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Welcome from NZ Mountain Safety Council 4-5
Evidence-based prevention 6-15
Issue Specific Advisory and Insight Projects 8-9 Covid-19 Impact Research 10-11 How a NZ Tramp is Planned Research 12 Coronial Reporting 13
Mountaineering Behaviour Survey 14-15
Initiatives that make a difference 16-41 Plan My Walk 18-27
Tramping Video Series Promotion and Old Ghost Road Filming 28-31 Outdoor Safety Retail Partnership 32-33 Engaging our Audiences 34-35 Avalanche Advisory 36-37 Firearms Training 38-39 Organisational Excellence 40-41
Effective communication that makes a difference 42-55 Roar Campaign 44-45 Duck Campaign 46-47 Winter Campaign 48-49 Media Impact 50-51 Metrics 52-53 Videos 54-55
Financial summary 56-57
Alongside the amazing work captured within these pages, this year we engaged our council member organisations and partner organisations within a comprehensive review of our strategic plan. While the new plan itself is interesting, it is not the highlight for this report. The highlight is the unanimous and very vocal endorsement from our council and partners of the impact of the strategic focus so far. The new strategic plan will ensure ongoing evolution and development of the phenomenally successful work captured in this report.
Plan My Walk deservedly dominates many pages of this report. Feedback from across the sector has been exceptionally positive, however we would like to specifically highlight the equally positive findings of user impact research (page 24). In addition, the fantastic work undertaken by the team to connect Kiwis and international visitors to all the MSC tools and resources was recognised at the 2022 TVNZ-NZ Marketing Awards. This is a strong endorsement of MSC’s messaging approach from the wider marketing industry.
Insights remain central to all of our work, and this platform continues to evolve to ensure ongoing relevance to the sector. Exploring participation changes, understanding how Kiwis plan their adventures, and gaining a deep understanding of the mountaineering community have been a focus this last year. These insights will continue to inform our work and that of many sector partners.
MSC has responded to previous insights indicating participation changes, particularly the growth in backcountry mountain biking. The soon to be released ‘Old Ghost Road’ video represents the first in a new series targeted at improving the safety-related knowledge of Kiwis exploring Aotearoa’s most challenging biking trails.
MSC has continued to drive a strong positive media presence ensuring increased visibility of our many tools and resources across these national mainstream channels. This deliberate focus on insights driven, proactive media articles also allow positive story telling ahead of traditional peaks in incidents, ensuring Kiwis are better informed for their upcoming adventures. These pages reflect the passion and talent of our staff, our board, and the support of our partners and funders who have embraced our shared mission. Together, we will continue to achieve so much more. But now, we are pleased to present to you a reflection on 2021-22 and all that we accomplished together.
Our approach to prevention begins with insights and evidence of real safety issues. With this knowledge, we develop initiatives that reach, engage, and influence those people who will benefit the most.
PHOTO: Liz Carlson, Liverpool Hut, Mt Aspiring National ParkThe Tongariro Alpine Crossing Issue Specific Advisory Group (ISAG) report was completed in 2019 and proposed a new version of the video. The decision to undertake this was not made until more recently and filming was completed during 2022.
The new video will replace outdated content, with the addition of new content showing a more diverse range of weather, and the addition of three new language versions: English, Chinese and Korean, and with subtitles in Japanese, German, Spanish and French. The video is complete but we are strategically holding back on releasing this until late 2022.
All ISAG-agreed solutions have now been completed, with Department of Conservation (DOC), and local iwi - Ngati Hikairo ki Tongariro now investigating the implementation of changes to how the track is managed (around visitor numbers).
The Tongariro Alpine Crossing video continues to be our top performing video from the Tramping Video Series.
The implementation of many of these recommendations has stalled due to the impact of other DOC processes, which they have determined need to come first.
MSC continues to maintain a collaborative approach with DOC and is applying suitable pressure to ensure these recommendations are not forgotten.
PHOTOS: Martin Grafetsberger , filming of the Tongariro Alpine Crossing Wilderness MagazineTo support DOC’s work, we developed a specialised map-based dashboard that overlays search and rescues, and fatalities onto maps with DOC’s administrative boundaries. This offers DOC a visual aid to the type of safety incidents from a land-management perspective, in particular viewing hunting boundaries and conservation areas.
Our dashboards are now our primary source for viewing data, and we use them every week to source metrics for internal projects, media inquiries and to support our council members and partners’ work.
These dashboards now update quarterly, so we are always using the latest datasets. This ensures we are acting on the latest trends, and we are able to develop and share the latest insights.
We have continued to keep the Text Ferret digital conversation monitoring running over the past year, while scaling back on the data analysis as we have concentrated our efforts on other work. By keeping the monitoring running we have accumulated a vast amount of data, and now have a full two-years’ worth. This allows us to see how digital conversations have changed through the seasons and for an annual comparison.
The above image shows how topics of conversation have shifted across the two-year period with different themes emerging as the seasons change and as real-world events occur.
Throughout the Covid-19 pandemic there have been many examples showing how our lives have changed and how Covid-19 has impacted communities, workplaces and our country at large. For MSC, we’ve been interested in how the pandemic has shaped new behaviours around land-based outdoor recreation participation and whether or not this has disrupted previously understood trends around safety incidents.
To explore this topic, we used the ACC injury claim data as a proxy for participation. We’ve felt for some time that injury claims, especially of minor and moderate severity, provide an approximate proxy for participation trends. Typically, we believe changes in minor injury rates are reflective of changes in participation trends. While not meant to be a perfect measure of participation, injury claims give us a more time sensitive lens, as exclusively participation-based research and surveys aren’t as responsive and time sensitive.
Using this approach, we compared approved injury claims across five activities (hunting, mountain biking, snow sports, trail running and tramping) between the pre-covid period from July 2018, to June 2019 to the period July 2020 to June 2021.
» Tramping had seen the largest increase, to 120% pre-covid levels
» Hunting and mountain biking had increased, to around 110%
» Trail running had stayed largely the same
» Snowsports had decreased significantly to 80%, which is not surprising due to the national lockdown that spanned three weeks of the season in August 2021.
» Across the board participation had increased, most notably in Marlborough (140%) and Nelson/Tasman (135%), Taranaki (135%) and Auckland (130%)
» But some places experienced very little change, Gisborne, Otago and West Coast all stayed marginally just above precovid levels.
» NZ Europeans, who have long been the dominant tramping ethnicity, remained at similar level
» Māori were up to 125%
» Asian were up to a huge 170%
» Pacific Peoples were only a touch behind at 165%
» For those aged 25-34 activity increased over 140%
» For those aged 15-24 there was no change
» And for children, there was an obvious decrease, with those aged 5-14years down to 90%
» Females rose to 120%
» And Males rose to 115%
These insights support the anecdotal observations that tramping had seen an increase in activity through the Covid-19 pandemic.
Since completing this work we have been able to access the latest Sport NZ Active NZ participation research. Using this data we have gone back to compare if our approach to using the ACC injury data as a proxy for participation was accurate. We have confirmed that this approach was in fact largely accurate and in many cases supports our findings.
We conducted this research in the previous business year (November 2019 to January 2020) but did not publish it until October 2021.
This research focused on developing a deeper understanding around how people plan and prepare for a NZ tramping trip. We were particularly interested in understanding:
» How far in advance did they start planning their trip?
» What important decisions did they make as they planned?
» What type of information did they seek and where did they access this information?
» How did they record and share their plans?
» This research was instrumental in the design and development of Plan My Walk.
The group type ‘Researchers’ look for specific information for their trips:
We have continued to work closely with the country’s coroners by producing expert reports to assist their investigations into land-based outdoor recreation fatalities.
These reports detail the events leading up to the tragedy, the circumstances of the incident, causation factors, a summary of key findings and recommendations for prevention. Coroners have heavy caseloads and due to the large volume and diversity of scenarios, it’s not possible for them to be an expert in everything. Our reports ensure the coroners have all the facts presented impartially and enable them to make recommendations that can have real-world positive impact.
In almost all cases, coroners adopt the findings and recommendations MSC make.
It’s typical for coroners and the Ministry of Justice media teams to work with us when releasing findings to the media and public, and we are typically included in relevant media articles where our recommendations are adopted.
In the course of this year, we have completed eight full reports and have started work on a further two.
The objectives of this research were to:
» Develop a clear understanding relating to the ‘attitude and behaviour of the New Zealand mountaineering community towards avalanche dangers and avalanche safety’ in order to answer the fundamental question…
‘is there a cultural issue within the NZ mountaineering community that is contributing to avalanche-related safety incidents?’
» Use the findings to form the basis of improved avalanche prevention specifically targeting the NZ mountaineering and alpine climbing community.
The survey was launched on 22 November 2021 and closed on 18 February 2022.
The incentivised survey was conducted online and promoted to the mountaineering community through multiple different channels, including via:
» Mountaineering clubs and relevant membership bodies
» Mountaineering, climbing and tramping social media pages and groups
» NZ Mountain Safety Council and NZ Avalanche Advisory networks and contact lists
As an example of one of the findings…
Understanding what motivates mountaineers is important, because motivations influence behaviours such as decision-making and risk taking.
Successfully completing a personal objective that I have set for myself
Having an enjoyable day out in the mountains, regardless of my objective
Having an epic adventure that will make a good story
Having an enjoyable day out with friends
Sharing my skills with others
Developing my skills
Successfully managing the challenges that I come across
Overcoming the challenges of being in the mountains
represents a result that is statistically significantly different from at least one of the other groups.
Launching Plan My Walk in May 2021 was a big deal for MSC, and this year we strategically put a lot of our resources and effort behind the promotion of it.
It is no stretch to say it is the biggest initiative the organisation has launched since we went through our significant strategic changes eight years ago. In fact, it’s probably the single biggest thing we’ve done in our modern history!
You’d be forgiven for thinking it has been our only workstream, but in typical MSC fashion we have delivered a long list of impactful work this year.
When we launched Plan My Walk our council members and partners did a fantastic job to support this and we saw a really pleasing spike in users visiting the platform, however we knew the 2021/22 spring and summer period was going to be critical. Our challenge was to reach as many people as we could from a large and diverse audience of trampers. About 29% of the country’s adult population go tramping each year. To successfully achieve this we needed an excellent marketing strategy.
Our strategy consisted of four key tactics: our own channels, earned media, our partners and paid promotion. Within this strategy we also elected to use social media influencers, a first for MSC.
Our Plan My Walk promotional strategy was recognised at a national level through winning the 2022 TVNZ-NZ Marketing Awards - Excellence in Marketing Communication Strategy award.
While winning awards is not our focus, being recognised for our hard work to improve personal safety in the outdoors is great motivation for our team, council members and partners. This recognition is truly about shared effort and success. Refer to page 26 for more about the awards.
The design of the Plan My Walk website and app was recognised after being named as a finalist in the Designers Institute of New Zealand 2022 Best Awards ‘Value of Design’ category.
This acknowledged the developers, Somar Digital, hard work in designing a product that supports the desired outcome of Plan My Walk, and that has a massive impact to its audience.
“ The app gives me great comfort. I feel it brings me safety and security, and this brings me peace of mind to enjoy my walks for the reasons they are intended which is seeing this beautiful country on foot. I’m learning a lot. This is my favourite app I have downloaded.” -
We have delivered an extensive marketing campaign to rapidly build awareness of Plan My Walk. The campaign earned significant media coverage, and garnered support by some of the country’s biggest influencers, brands, partners and organisations. The strategy’s vision was to create awareness of the importance of preparation before heading into the outdoors and to show how this new platform can support that journey.
Our own channels had a big part to play in the promotion of PMW with updates sent via our existing digital channels and using our engaged social media audience to the get the word out.
» Included PMW features in the new Tramping Video Series, and added links to videos in our YouTube playlists
» Promotion in our EDM lists to both our network partners and existing public list of subscribers
» Linking to the Plan My Walk website or specific tracks when generating new blog content or resources on our website
» We have the ability to add traceable QR Codes and add features of the app to on any printed collateral we developed for projects throughout the year
» Our social media channels allow for us to engage and update the community, we pushed PMW over 60x on our main Facebook page alone through the year, with every post reaching thousands of followers and those interested in the outdoors. These were pushed ahead of key weekends and public holidays, promoting of places to go, describing features of the app, and our 15s video. It allows a place for discussion and Facebook/Meta/Instagram continues to be a key driver in user traffic to our channels.
For our paid advertising we established a detailed media schedule with our marketing partners GSL Promotus, which included projected metrics. These were established based on previous campaigns and an assessment of how we felt this target audience would respond to our video and display assets, and ultimately to PMW. We set the goal of achieving our highest ever campaign click-through rate, in the end equalling our previous best of 0.77%.
WE ALSO:
» Anticipated delivering 752,000 video views, but achieved over 1 million
» Anticipated delivering more than 2 million impressions, but achieved nearly 4 million
» Estimated 36,500 clicks to the PMW homepage but achieved over 62,000.
» Across these three metrics we achieved an average of 60% more than our initial projections.
We set out to achieve this by focusing on the tangible features and functions of the tool that people can see and use. The messaging needed to subtly speak to the issues and clearly identify the solution in PMW.
We used a strategy to reach people in different ways in each of the three pre-trip phases:
» awareness (when users were looking at outdoor content for inspiration)
» consideration (when users were researching outdoor excursion options)
» action (when users were planning specific walks).
This approach meant we could cast the message out wide, then narrow our focus to specific types of people in each stage of the planning process.
We identified working with influencers as a critical tactic, deciding to financially invest in this approach for the first time. Throughout the campaign we collaborated with ten different influencers that aligned to our brand and values, and where we felt PMW would be viewed as natural content. Our biggest influencers were Richie and Gemma McCaw.
Each influencer had their own style and audience, but we only wanted to work with people who had a genuine passion for safety in the outdoors. Collaborations needed to be based on mutual interest — audiences can see through partnerships that are ‘all about the money’, and they resonate with natural content more than staged ads.
Richie and Gemma McCaw: The McCaws lead active lives which sees them regularly exploring Aotearoa’s amazing tracks, it was a natural fit to engage them in our campaign.
“ Sometimes the health and safety side of getting outdoors can stop some people, but the app encourages and makes it a really easy thing to be able to do”
- RICHIE MCCAW, ADVENTURERSponsored story on Stuff.co.nz
Targeting media was another of our marketing strategies, and over recent years we have built strong media relationships. The media are important stakeholders in all our work. We secured some incredible media coverage for this campaign, including TVNZ Sunday, TVNZ Breakfast, The Rock radio station, Newshub 6pm news and many written articles across major sites such as stuff.co.nz, NZ Herald and Otago Daily Times.
In total we proactively generated 36 media features that mentioned or exclusively featured PMW.
We engaged with council members and partners before developing PMW, and intensified this engagement during the build. This early engagement helped us secure commitment from significant partners keen to help promote, including Tourism NZ, Torpedo7, Macpac, NZ Police, MetService and many more.
We continued to engage with them as we moved from developing the marketing strategy into the detailed campaign planning.
These partners helped us raise awareness of PMW among people outside our own reach.
MetService locked in a free website campaign with ad placements across their hugely popular website which generated over 1.9million impressions. On its dedicated Mountain Forecasts pages, permanent tiles were placed that led to over 2000 PMW users.
NZ Police continues to be a highly engaged and supportive partner by sharing Plan My Walk content on its huge social media channels. These were some of the most popular social media posts about PMW.
Paying attention to what was happening in society and the media presented us with opportunities we hadn’t planned for. Being open to taking these opportunities can pay off and some of our best promotion came with zero cost, like the Lotto NZ collaboration. The Lotto NZ campaign featured many elements including a PMW feature video played during a live TV draw which had an estimated 227,000 live viewers, further to this they developed a blog page on their website, plus social media features and promotional videos playing in Lotto outlets acros Aotearoa.
Building on the strong retail partnership with Macpac, we worked together on multiple projects that promoted Plan My Walk to their customers.
The first season of the How-To Videos showcased seven videos covering important aspects of tramping such as managing temperature, how to fit a pack, and gear care. This was hosted on our YouTube and promoted by both us and Macpac across social media and EDMs.
In addition, over 170,000 double-sided clothing tags promoted Plan My Walk on items in stores across Aotearoa and Australia. In Google Analytics we can see 1,060 total users, who had 691 engaged sessions, with an avg. engagement rate of 41.73%. Further swing tags have been committed for 2022/23.
As another way to get PMW to its customers, Macpac dedicated one side of its refund card to Plan My Walk. This includes a scannable QR code, as well as the website URL. A total of 60,000 were printed and these are sent within every online order.
Connecting with the active outdoor community via the engaged Wilderness magazine readership was a ‘no-brainer’ for getting PMW to those who need it. Its readers are made up of highly-experienced trampers, through to beginners. We felt the experienced trampers were an important audience to engage with in the first year as we considered them ‘champions’ of the app.
We signed up as a sponsor of the magazine’s new initiative, Walk1200km. It encouraged Kiwis to get walking everyday, and brought on local businesses as sponsors. The sponsorship agreement included a year-long PMW-focused quiz sent out weekly to its Electronic Direct Mail (EDM) subscribers, full-page editorials, four PMW-focused articles and advertising in the magazine.
We saw success in the informative stories published in the magazine, online and in the EDMs. For example, the first story ‘Kiwi app world first’ received 272 unique clicks and 315 total clicks in the EDMs while the website page received 541 page views.
Plan My Walk was developed to improve the safety of walkers and trampers by enabling improved trip planning and preparation.
Through the first full year of its existence, we have achieved some fantastic milestones around target audience reach and engagement. Additionally, the platform has continued to be developed and improved.
Despite this, we know that measuring the impact which Plan My Walk is having on walker and tramper safety needed to go beyond user numbers and engagement. To understand this, we conducted a survey of Plan My Walk users, to understand how Plan My Walk was positively impacting them, and to determine if it is improving users’ safety-related behaviours. Here is a selection of key findings:
50% perceived their experience level to be at intermediate level. Gender balance evenly split, and place of residence was well-spread across the country.
Have a better understanding of what clothing, equipment or gear I should take
Have a better understanding of key information about the walk or tramp such as difficulty, duration and suitability for my needs
Have a better understanding of the types of things I need to consider when planning and preparing for a walk or tramp
Feel confident I am going out on my walk or tramp with the knowledge I need to be safe
Feel confident I am going out on my walk or tramp having completed suitable planning and preparation
By making it easy for me to find suitable walks and tramps
By making planning and preparation easier
By combining essential information into one convenient place
To ensure my planning and preparation is more effective
Understand the range of different alerts or warnings that may be applicable to my walk or tramp
These findings show that Plan My Walk is achieving its goals and is having a positive impact on improving numerous key factors associated with improved personal safety through quality planning and preparation.
Furthermore, using the Net Promoter Score index, Plan My Walk scored a very strong 30 when users were asked how likely they would be to recommend Plan My Walk to other walkers and trampers…
Letting family know of where I'm headed and when to expect me back is always the last thing I do (which in itself is a terrible habit!) but using Plan My Walk has made me much more conscious of it, and even if I don't do it through the app, I'm much better at letting family know what I'm up to now, Thank you!”
I really like the idea! For myself as someone who would like to get outdoors more I think it removed some barriers in terms of having what you need/ reviews/preparation recommendations which gives me confidence in being able to get out there and do it safely...”
I particularly like when people post photos of walks, I always look for the pictures as it helps me assess a walk. I find the reviews the most helpful part of the app in general.”
It’s a great resource - inexperienced trampers and tourists planning to go tramping in NZ should be strongly encouraged to use it.”
We are the winners of the national 2022 TVNZ-NZ Marketing Awards - Excellence in Marketing Communication Strategy award for our promotion of Plan My Walk.
The awards recognise innovative marketing and how the promotional strategy has led to measurable results for the brand.
The judges were impressed with our “outstanding results earned from a small team with limited resources”.
“The sense of purpose in saving lives and helping more Kiwis enjoy their outdoor experience compelled the judges to award MSC the winners. As did the incredible results, use of digital media and influencer marketing.
“The audience insight was demonstrated with partner activations media targeting and the use of clothing tags at point of purchase. [In addition to] aiming for regular monthly media activity helped extend the duration of the campaign and message repetition.“An outstanding marketing communication strategy.”
Being awarded this top accolade shows that it doesn’t matter the size team or amount of budget an organisation has, it’s the creative approach and dedication to go above and beyond that sees success at the end of the day.
We want to express a huge thank you to our many retail partners, industry and council partners, the NZ media, local councils and regional tourism organisations, research partners, and app developers (Somar Digital), social media influencers, and so many more, that have helped and supported us along this journey.
We would also like to acknowledge our fellow finalists for this award: ANZ, ASB, Mercury, NZ Post, Pizza Hut, Southern Cross Health Insurance and Tonkin+Taylor. We were also a finalist in the Excellence in Not-For-Profit Marketing Strategy.
RIGHT: Track photos in Plan My Walk submitted to us from the outdoor community, many using the Track Reviews feature in the app.As we intended, PMW has evolved into a platform for the outdoor community to share track information through user reviews and photos. This page showcases some examples of usersubmitted images.
The second instalment of our increasingly popular and award-winning Tramping Video Series were launched as a campaign initiative in November 2021. Utilising our own channels, earned media, partnerships and conducting a paid digital campaign we shared the seven new videos with trampers across Aotearoa.
The videos were initially released exclusively within Plan My Walk, which provided an exciting opportunity to bring new content to an ‘outdoor-ready’ audience. Our promotion tactics in play were:
EDMs: To launch the release in November, we sent out a Tramping Video Series EDM to our partner list of 1,400 contacts as well as our public subscriber list of (at the time) 40,831 subscribers, which was opened by 42% of recipients and generated 4,697 link clicks.
Plan My Walk app: We placed the videos in our Plan My Walk app on the specific track pages as an initial exclusive launch placement.
Partnership channels are a huge factor in video view traffic, as it is our top traffic source. We sent out the relevant versions of the videos in the series to the DOC Visitor Centre network as well as reached out to Regional Tourism Operators, top performing Google search sites for each track and iSITES to place it in their channels. Our larger partners such as DOC shared on social media and is our largest traffic source with 30% of all views. MetService have indicated in their workstream to place on their website like the previous season to help get the videos in front of those who need it.
We not only promoted the tracks as excellent options for trampers, but also encouraged content creators such as Young Adventuress and Backyard Travel Family to promote the new videos in blogs we had commissioned as part of the Plan My Walk promotion. This provided natural places for their audiences to learn about the new episodes in the series and provide long-term content on their blogs for people to learn about the tracks.
We promoted the series on YouTube with a paid campaign from December to May 2022. We began by targeting relevant audience groups and showing a 30 second promo video which either led to 15 second versions or long form versions of the videos and the entire playlist including series 1. All of this was designed to capture interest and focus on those who were willing.
» Overall, the YouTube campaign presented the 30” Overview and 15” Track teaser videos to view 1.16m times
» 462,029 promoted videos (1 x 30” Overview and 7 x 15” Track teasers) were viewed to completion
» The view-through rate was just under 40% overall
» The Gillespie Pass Circuit 15” Track Teaser was the most viewed video, followed by Alpine Route
» Rees-Dart Circuit 15” Track Teaser had the highest view-through rate, followed by Kauaeranga Kauri Trail
» Views of the long-form (full length) videos increased on average by 432% for the series two and 12.4% for the series one.
(NOV
(Plan My Walk)
on our Vimeo player in Plan My Walk
views, average watch time 4:23s, and a total total watch time of 2,745 hours.
Kauri
Tramping Video Series continues to play an important role in our resource portfolio with engaging content that is able to be shared and is informative. The research from series 1 pays homage to that, also the attitude from our network and audiences as they waited with anticipation for the second season release. We continue to use video as a method to educate and create awareness for Aotearoa’s outdoors with more track-specific content and track-flyover videos to complement our other existing channels and partnerships who need them.
In response to both the rapid growth in interest and accumulation of safety incidents on this iconic West Coast mountain biking adventure, we set out to develop our first mountain biking trail specific safety video in partnership with the Mokihinui-Lyell Backcountry Trust.
The Old Ghost Road explores one of the most remote and dynamic environments in the country and has become an icon for backcountry mountain biking in Aotearoa.
The video format will largely mirror the Tramping Video Series, drawing on insights and local knowledge to inform future users about the key hazards on the trail, along with essential preparation suggestions. As usual, this is all reinforced by a stunning visual package highlighting the beauty of the area along with the weather and conditions one can expect.
Filmed in May 2022 across four days, the team of five recorded some of our finest backcountry footage to date. It included new approaches to camera equipment, carrying food, and emergency supplies all catered to being on mountain bikes.
It’s incredibly impressive to see the work that the Mokihinui/Lyell Backcountry Trust has done to build this track, with particular attention to the details that make this a mountain bike friendly track, as well as catering to trampers.
Once released this video will be strategically placed where anyone considering the ride would be looking for information, most notably on the official Old Ghost Road and DOC websites.
The video will be launched in late 2022.
PHOTOS: Filming of the Old Ghost Road video One of the many stunning shots in the filmWe continued to work in partnership with our Outdoor Safety Retail Partners (OSRP) through various initiatives designed for their customer channels and networks. This group of retailers encompass a wide range of outdoor users and they are committed to helping them to stay safe through their partnership with MSC. We value the ability to collaborate with them and harness their connection to Aotearoa’s outdoor community.
Our collaboration has included a range of initiatives to engage these users, including staff training, printed collateral and video resource development.
The OSRP group includes Hunting & Fishing New Zealand, Bivouac Outdoor, Torpedo7, Macpac and Kathmandu.
We filmed a series of videos with Macpac during the filming of the Tramping Safety Videos and these were launched through April 2022. This series featured seven short how-to style videos that were designed to positively influence their customer network. The topics covered key safety tips that we identified for our combined target audience based on our insights.
Together we promoted these through YouTube, our combined EDM subscription lists and through social media channels. Macpac also reworked some of the videos into short Instagram reels for their own channel.
We are in the process of developing a second series of these videos, focussing more on the shorter vertical video format for stronger engagement on popular social channels.
Beyond the initial promotion, these snappy how-to videos provide long-term value for both our own and Macpac audiences as resources for visitors to our channels who are looking to learn basics on outdoor gear and safety.
Total views of the seven videos in the series on our YouTube: 8,770 . With main video views:
» How to tramp like a pro: 2,340
» Look after your gear: 845
» Manage your temperature: 970
» Be ready for all weather: 2,055
» Fitting your pack: 1,598
Macpac’s Instagram Reel views* 24,200
» How to tramp like a pro: 7,000
» Look after your gear: 4,900
» Manage your temperature: 5,000
» Be ready for all weather: 7,300
Macpac x MSC How-To videos: Season 1Our in-store kiosks and eLearning staff training modules continue to benefit both staff and participants. These tools were built over the last couple of years, and we have kept them in place and continue to observe how they perform.
The online training modules cover four key topics of outdoor safety. These have been made available through Kathmandu and Bivouac’s staff learning management systems. For Kathmandu, 890 staff completed all four courses across Aotearoa and Australia. Bivouac had a total of about 80 staff across the country complete their training modules.
We also updated our in-store kiosks within the eight retail stores (Bivouac and Macpac) across the country. As Plan My Walk went live in May 2021, we quickly realised its use to provide gear lists, weather and useful videos for trampers meant it was an obvious fit to place in our retail in-store kiosks. The benefit of Plan My Walk app’s responsive mobilefirst design meant we were able to easily load it in the kiosks, so we kicked this off in winter 2021. Engagement with the kiosks varied across stores as several locations had longer lockdowns during the Covid-19 restrictions of 2021.
The OSRP group were big supporters of Plan My Walk and throughout the year they each supported the launch in their own unique way. For some, this was through their social media channels, for others it was via staff training or flyers and refund cards in their online orders or catalogues. One of the most successful tactics was the attachment of Plan My Walk specific swing tags on approximately 170,000 items of Macpac clothing. The QR code scans from the swing tag was the top performing QR code placement across the entire launch campaign.
Mountainsafety.org.nz is our primary home to provide information for those looking to explore Aotearoa’s outdoors.
Last year we worked hard to overhaul the homepage experience and make it easier for people to find the information they were looking for. This year we have continued to improve the experience for site visitors through new content, improved digital awareness and ongoing web development to improve Google Search Engine Optimisation (SEO).
The internet is extremely full of information with websites competing for traffic. As a result, it is an important aspect of website management to appear as high as possible in search results. Google SEO and general brand awareness that is ‘always on’ is now an ongoing priority for reaching and engaging our target audiences.
We have specifically worked to refine the content on our website to improve overall search engine system crawlability (Google’s systems can find our content faster and present it to those who need it). This includes featuring ongoing paid placements in Google AdWords with our marketing partner GSL Promotus.
The places where our website is linked from (mainly our council member partner sites) will also continue to play an important role in providing healthy traffic to our website.
» Since conducting an SEO overhaul of our website with Somar Digital through February and March 2022, we have improved our website health from 72% to 82%, now in the top 10% in the industry appearance in searches.
» Our paid Google AdWords brand awareness of mountainsafety.org.nz resulted in 4,756 search ad clicks from 20,763 impressions
Some of our Traffic Acquisition Top Performers (where people come from to get to our site aside from advertising).
» 20,025 users (55% of our website traffic) is from Facebook
» 3,994 users (10.89%) from DOC
» 1,005 users (2.74%) from NZ Police
» 1,001 users (2.73%) from Plan My Walk
The Mountainsafety.org.nz websiteFrom the success of launching a ‘story’ section on our website last year we have continued producing stories as part of our communications strategy. We have written fresh content, interviewed real people and generated long-form media to increase audience engagement and provide valuable content for people to digest our key messages.
This year we produced 69 unique stories on our website that cover a range of content from media releases, guest blogs and campaign-related content. This resulted in the ‘Read’ section of our website achieving 93,348* page views, which is 20.4% of our total website page views. This ranked in second place in terms of the highest page views, behind the ‘Learn’ section.
We also had 42,615 unique users visit the ‘Read’ section of our website. The level of engagement with these pages is another important measure, with the average reading time on story pages being over one minute and this is ranked as the highest length of time on any sections of our website, proof that people are reading the content on the page.
» A Kiwi hut bagging challenge
5,715 page views (1 July 21 – 30 June 2022)
» Media Release about ISAG for trampers in the Tararua Ranges 4,570 page views (12 August 21 – 30 June 2022)
» This isn’t an easy story to tell, I made a bloody poor call 2,932 page views (1 July 21 – 30 June 2022)
» A lesson with every adventure Braden Currie blog 2,532 page views (26 Jan 22 – 30 June 2022)
» 5 adventures for first timers with Young Adventuress: 2,335 page views (16 March 22 – 30 June 2022)
*Landing
of our total website page views are on the read section (as at July 2022)
We have taken initiatives to engage with our outdoor community through our email subscriber lists.
This community continues to grow as we proactively generate new subscribers from our networks such as our Firearms Course participants, Plan My Walk registered users, interests subscribers and collaboration through sector events. We use this platform of Electronic Direct Email (EDMs) to provide seasonal safety information and relevant updates to these audiences.
Over the course of the year, we have sent out 19 EDMs to either the whole list (about 60,000+ total) or activity specific segments. We’ve continuously achieved strong open rates, which indicates our content is resonating with recipients, and that we are staying well above the industry open rate (industry standard is 25.17%). Below are some highlights of our EDMs:
» Tramping Video Series Launch in November 2021: 40,831 subscribers, 42% opened
» Roar and Duck hunting seasons 2022: 12,505 and 16,428 subscribers, average of 37% opened
» Plan My Walk updates and 1st birthday in May 2022: 35,741, 51% opened
» Queen’s Birthday weekend June 2022: 58,073, 41% opened
» Celebrating Matariki June 2022: 59,255, 40% opened
Another valuable tool these direct emails provide is a way to use this subscriber audience for research purposes. For example, we were able to reach out for our Plan My Walk impact research (currently underway) and Mountaineering Behaviour Research.
60,000+ subscribed to our public mail list (as at July 2022)
average open rate of our EDMs (as at July 2022, industry standard for a Non Profit org is 25.17% for Mailchimp 2019 data)
The 2021 season will most likely be remembered as the first-time winter avalanche forecasting in New Zealand was stopped during the height of the season. As Covid-19 has done over the past few years, its impacts were well and truly felt by the snow, avalanche, and alpine sectors when the country returned to alert level 3 through late August and early September 2021.
Despite this frustrating impact, good quality early season and late season snow delivered excellent conditions across much of the mountain areas, especially higher up, and this provided for strong levels of backcountry participation, especially late into spring.
At the start of 2021 season, the new NZAA Operations Manual was created in conjunction with the forecasters to help guide the forecasting process and align methodologies across regions. This document will be updated seasonally as processes continue to evolve and improve.
At the end of 2021 season, MSC began its research into ‘Attitudes and behaviors of the NZ mountaineering community towards avalanche safety’. This consisted of a survey, which was distributed and promoted via numerous channels to the mountaineering community in spring, usually the peak mountaineering season in Aotearoa.
As has become standard practice, the MSC forecasting team met for pre-season training on 25 May, in Wanaka. This training day preceded the 2021 Southern Hemisphere Alpine Conference (SHAC).
Avalanche.net.nz(1 JULY 2021 - 30 NOV 2021)
» 34,517 unique users
» Who combined had 100,170 sessions
» And viewed 190,438 pages
» With the average session on the site lasting 3.02 minutes
» The 2021 metrics were very similar to 2020 despite the three week nationwide lockdown. Given the lockdown’s impact, to maintain similar metrics is an excellent result. The graph below shows how this impacted avalanche.net.nz site traffic.
» The NZAA Instagram page saw almost 200% growth in reach for winter 2021.
» Instagram Reach – 74,535 (compared to 25,604 in 2020)
» Facebook Reach – 198,961 (compared to 209,891 in 2020)
Despite waves of continued Covid-19 restrictions, our network of 40 instructors delivered 438 courses across 43 locations around Aotearoa. Across these 438 courses nearly four and a half thousand applicants attended the course.
MSC also provided instructors for the Police run Whakatupato courses around the North Island.
Additionally, many of the MSC instructors also delivered private instruction sessions to local clubs, organisations and school groups.
The filming of a three-part training video for instructors is well underway. This will provide a visual learning tool covering all of the critical elements of running the Firearms Safety Course and will act as part of a new instructors’ induction, as well as part of the existing instructors on-going training and course moderation. The series is broken into three smaller easier to absorb pieces: introductions and set-up are grouped together, delivery of the hands-on portion of the course, and finally FAQs and administration.
Our Wellington City base has never restricted us in getting out and about for work.
Whether it be on-track filming, meeting with council members and partners, chatting to the media, or investing in our team culture, we love to make the most of anything. This year’s highlights span filming, presentations and lots of great pizza.
Our purpose is clear; we are here to improve personal safety in the outdoors. We are not motivated by awards, but it sure is awesome when that external validation of our hard work is recognised.
This external validation is also an important measure of our messaging strategies and tactics. Marketing, communications and behaviour change are ever evolving fields, especially as digital technology is constantly changing. By submitting our work for these awards our strategy is put under the microscope and we are compared against the very best in these fields from across Aotearoa, this process acts as a type of independent review and we use this to ensure we are constantly improving.
At a strategy level, we have continued to use four primary tactics; earned media, our own growing channels, our council members and partners and paid advertising. Each of these four tactics work to complement each other, and each of them have their strengths.
NationalThe annual Roar and Duck hunting seasons arrive every autumn and and these provide much-anticipated hunting opportunities across Aotearoa. This period sees the highest annual participation in hunting and is therefore a key period for hunter specific safety messaging.
Over the years we have worked hard to directly address preventable incidents occurring during these hunting seasons by delivering targeted interventions leading up to, and over, key periods of participation. This year we refined our strategy to maximise results.
Incident data shows that Big Game Hunters, especially during the Roar, experience a range of injuries and incidents, with some resulting in search and rescue responses. Big game hunters often travel into remote and challenging terrain and are required to travel off-track for large portions of their hunts, this includes crossing rivers, navigating steep slopes covered in gullies, bluffs, slips and fallen tree debri. Stalking a deer is no easy task. Through our analysis of hunting incident data we can see a number of these events are preventable, despite the challenging terrain and nature of the activity, through sound planning and preparation, good navigation and sound decision-making.
Here’s a selection of key initiatives we lead through the 2022 Roar hunting season:
We began upstream by reaching out to our partner network highlighting our key safety messages for the season, allowing our partners enough time to circulate these messages prior to the Roar, when hunters were in their trip planning stages. For example, we pushed key messages to the NZ Hunting & Fishing community (their FB has 80,000 likes) and 129,600 printed flyers to their catalogue recipients, all focused on the right equipment to take.
We used our 2021 TVNZ-NZ Marketing Awards award-nominated video in another paid digital campaign as it focuses on the impacts of unpreparedness in the bush. This year we tightened our target audience group and used effective retargeting to reach the people we needed to.
Southland has the highest rate of injuries during the Roar
We used the power of storytelling to provide relevant content for the hunting season. We interviewed hunters and those from the outdoor sector about their Roar preparation.
» One of our top performing pages on our Read section continues to be the 2021 season story of a hunter approaching a river (‘This isn’t an easy story to tell, I made a bloody poor call’), with 1,430 unique page views, boosted thanks to the sharing of it on social media by NZDA.
A few examples of new exciting content that will have longevity value for our website include:
» How a hunter plans, Cam’s Roar: 92 unique page views, 182.84s on page
» 20 years a LandSAR: 347 unique views, 101.87s on page
» Always ready for a night out: 21 unique page views, 125.87s
» We also use our EDM list of subscribers which includes those who indicated as interested in hunting and our Firearms Safety Course participants. 12,505 subscribers of which approximately 36% opened.
(28 February - 17 April 2022)
» Our digital campaign achieved an average 0.55% CTR advertising with 299,347 video views across various placements on TVNZ on Demand, Stuff, Socials and MetService website. The landing page on our website for ‘Big Game Hunting’ achieved 5,094 web sessions as a result from the GSL Promotus paid campaign and an average of 2.11 pages per session.
» Total views of the 60 second ‘Same Hunt Different Story’ video on our YouTube was 67,122 views, our second highest views on our channel for the year
» 1,375,476 impressions
» 0.55% click-through rate
» 299,347 completed video views
» 5,094 landing page sessions from digital advertising
We have focused on the opening weekend of duck hunting season for several years now. This focus has continued because we know opening weekend is the most popular time of the season and historically had seen the majority of firearms incidents. Over the last few years we have successfully managed to reduce the number of firearms incidents, but we maintain that requires a continued and active focus.
For the 2022 season we focused our efforts with Fish & Game NZ, to reach the season’s licence holders. We collaborated with them on website content, proactive news media release and story content for their Both Barrels EDM.
We also worked again with Hunting & Fishing New Zealand as they reach a large number of active and engaged hunters.
We used a range of static banners through a digital campaign, which focused on combining a positive participation and safety-first message. We narrowed in on a very clear target audience and reached them by utilising specific re-targeting tactics.
We used a story from a duck hunter getting ready for the season: ‘The Central Question around Duck Hunting’ which achieved 215 unique page views. We also sent safety tips to our EDM list of 16,428 subscribers, average of which approximately 39% opened.
(26 April - 8 May 2022)
» The digital campaign achieved a click through rate of 0.76% with 15,032 website sessions on our campaign landing page (Game Bird Hunting). This was our top page for page views on our site for the entire year excluding out home page. See website metrics further in this document.
» 2,479,192 impressions
» 0.76% click-through rate
» 15,032 landing page sessions from digital advertising
Some of the campaign banners for duck seasonThe best conditions for the season arrived at the same time as a Covid-19 lockdown across the country. This stopped our avalanche forecasting for three weeks, however we still worked hard to generate avalanche awareness around the three-week closure dates and encouraged further learning from home environments.
The aim of this campaign was to build increased awareness of the New Zealand Avalanche Advisory. Building on the success of our 2020/2021 digital campaign we again targeted backcountry users through specific digital advertising channels.
We used a combination of video and static media, and on our own channels we generated more long-form media with the use of interviews and stories. This was engaged with through our social media channels, with a strong focus on our Instagram channel.
Despite the lockdowns, the various tactics we use to reach, connect and engage backcountry users continue to pay dividends. The continued focus on generating proactive and prevention focused earned media resulted in 25 media stories or inclusions of the NZAA, this is a record high. This approach helps to grow the broader awareness of New Zealand’s public avalanche advisory.
Over the last year we have built on the strong success of the previous year and again achieved our goal of featuring in at least 52 proactive media articles – on average one proactive pickup each week for a year.
Over the year we successfully achieved 94 proactive features. In total, including reactive features, we achieved 124 media article mentions. After years of relationship building with key media contacts, we have seen an increase in reporter and media outlets reaching out to us for expert comment, in addition to most of our media releases achieving pickup. This is a strong sign that we are not only recognised as the national outdoor safety organisation, but the MSC name and advice is valued in the media and trusted by readers.
Achieving one pickup per week requires a huge amount of effort and focus, especially given the majority of these articles cannot be based on an incident, and outdoor safety isn’t usually a topic journalists are looking for content on.
Increasing our presence in the media has multiple benefits:
» helps to grow our brand recognition across a wider range of people
» positions us as the ‘go to’ organisation for outdoor safety and in particular topics like tramping and hunting
» provides journalists and media outlets with a clear point of contact for relevant stories and instils confidence that they’re working with a respected, trusted and professional body that can provide evidence-based and well-balanced responses
» allows for the strategic targeting of specific issues, for example we can focus on key safety messages that we know are based on insights
One area of success has been working with key reporters with both Stuff and NZ Herald to produce ‘top track’ listicles which showcase a track while weaving in key safety advice and connecting readers to Plan My Walk.
The top three sources for all media pickup:
Stuff.co.nz articles | 30 NZ Herald articles | 21
Otago Daily Times | 12 Radio New Zealand | 12
The top three campaigns we ran that generated media interest:
Plan My Walk promotion | 34
Winter/NZ Avalanche Advisory | 21 Duck hunting season | 8 Roar hunting season | 4
NOTE: ‘Proactive’ means that without our work the article would not have been generated. In most cases these proactive articles are due to a media release or pitching an article idea to a journalist. Proactive articles do not include any form of incident, so this means media articles generated off coronial findings or search and rescue events are not included. We are also very careful in what we count as a media article, we do not include sources such as Voxy, Scoop, Yahoo or MSN. Only well-established New Zealand-based media that have a genuine news presence, and are used by New Zealanders count, for example Stuff.co.nz, NZ Herald, Newshub and Radio NZ among others. We use Meltwater as our media monitoring tool, which only monitors digital articles. Radio interviews and print articles, of which we do each year, are not monitored by this service.
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MSC has applied Public Benefit Entity Simple Format Reporting - Accrual (Not for Profit). These summarised financial statements have been extracted from the Performance Report (PR) which was authorised for issue by the Executive Committee on 10th October 2022. The PR has been audited and an unqualified opinion was issued. These summary financial statements have not been audited.
The summary financial statements cannot be expected to provide as complete an understanding as provided by the PR. A copy of the PR can be obtained by contacting MSC.
Property, plant and equipment 233,910 222,250 Non-current Assets 233,910 222,250
Inventory, debtors & prepayments 66,029 76,651
Term deposits 600,000 300,000
Bank accounts 409,077 626,778
Current Assets 1,075,106 1,003,429
Total Assets $1,309,016 $1,225,679
Current Liabilities 376,855 357,376
Retained earnings 932,161 868,303
Total Liabilities and Retained Earnings $1,309,016 $1,225,679
Providing goods or services
New Zealand Lottery Grants Board 1,511,335 1,440,913
New Zealand Police 297,000 310,140 New Zealand Search and Rescue Council 288,727 293,500 Sport New Zealand 35,000 90,000 Department of Conservation 4,000
Other 23,789 109,887
Other revenue
Interest and sundry 13,774\ 2 20,693
Total Revenue 2,169,625 2,269,133
Employee related costs 777,417 755,455
Providing goods or services 1,328,350 1,383,804
Total Expenditure
2,105,767 2,139,259
Surplus $63,858 $129,874
Net Cash Flows from Operating Activities 168,204 147,520
Net Cash Flows from Investing Activities (385,905) 376,768
Opening cash balance 626,778 102,490
Closing Cash Balance $409,077 $626,778
This is represented by:
Bank accounts 409,077 626,778
Closing Cash Balance $409,077 $626,778
A huge thank you to our funders for their continued support.