Plan to Fail launched by the Royal Commission

Royal Commission launches failed media campaign this morning.

Flat broke, not listened to survivor deemed not a "victim" under Catholic and Royal Commission dictates says he can do a quick media launch HowTo for the Royal Commission so they can start again.

This morning the Royal Commission launched a media campaign. See image below. The campaign was launched using the hashtag â€ª#‎campaign‬

A visit to the #campaign page on Twitter showed a wide variety of people using this tag. A search on Google shows 417,000 uses already. #campaign is a well used hashtag and it will require some muscle to bring the Royal Commission pages to the top where they can begin to gain some notice. This is expensive and time consuming and when using such a generic name that job is endless as a plethora of disconnected and disassociated future users will randomly use this as a tag.

Google something along the lines of "launching a hashtag media campaign" brings up 45 million results. Visit any half a dozen of the pages you find in the first 10 pages of Google and a read there will show you that the Royal Commission appears to have broken every rule in existence when it comes to launching a successful media campaign.

In fact if it was your plan to fail or to cost the Royal Commission additional money, time and effort to produce a mediocre outcome or possibly a comprehensive failure then the campaign as established by the Royal Commission is well on its way towards non existence.

A search with the new whizbang circa 1998 technology search tool newly implemented by the Royal Commission at some unknown cost failed to turn up a single return when searching for the word campaign.

The twitter launch thus far has failed to provide a link to the said campaign other than the link provided by Twitter. This shows a lack of coordination and preparation. Visitors to the Royal Commission web site are not presented with any direct reference on the page to this new campaign. I was fortunate enough to catch a Twitter feed that indicated that the campaign was about inviting people to tell their story. and provided a link (http*:*//childabuseroyalcommission*.*gov*.*au/share-your-story). A visit to that page showed 2 result - both were in the Twitter feed - no other reference to the word campaign was found on the page, therefore there was no association with the hashtag #Campaign and the Tell Your Story page. A review of the page source to check on what search engine robots get to read found 4 references to "campaign". Once again these were all in the Twitter feed.

A new campaign was launched on the worst possible day of the week for a media launch - Tuesdays is best according to a few minutes use of Google.

Launching on Sunday has traditionally been seen as the day to launch for print media, however there is the fact that regardless of the day the Royal commission makes a release the news is eager and willing to take it up straight away; regardless the issues with the Twitter launch remain.

What could the Royal Commission have done?

It could have taken 5 minutes to think of a unique hastag (‪#‎ShareUrStory‬would work (time taken to think of this = 15 seconds) (only 420 on Google). A little more time may turn up something better.

It could have prepared a page giving details of its campaign and the necessity to provide an opportunity to tell your story.

It could have launched simultaneously a secure moderated chat environment where people could tell their stories as well as connecting with others so that they can learn from and support one another. Time taken to plan and procure Open Source software, implement, test and put together a small media page for that, connecting it with the Campaign page and the tell your story page would be a simple matter of a few hours - perhaps a day. Perhaps 3 or 4 hours for a software technician. The largest cost would be in the moderation areas which could be overseen by Royal Commission staff after an initial formation period thus removing much of that burden from the Royal Commission.

It is not known at this stage if any other information is available. No notices have been received via Google notifications or others similar alerts.

Survivors would have a known safe location to go to online where the accumulated knowledge of fellow survivors becomes available to them through a few clicks of their mouse button.

If the cost or the operation were outside the terms of reference of the Royal Commission I would like to put to them that if they were to support a call for a small public appeal for funds to set up and to operate such a system would be truly supportive towards the people in real need of support. I am aware that there are a number of survivors with professional level experience in a range of media areas with many willing to volunteer time though an hourly rate for input would be the professional way to approach that.

The above is my opinion. I have attempted to base each aspect on the facts as I have found them. My reasons for doing this are quite simple; a successful Royal Commission is the only thing available with the potential to bring justice and closure where possible. That is what survivors have all survived for ever since their original abuse.

That poses the question that so many survivors of clergy abuse well know and that is the automatic triggering of the cover up mentality of hierarchies when their efforts are questioned or even at times when good suggestions are offered when they see an opportunity for that. That is almost instinctive in survivors as they have learned how powerful and how supportive that is for themselves and for others. They have learned that going to ground rather than getting together with all interested and involve parties is not the way to progress as it is not supportive - it only serves to protect the person who thinks they have failed regardless of the fact that so often those instructions have come from further up the hierarchy.

Will the Royal Commission sit with those of us who have a personal interest in making something positive happen that benefits all survivors or will it stand off aloofly like Church and government and say "No" that is not in your best interest or some other excuse or do we simply continue to put out there in the public a continuing and growing list of failures such as the above and should we then expect that just like Church and government the Royal Commission will also brand us as heretics or as those out to do them harm and damage?

Perhaps after this the Royal Commission might open up a little bit and acknowledge that it is not the only holder of knowledge in this event and that it should follow the evidence as found in the stories of survivors and those still caught up as victims.

From experience survivors have come to expect that when it becomes a cover up type response the answer can only be one from the many aspects of the few bad apples theory while the people who stymied the #Campaign in the first place remain hidden by the status within the Royal Commission and remain unaccountable for the failure. Should we expect someone junior to take the brunt of that from the Royal Commission or will it undertake an education program for the executive who conjured up and signed off on this magical failed before it got started concept?