RAC WA has been recognized as a WBA Winner for Comms Excellence in the World Business Awards 2019. The World Business Award for Comms Excellence [COM] recognizes organizations that have achieved outstanding results through initiatives that demonstrate innovative communications strategies and outcomes.

As an iconic Western Australian member-based organisation, RAC’s purpose is to give back to its members and WA for the better. It’s been doing this since its inception in 1905. RAC has more than one million members in WA, representing nearly one in two households in the State.

As RAC doesn’t have shareholders, it reinvests its profits back into the WA community. This means that the more members RAC has, the more it can give back. It does so through its member benefits program, which provides discounts on both RAC products and services and external retail partners.

The RAC product and service offering is diverse. Through its motoring legacy it offers roadside assistance, car servicing, batteries and tyres. It also has a strong insurance line, protecting members’ homes, cars, caravans and pets, with affordable and Choice awarded quality insurance. Travel is another historic pillar of the RAC business, offering tours, cruises, flights and travel insurance.

In recent years, following an expressed demand from RAC members for more affordable and accessible WA holiday locations, RAC branched into Holiday Parks and Resorts and now has eight properties in iconic WA locations offering members discounts on stays.

An emerging key business area is the home pillar, including home security, repairs and maintenance and solar panels. RAC Finance offers car, personal and property loans.

As well as offering members special benefits, products and services, RAC invests heavily in its advocacy initiatives around mobility and sustainability.

Initiatives include delivering road safety education to more than half a million West Australian children every year, a world first automated vehicle program running trials on roads with traffic, advocating to government around motoring taxes and risky roads.

RAC’s challenge and opportunity is to communicate to its one million members and its potential members about what makes RAC different: that when you purchase RAC products you don’t just become a customer, you become a member and part of so much more.

Being an RAC member means you get access to a range of extra benefits beyond what you pay for, from discounted fuel, holidays and products. Plus, through your membership you support community initiatives and agendas that support a better WA.

As a member organisation, RAC relies on creating dialogue with its one million plus members across WA – nearly 1 in 2 West Australians – to strengthen their sense of belonging and connection with membership.

Although RAC has several member communication channels, they were being approached independent of each other, without a considered strategy for how a channel connected with members or how they worked together to provide a consistent message.

An extensive strategy process was undertaken with senior representatives from across the business, representing product, brand, advocacy and member relations. Subsequently, a communications initiative was developed to tackle the challenge of creating an audience centric enterprise-wide content strategy to better connect members with the value of their membership, creating brand differentiation and loyalty. It was also designed to improve the execution of RAC’s brand communications, particularly at the individual and personal touchpoints – where RAC members go online to read, in their mailboxes, email inbox and social media feed.

To make the most of opportunities for RAC, a central RAC Content team was established, bringing into one team channel specialists across digital content, magazine, social media and email. One new position of Managing Editor was added to oversee and co-ordinate content and strategy.

With no other ‘greater purpose’ than to communicate with RAC members, the Content team had a mandate to be truly audience centric and ask ‘what’s in this for the member’ about every piece of communication.

The new communications eco-system has been successful in better leveraging that inherent trust and expertise with our members by ensuring the information they are getting is high quality and delivered across a number of channels.

By restructuring the way its member communications channels are organised and creating clear enterprise-wide and channel specific strategies that focus on the ‘why’ for members, RAC has transformed its member communications. As well as increasing reach and engagement, the content delivered is also connecting members with RAC’s deeper purpose, offering value and creating differentiation.

Every positive brand interaction creates more loyal members, and as a mutual, the more members RAC has, the more it can do for the better of WA.