Run by the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner (OAIC), this annual event is aimed at three key stakeholder groups, helping businesses, government agencies and individual members of the public navigate the swiftly changing digital privacy landscape.
Having expanded the PAW target audience from two to three groups for the 2022 event, the OAIC faced a new challenge in appealing to people across vastly different circumstances. While the broader event goal remained to raise awareness of privacy issues and the importance of protecting personal information, key messages varied across audience segments. The OAIC sought to help individuals understand their rights and protect their own data, and to help businesses and government agencies understand their obligations while encouraging them to promote the campaign.
Branding for the awareness campaign needed to be versatile to engage a diverse audience, while intuitive navigation and functionality were paramount for the website build.
Each year the OAIC puts the development of a PAW campaign brand and microsite out for tender. The Being Group was the successful agency in 2022, chosen for campaign concepts developed around the theme ‘Privacy: The Foundation of Trust’.
After delivering two creative directions for consideration, the preferred concept, Building Trust, was further developed to present a clear and consistent brand.
Design centres on the use of colourful 3D building blocks to illustrate the key information required to build a strong foundation of online privacy. Inspired by iconic games in the common consciousness, like LEGO and Tetris, each bright and colourful block has its own unique shape and characteristics, representing individual pieces of information and how they fit together. The visually appealing campaign identity communicates that online privacy is easy for individuals to build themselves, and is simpler than they might imagine.
A streamlined version of the hero visual acts as the campaign logo, offering a simplified representation of the foundation of trust, which can be used broadly in all campaign communications.
The eye-catching colour palette is vibrant and impactful. Tonal variants of core colours make up expanded supplementary palettes to signify content for the three target audiences.
The 3D block motif is versatile in design across collateral and the campaign microsite, where it is stacked, arranged in different configurations, and highlighted with different colours for emphasis and informational clarity.
A custom campaign microsite brings the Building Trust concept to life, with bright, colourful visuals playing the hero and standing out against the light background.
Web design is simple to ensure the message can be understood by people from all backgrounds and levels of literacy — particularly older Australians, culturally and linguistically diverse communities and First Nations Australians. Copywriting extends the concept of Building Trust through clear, concise language that reflects the theme. Connecting text with design, visitors are asked: Do your privacy practices stack up?
Functionality was a key consideration of the microsite’s build. We recommended use of the Drupal content management system (CMS) to counter the limitations of pre-existing CMS or more complicated third-party systems. The simplified CMS of the custom Drupal website allows OAIC staff to make ongoing updates with ease, particularly for displaying PAW’s supporters. An easy content upload function publishes company logos and links from a spreadsheet exported from an existing user database.
Navigation is intuitive, with pages for each of the event’s target audiences offering tips for building strength in privacy. A parallax display, highlighting individual colour-coded building blocks and how they stack together, serves as a strong visual device for organising advice for individuals, business and government.
The campaign microsite is geared towards raising awareness and encouraging participation in PAW activities. Calls to action to become a PAW supporter are prominent, and further resources for visitors are readily available throughout, including branded downloadable assets. Visitors are encouraged to download the PAW toolkit, which includes an A3 poster, PowerPoint template, email signature, web banner and images for social media, all written and designed by The Being Group.
Following the event, a survey of PAW supporters captured the success of the campaign identity and microsite, with a majority of respondents rating the website and supporter toolkit as very useful and 84% of respondents rating the PAW branding and design assets as 4/5 or 5/5.
The supporter toolkit was EXCELLENT! Well done. It is now the gold standard by which all other agency/industry associations’ supporter toolkits are measured. So well thought out, easy to use and implement.
