Blog post
June 25, 2019

The Gold Standard

In the past year, there have been over 280,000 media mentions of the Commonwealth Games in Australia.

When you look at the sheer scale of coverage for the Gold Coast 2018 Commonwealth Games, it’s amazing to think just how complex and diversified the voices within that noise are. As Australia’s largest sporting event this decade, the Games are attracting worldwide interest – providing a perfect example of how media intelligence is crucial for any organisation to remain empowered and informed. 

Supporting the work of the Commonwealth Games by delivering invaluable insight to those working behind the scenes enables the team to digest huge volumes of content into bite-sized pieces of knowledge that can be used to take action, address key topics or issues, and keep the broader organisation informed.

From a personal perspective, it’s been amazing to watch as the Commonwealth Games preparation unfolds – setting somewhat of a ‘gold’ standard when it comes to media intelligence and insights. 

Why? Because the team have recognised the value of not only pulling out pertinent coverage daily, but engaging in media insights to better position themselves and react to negative press accordingly.

If you do the math, 280,000 media mention averages out to around 780 media items a day across social and mainstream – and that’s during a non-Games time period.

Now let’s multiple this number by about 10 to account for the increase of coverage during Games time. This team is tasked with staying across more than 7,800 media items per day across social and mainstream, globally.

It’s easy to understand the need to prepare, because the numbers don’t stop there. For example there’s expected to be a TV audience of 1.5 billion, 1.5 million spectators, 6,600 athletes and over 15,000 volunteers – all engaged and ready to be part of #GC2018.

With those numbers spinning around in my head, it’s easy to see how clients can become overwhelmed. Analysis is simply a must-have in this scenario – even just to get some perspective on the sheer volumes of coverage.

When you think about an event like GC2018, there is a lot of information that needs to be tracked – and much of it is not about the sport itself. From the infrastructure, to local community issues, to travel issues, ticketing, athletes and venues (the list goes on!) to beautiful PR pieces, hosting media at the Commonwealth Games Village (CGV), and briefing ambassadors on crisis management.

Being able to distill, digest and make sense of this volume of coverage is something we’re proud to be supporting – providing the tools to capture instant quantitative insights as well as tracking trends and peaks in coverage against issues or topics to support the team’s decision-making processes during the Games. 

From our broadcast monitors, to our daily briefing editors to our operations and account management. From our senior analysts who work on our key sporting client’s insights, to our client service support – we’ve all been working towards this event in some way or another for the past few years, and the countdown is now on! We’ve also had countless conversations about making sure we’re ready for every possible scenario that may impact the Games (and as a result, the media environment surrounding it). The Isentia team have workshopped and considered issues from power outages, to weather conditions, to doping scandals, to village incidents, to buses of athletes crashing. We need to make sure we are positioned to meet anything that comes up, and that includes having an embedded staff member at HQ from now until the end of the Games, providing always-on support.

Similarly, the Commonwealth Games team are busy building infrastructure and creating impact from the Games which will result in generational benefit for the Gold Coast region and Queensland. It’s not just a one-time sporting event. The Games venues will leave world-class infrastructure for future international events, while the Commonwealth Games Village will become the heart of the Gold Coast health and knowledge precinct.

When you’re in the sport of media intelligence and supporting crisis management, it’s critical to be able to map out scenarios that may impact clients, ensuring the both of you are prepped and ready for what’s ahead. At Isentia, we pride ourselves on being an extension of our client’s team. And for an event like the Commonwealth Games, we are sitting side-by-side, every step of the way – excited to support Queensland’s growth well into the future.

Isentia is proud to be supporting the Gold Coast 2018 Commonwealth Games by delivering powerful media intelligence and insights all the way to the finish line. Read more from John Bissinella, Head of Client Success about how we stay ahead of the games to deliver the best possible service for our clients here.

Patricia Kavanagh, QLD State Manager

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We’ve implemented a lot of changes over the last six months to ensure our clients are ready for the years ahead – working on what’s important to ensure that we deliver the best possible service.

Shifting forces

Issues can move quickly with almost hourly twists and turns, some snowballing from a single simple tweet. Unless you’re checking multiple channels regularly, it’s easy to lose track of a story’s trajectory.

Take the recent news focus on Barnaby Joyce. The story developed over two weeks and each day delivered a new angle, with influencers from both sides weighing in via different forms of media. If you’re like me, the story would have had you hooked with an impressive volume of chatter and numerous voices shaping the overall picture. With Mediaportal, stories like this are much easier to get a handle on - tracking velocity, following the twists and turns, seeing who is driving the agenda and tracking its geographical impact.

We’re passionate about this connection point where our clients can navigate this dynamic, rapidly changing landscape to apply or build-out strategies that place their knowledge at the heart of action. This vision to both discover and inform our clients so they know their media better than anyone else with a team behind that technology that knows exactly what they’re trying to achieve, is what’s driving the year ahead for Isentia.

Our roadmap for Mediaportal is designed to be agile to respond to evolving needs and deliver greater interconnection between information and understanding. All designed to give our clients the ability to harness the game-changing potential of real-time actionable media intelligence.

The laws of simplicity: People and tech 

If you’re the weightlifter, consider us your spotter. Our teams work hard to understand your business and the issues that are important to you. We’re here to partner with you for the long-term and have real people picking up your phone calls. Our approach to the simple yet powerful combination of people and technology makes us fairly unique and it's one our clients really value. Having someone to work with so that your content is more accurate and relevant, allowing your team to spends less time sifting through mountains of irrelevant content is just the tip of the ice-burg. 

We are your backup when the board comes knocking for answers. Clients who have tried less sophisticated services on the promise of “something different” and a budget price, invariably come back to us with stories of painful service, and unfulfilled promises. With us, you have confidence and a solution that's ready to go without the hassle - it's a big reason why so many clients recommend us to others.

That’s why we’re invested in having the right people with the best minds for our business to build on our personalised service, delivering the largest scope of content anywhere in the Australian market.

Channelling an athlete’s mindset

Our commitment to our industry cannot be questioned. We continue to lead and innovate - focusing on delivering the best service for our clients and making their lives easier. And like Commonwealth Games greats Ian Thorpe, John Landy and Dawn Fraser, we made it here through hard work, commitment and passion. As the external environment has changed, we have remained ahead of the pack - never compromising on our desire to equip our clients with accurate, curated insights into their media landscape.

For us, Client Success means delivering rich and accurate data for our clients so they remain on top of breaking issues, and are able to better understand how their strategic communications and business initiatives are truly interpreted by their various stakeholders through the lens of media coverage and social discussions. 

We are our clients’ support team – their high-performance coach, and we continue to strive for greatness as we cheer the real athletes to glory in this year’s Commonwealth Games and beyond.

Isentia is a proud partner of the GC2018 Commonwealth Games, delivering powerful media intelligence and insights all the way to the finish line.

John Bissinella, Head of Client Success for Australia

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Blog
Staying ahead of the game

Isentia is a proud partner of the GC2018 Commonwealth Games, delivering powerful media intelligence and insights all the way to the finish line.

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Every stakeholder relationship is different, and managing them effectively takes more than a one-size-fits-all approach.

From campaign planning to long-term engagement, having the right tools and strategy in place can make the difference between missed connections and meaningful impact.

This guide covers:

  • Identifying and understanding your key stakeholders
  • Mapping and modelling for influence and engagement
  • Equipping your team to maintain and grow strategic relationships

Get your copy now

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Blog
The fundamentals of stakeholder strategy

A practical guide to tailored stakeholder management, offering strategies and tools to identify, map, and nurture relationships.

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Across the communications landscape, teams are being asked to do more with less, while staying aligned, responsive and compliant in the face of complex and often shifting stakeholder demands. In that environment, how we track, report and manage our relationships really matters.

In too many organisations, relationship management is still built around tools designed for customer sales. CRM systems, built for structured pipelines and linear user journeys, have long been the default for managing contact databases. They work well for sales and customer service functions. But for communications professionals managing journalists, political offices, internal leaders and external advocates, these tools often fall short.

Stakeholder relationships don’t follow a straight line. They change depending on context, shaped by policy shifts, public sentiment, media narratives or crisis response. A stakeholder may be supportive one week and critical the next. They often hold more than one role, and their influence doesn’t fit neatly into a funnel or metric.

Managing these relationships requires more than contact management. It requires context. The ability to see not just who you spoke to, but why, and what happened next. Communications teams need shared visibility across issues and departments. As reporting expectations grow, that information must be searchable, secure and aligned with wider organisational goals.

What’s often missing is infrastructure. Without the right systems, strategic relationship management becomes fragmented or reactive. Sometimes it becomes invisible altogether.

This is where Stakeholder Relationship Management (SRM) enters the conversation. Not as a new acronym, but as a different way of thinking about influence.

At Isentia, we’ve seen how a purpose-built SRM platform can help communications teams navigate complexity more confidently. Ours offers a secure, centralised space to log and track every interaction, whether it’s a media enquiry, a ministerial meeting, or a community update, and link it to your team’s broader communications activity.

The aim isn’t to automate relationships. It’s to make them easier to manage, measure and maintain. It’s about creating internal coordination before the external message goes out.

Because in today’s communications environment, stakeholder engagement is not just a support function. It is a strategic capability.

Interested in how other teams are managing their stakeholder relationships? Get in touch at nbt@isentia.com or submit an enquiry.

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Blog
SRM vs CRM: which is right for PR & Comms teams?

Across the communications landscape, teams are being asked to do more with less, while staying aligned, responsive and compliant in the face of complex and often shifting stakeholder demands. In that environment, how we track, report and manage our relationships really matters. In too many organisations, relationship management is still built around tools designed for […]

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