‘Every School Day is a Big Day’ – national communication campaign

Regular attendance at school is important for young people’s engagement and participation in learning, their achievements, social development and wellbeing.

Student attendance and engagement has been a challenge since 2015 in Aotearoa New Zealand, and these challenges have been exacerbated by the impact of COVID-19.

Launched in June 2022, our All in for Learning Strategy (Attendance & Engagement Strategy) is a nationwide response to support ākonga to go to school more regularly, participate and progress in their education. 

To support this Strategy, we have developed an integrated communications and engagement approach knitting together national communications, regional communications, and support for schools, using physical, digital and social media.

The cost of the national communications is around $1 million of baseline funding. This national communications approach was designed to make attendance a national priority by:

  1. helping parents, whanau, ākonga and communities understand the importance of regular attendance and engagement at school
  2. enabling one story to be consistently and repeatedly heard; and
  3. enhancing awareness of regular attendance as an issue at a regional and local level.

National Communications Performance

The national communications and assets were launched on 26th August by Minister Tinetti with a planned, paid media spend of $480,000 over the campaign period.  On Day 1, the national communications achieved $342,000 of unpaid media exposure across major broadcast and digital media.

The campaign has exceeded the targets set for reach (how many people see the communications) and frequency (how many times the communications are seen).

Performance Measure

Target

Actual

Reach: parents with children and students under 17 years old

74%

96.3%

Frequency

4

17.1

 

In total, 167 creative assets were developed to support a multi-channel, multi-lingual approach, deployed across:

  • 521 Television Spots, across 16 TV channels
  • 688 National Radio Spots
  • 43 x Bus Backs
  • 33 x In-School Full Video screens
  • 281 x Posters in 7 key locations
  • Digital Billboards & Adshels programmatically, 1km radius to all schools in NZ (that have screens in that radius).

These assets have been designed to be repurposed post-campaign to maximise our return on investment. 

The Ministry sought a supplier from the AoG Advertising Services panel, extending an existing Ministry partner contract. The timeframes for delivery of the research, development and deployment of a national communications campaign were limited, and we used an existing supplier that had the capability and capacity to deliver a national communications campaign in a short timeframe.

The following are the contracted costs for the respective elements for the development and delivery of this campaign, including assessments:

  • Agency (incl. strategy, creative & production)             $294,900
  • Media costs                                                              $480,000
  • Baseline Research                                                     $56,600
  • Focus Group Research                                               $98,500
  • Impact assessment reports                                        $70,000

In addition, associated internal costs such as project management, editing and translation services for the campaign, launch event collateral, social media, and influencer posts have been supported through internal resources.

Every School Day is a Big Day Campaign Impact Assessment Summary [DOCX, 169 KB]

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