Here at Isentia, wellness is a focus and working in an environment where everyone feels comfortable to speak openly about troubling issues without fear or stigma is important to our culture of inclusivity and respect. We believe being part of an organisation that are advocates for diverse employment and fair treatment are important values and having a healthy mindset is just as important. We also love to lend a hand to local and national fundraising organisations wherever we can and support social issues that resonate with us.
With this in mind, it sparked an idea to combine health and wellness whilst also participating in a charitable activity. We wanted to raise funds for a great cause, get fit and have fun at the same time and so 11 Melbourne Isentians formed a running club and participated in the Run Melbourne 10km. Our charity of choice was White Ribbon.
We trained hard and with the help of Strava, we were able to stay accountable with our training and also track our progress. Running through the Melbourne winter was a challenge in itself, but slowly and surely our fitness and running pace increased week by week and we were feeling confident about the 10km run. Many of us achieved our fastest times, motivating us to continue training and recruit more people into our running club.
Over a three-week campaign, our team collectively raised $1,375 for White Ribbon, it was great so many of our colleagues, friends and family were supportive of us participating in the event as well as supporting this great cause.
Where are we running off to next? Watch this space…
Loren is an experienced marketing professional who translates data and insights using Isentia solutions into trends and research, bringing clients closer to the benefits of audience intelligence. Loren thrives on introducing the groundbreaking ways in which data and insights can help a brand or organisation, enabling them to exceed their strategic objectives and goals.
In our third edition of Isentia Conversations: Communicating through Change, we chat with Rochelle Courtenay, the Founder and Managing Director of Share the Dignity. Rochelle talks to us about how she stays connected with over 6,000 volunteers across Australia and how she motivates those teams to work to end period poverty.
Isentia’s Insights Director, Ngaire Crawford also shares some of the trends seen across social and traditional media about home not always being the safest place for some people, and how social communities can help combat this.
Because many of us are working from home, we saw this webinar series as an opportunity to connect with each other, learn from subject matter experts and hear their stories, as we adapt to a new way of working.
4:55 - Although most of us are now working from home, home isn’t always the safest place for everybody.
5:25 - The main topics currently reported on mainstream media:
8:55 - Within ANZ, data shows people are searching online about the rules for lockdown. What are they? Are they doing the right thing? What are the policies?
9:10 - On social media, people are reaching out and using their social channels to create connection, to remind everyone to check in on people and be a source of safety. During March, references to being scared and feeling unsafe more than doubled across ANZ.
Cluster topics driven by COVID-19 for feeling unsafe included: Rates, self-isolation, stress and mental health.
Cluster topics driven by COVID-19 for feeling scared included: Government, kids, workers, rent, supermarket, police, trust and social media.
10:15 - It’s important to see the good in social media right now - it’s the greatest facilitator of social connection. Not only can people reach out to others directly, toxic people and unhelpful communication can be called out very quickly. Always use your common sense when using social media, check your sources and investigate claims before relying on them.
13:13 - The importance of community.
15:45 - For the past five years, Rochelle has also been known as the ‘Pad Lady’. Share the Dignity was created after Rochelle read about the high number of Australian homeless women who didn’t have access to essential sanitary items.
Twice a year, she drives two collections for sanitary items and runs the ‘It’s in the bag’ campaign each December. For this initiative, every day Australians are asked to fill a bag with essential items including toothbrushes, toothpaste, sanitary items, shampoo, conditioner, deodorant and soap. For a woman who is fleeing domestic violence, it may have been weeks since she has brushed her teeth, so these basic items are essential for these women in need.
16:56 - Communicating online to her ‘Shero’ and ‘Hero’ volunteers has been the norm for Rochelle since she founded Share the Dignity. Using ‘Workplace’ for their intranet, internal communications via announcements to all 5,783 volunteers is easy and effective.
17:45 - The most important thing when communicating is to be authentic and genuine. We ensure the most important people (Sheroes and Heroes) within our charity are kept informed and are at the forefront of everything that’s done. We ensure our communication comes from the heart first and our heads second.
19:03 - Reinforce the message you are trying to communicate. With charities, it’s important to remind volunteers (and staff members) why they are doing the work they are doing. Often, different types of communication are developed to cater for different communication preferences. Videos are recorded and also written up to deliver the same message.
19:58 - Since COVID-19, Share the Dignity has adopted new engagement initiatives on social media. The most recent; a Mother’s Day campaign where the community was asked to share their favourite photo with their mum. The campaign encouraged people to connect and engage with one another, to share stories, smiles, tears and laughter. It was a great way to create a community within a community. It’s important to help people within your community through difficult times.
24:30 - A key part of running a charity is to sustain volunteers’ passion. We do this by sharing stories about the women they have helped and continue to help. We make sure they know how much of a difference they are making to someone else’s life.
If you would like to view other Webinar Isentia Conversations: Communicating through Change:
Isentia Conversations: with Katherine Newton from RU OK?
Isentia Conversations: with Bec Brown from The Comms Department
Isentia Conversations: with Rachel Clements at Centre for Corporate Health
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R U OK? uses the insights Isentia provides to plan and evaluate its campaigns. Revealing the messages that get attention and how different audiences engage each year.
The way different audiences perceive the same piece of news can be very different, depending on their culture, the way the news is being communicated and any number of contingencies.
These disparities can mount up until, in the end, these audiences are living in completely different realities.
One of the biggest challenges for PR professionals in the region is the hardening of "siloed realities." Audiences are fracturing into smaller, self-affirming groups that rarely overlap. If your communications strategy relies on a one-size-fits-all message via mainstream media, the content might not have many takers.
A vivid example of this is Australia’s "Voice to Parliament" referendum.
If audiences were only exposed to the major broadsheets or watched traditional evening news, the conversation often centered on legal structures, constitutional law, and high-level political endorsements. The nature of these discussions were formal and policy-heavy.
But on social media, specifically TikTok, the reality was entirely different. The "No" campaign gained massive traction through short, punchy, and often emotive content that bypassed how complex the policy discussions were entirely. Creators or influencers spoke directly to fears about land rights and personal costs, arguments that were barely present in the "mainstream" policy debate.
This resulted in a campaign that validated the opinions of audiences exposed to the mainstream media , but completely neglected what audiences were speaking about on social media. The two spaces were in their own siloes, the audiences never really spoke to each other and they just echoed within their own walls.
When we zoom into Southeast Asia, these silos are often built around language and culture. A corporate crisis plays out very differently in a multi-lingual market like Malaysia or the Philippines.
As a comms director, relying solely on English-language monitoring, would end up missing a large part of the broader conversation.
How do we connect these separated worlds? We need "bridge builders."
The era of the generic corporate spokesperson is fading. To navigate silos, brands need to engage personalities who have credibility across the divide. This might mean identifying a "Key Opinion Consumer" (KOC) who is respected by both corporations and everyday users. Or finding a financial influencer who can translate complex corporate sustainability goals into language that resonates with sceptical Gen Z investors. Many accounts on Instagram and TikTok in the financial education space have much larger audiences. The late-millennial and Gen-Z crowd realise that they’re probably falling behind in the best ways to work their money, and so they create short, quick and punchy content that leads to their younger audiences taking action on their finances and that it’s actually not super difficult to just start.
The media should not be treated as a ‘single entity’. There is no singular media anymore. There are only clusters of communities, and our job, as communicators, is to find the keys to unlock each one.
We analyse why audiences consume news in siloes and what are the possible connectors or bridges that could bring them together.
The media landscape is accelerating. In an era where influence is ephemeral and every angle demands instant comprehension, PR and communications professionals require more than generic technology—they need intelligence engineered for their specific challenges.
Isentia is proud to introduce Lumina, a groundbreaking suite of intelligent AI tools. Lumina has been trained from the ground up on the complex workflows and realities of modern communications and public affairs. It is explicitly designed to shift professionals from passive media monitoring back into the role of strategic leaders and pacesetters.
“The PR, Comms and Public Affairs sectors have been experimenting with AI, but most tools have not been built with their real challenges in mind.” said Joanna Arnold, CEO of Pulsar Group.
“Lumina is different; it is the first intelligence suite designed around how narratives actually form today, combining human credibility signals with machine-level analysis. It helps teams understand how stories evolve, filter out noise and respond with context and confidence to crises and opportunities.”
Lumina is centered on empowering, not replacing, the human element of communications strategy. This suite is purpose-built to help PR, Comms, and Public Affairs professionals significantly improve productivity, enhance message clarity, and facilitate early risk detection.
Lumina enables communicators to:
We are launching the Lumina suite by making our first module immediately available: Stories & Perspectives.
In the current fragmented, multi-channel media environment, communications professionals need to be able to instantly perceive not just how a story is growing, but also how it is being perceived across different stakeholder groups.
Stories & Perspectives organizes raw media mentions into clustered, cohesive Stories, and the Perspectives that exist within each, reflecting distinct media, audience, and public affairs angles. This unique functionality allows users to:
"Media isn’t a stream of mentions," said Kyle Lindsay, Head of Product at Pulsar Group. "But rather a living system of stories shaped by competing perspectives. When you can see those structures clearly, you gain the ability to understand issues as they form, anticipate how they’ll evolve, and act with precision. That’s what we mean when we talk about AI built for communicators, and that's what an off-the-shelf LLM can't give you."
The launch of Stories & Perspectives is the first release of many. Over the upcoming months, we will systematically roll out the full Lumina roadmap, introducing a comprehensive set of AI tools engineered to handle every phase of the communications lifecycle.
The full Lumina suite will soon incorporate:
Want to harness the power of Lumina AI for your PR, Comms, or Public Affairs team? .
Complete the form below to register your interest.
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