during a challenging period in the museum's history.

Creative agency: Leo Burnett.

The Design Museum

Images: The Design Museum

To commemorate the closing of the Design Museum's former Shad Thames site, the Design Museum hosted a weekend punk festival as part of a year-long celebration of 40 years of punk heritage and influence in London.

The brand identity was developed with iconic British graphic designer Neville Brody and embodied the spirit of punk. The marketing campaign used traditional street ambient campaigns as well as content partnerships with curation partners Rough Trade, Roundhouse and the BFI. Weekend Punk at the Design Museum attracted 2,000 people over two days with almost 40% of the audience citing that they gained a better understanding about the heritage of punk.

#punklondon

I led the social media strategy for a London-wide cultural initiative celebrating the 40th anniversary of Punk. The launch social campaign resulted in #PunkLondon trending in London.

Weekend Punk

Images: The Design Museum

As a digital native, I have championed, managed and overseen many digital projects throughout my career. Here are three examples.

Rich Mix

Rich Mix is an independent cinema and arts venue in London. I oversaw the development of the new website and integration with ticketing system and database (Patronbase) increasing annual traffic by 20% to 600,000 visits in 2012, as well as increasing our mailing list from 20,000 to 70,000 in two years. This website project required me to commission and manage a web agency, develop a project specification and budget, plus oversee the design, development, testing and public launch of the website. More importantly, it required strong internal stakeholder management skills to ensure all of organisation’s requirements were managed. I was the manager of the website and all digital channels, establishing the strategy and KPI’s and overseeing a team of three people to keep content up-to-date, manage online ticket sales, drive traffic to the website through social media, SEO and e-marketing, manage customer feedback and create regular web analytics reports.

Rich Mix

Major Projects Victoria

Major Projects Victoria manages high profile, large-scale public projects for the Victorian Government in Australia including the $128m Melbourne Recital Centre/Melbourne Theatre Company Theatre and $268m AAMI Park Stadium. I championed and managed the introduction of a new corporate website, content management system and social media strategy, doubling web traffic in the first six months.

Major Projects Victoria

Livity Africa

“Beth has been absolutely fundamental and instrumental in taking us from a print magazine with a small digital offering into a pretty much fully-fledged digital agency and platform - with a digital offering that is now not just flourishing but starting to self-monetise,” Livity Africa Founder Gavin Weale.

I joined youth media agency Livity Africa in its infancy and played a critical role in transitioning it into a digital-first agency. As a member of the leadership team, I implemented a digital strategy which grew their main online community to over one million young South Africans. This network of engaged young people helped us attract clients like the British Council, Google, Red Bull, Barclays, Canon and Converse to help them reach young people through digital, events and media.  Crucial to the success of Livity Africa was my commitment to developing the digital capability among our staff and network of young people, as well as influencing our leadership team about the potential of digital. Influence could have only been achieved through a consistent approach to setting digital objectives, measuring their impact and translating that into business language. In addition to Livity Africa’s client campaigns, I oversaw the digital content strategy and brand strategy for their media property Live SA as well as the Voting is Power campaign which encourages youth engagement in politics and democracy. 

Livity Africa

Cover image: Peter Glenane

South Africa has a very vibrant fashion scene. To capture and celebrate the spirit of youth expressed through MRP’S (SA's equivalent of H&M) fashion, Livity Africa has been creating fun fashion editorial campaigns – from conceptualsing fashion shoots and sourcing clothing and models, to styling them and capturing the imagery in still and moving pictures.

The fashion campaigns are part of an ongoing partnership with MRP and are featured as blog post content published on the livemag.co.za platform and promoted through social. The aim is to highlight the personality and the fashion-forward both behind and in front of the camera and inspire the 18-to-30 target market – not just with the fashion but also with the attitude and featured creatives.

In collaboration with the creative team of photographer/art director Siyabonga Mkhasibe and stylist Tshepo Mosokotso, my role was to secure, oversee and measure the campaigns. MRP has remained a client of Livity Africa following the initial three campaigns launched during my time at Livity Africa.

Livity Africa

Images: Livity Africa

Live SA is a South African youth-run media channel covering a range of topics from fashion, politics, music, art, relationships, career advice, events and gigs. All the content is 100% produced by the team of 18-to-25-year-olds.

Alongside other media professionals, I mentored youth journalists. I also oversaw the digital marketing and social media strategy for Live SA, doubling the website, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and Google + communities in 2014.

Working with a team of young people, we successfully monetized Live SA’s online communities attracting digital campaigns with Canon, Barclays, Mr Price (SA’s H&M equivalent), Native VML and Converse.

Live SA

Images: Live SA

Voting is Power (VIP) is a campaign delivered by Livity Africa that encourages young people to vote and become active agents in their democracy.

Through digital engagement, interactive events, interventions in parliament, and activations across South Africa in a co-ordinated ongoing campaign, Livity Africa's network of young people not only report on how SA’s democracy functions, but also advocate for youth interests and issues. 

In the year of the 2014 South African national election, I oversaw a digital marketing, social media and PR campaign which encouraged youth engagement in democracy. Leading a team of three, we achieved our digital reach and engagement targets 6 months into a 12 month campaign. We generated 168,000 engagements with 18-to-35-year-olds and our national live youth debates trended twice on Twitter in South Africa. VIP was initially, and continues to be, supported by Omidyar Network, however has since received support from Making All Voices Count, the Raith Foundation and the Indigo Trust.

Voting is Power

Image and film: Livity Africa

Since 2010 I have managed the international media for the Lake of Stars project, an annual international music festival in Malawi. From managing international and local media onsite during the festival to developing pre and post media strategies, I have been instrumental in growing the festival’s global brand. I managed and trained the festival media team of staff and volunteers, coordinated media interviews with high profile artists and been part of the festival’s leadership team.

Between 2014 and 2016, international media coverage reached more than 500 million people each year including CNN, BBC World, The Guardian, Metro, Wall Street Journal, BuzzFeed, Time Out, Mail and Guardian South Africa, Africa Geographic, Culture Trip, MAPP Africa, Newsweek, Wanderlust, Vice, Suedduetsche Zeitung, MTV Base, the Scotsman and DSTV.

Lake of Stars Festival

Images: Lake of Stars Festival

Digify Africa is a digital training initiative delivered by Livity Africa, with support from Google, the Rockefeller Foundation and British Council. The programme is designed to up-skill the next generation of digital talent in preparation for jobs and entrepreneurial opportunities across the continent.

A key member of the initial team which rolled out Digify in South Africa, I oversaw the pr and marketing campaign in 2014 and 2015. 

During my time at Livity Africa we secured paid internships or jobs for young people with South Africa's leading creative agencies and brands including Native VML, MTN, British Council and Retroviral.

I also grew the profile of the programme with creative agencies, brands and funders through PR, securing coverage with national TV and radio stations including ENCA, Power FM and SABC.

Digify Africa

Images: Livity Africa

With almost 15 years experience working in marketing and media, a few of the training and insight projects I have developed and delivered include:

- a two-week media management course for African festivals in Zanzibar for the African Music Development Programme in 2014

- a two-week journalism course for Girl Effect in Rwanda on behalf of Livity Africa in 2015. This project involved delivering training to non-English speakers with the aid of a translator.

- the digital journalism and social media induction programme for 18-to-25-year-olds at Livity Africa in South Africa from 2013 to 2015.

Livity Africa
African Music Development Programme

Image: Livity Africa

From 2008 to 2010, I provided communications, media and issue management advice to ministers, ministerial staff and senior civil servants for high profile, large-scale government projects including the $128m Melbourne Recital Centre/Melbourne Theatre Company Theatre, $268m AAMI Park Stadium and the Biosciences Research Centre.

We reached an average monthly audience of 25 million through positive media stories about our projects and I secured and oversaw the making of an episode about AAMI Park on US Discovery Channel’s ‘Build it Bigger’ series seen by more than 20 million people in over 200 countries.

With my manager, we managed more than 100 ministerial media visits, press conferences, official ceremonies, stakeholder and celebrity events for the projects.

Major Projects Victoria

Images: Major Projects Victoria and Hivis Pictures