The brief

The 5th Auckland Triennial is New Zealand's biggest and most prestigious visual art event. To honour this responsibility, The Auckland Art Gallery secured the services of world-class curator Hon Hanru to develop and commission over 43 artists from 15 different to respond to his central theme, If you were to live here…. The Triennial runs from 10 May - 11 August 2013.

The Wright approach

While traditional publicity and public relations work would garner major coverage of the Triennial, the event also strived to create a strong presence online: on its website and through social media primarily.  This would be in keeping with the international focus of the event, as well as its aim to engage the widest number of people possible.  Wright Communications, which provided all communications services to the Triennial, added its digital expert Amanda Nodder to the team to ensure all bases were covered.

Amanda was required to bring the Gallery's online presence up to speed rapidly.  She immediately created a social media strategy, setting up connections with all relevant parties and venues to ensure information was flowing freely.  From this she compiled a conversational calendar, which ensured all key events would be shared online to members of the public.  She attended events, creating a Twitter conversation with online art lovers.  She attended to the daily management of Facebook and Twitter, responding to followers and creating competitions to maintain interest.

Another main prong of Amanda's work involved ensuring there were no design faults or factual errors on the Triennial website before its 'Go Live' deadline, and that all events and other information was completely up-to-date.  This work involved liaising with web developers and on-going support with uploading content, including images, onto the website.

Outcome

Sara Laver from the Auckland Art Gallery Toi O Tamaki was happy to vouch for the quality of the work undertaken by Wright Communications - particularly that done by Amanda Nodder.