The Australian Journal of Pharmacy (AJP) has provided its readers-come-viewers with wall-to-wall broadcast coverage from Australia’s largest Pharmacy event on Facebook Live.
The project focused on delivering breaking news to pharmacists around the country, and included keynote addresses from the Health Minister and Shadow Health Minister, along with industry updates and discussions, from the Australian Pharmacy Professional (APP) Conference & Trade Exhibition.
The Facebook Live videos, sponsored by GSK, also provided readers with access to exclusive interviews with pharmacist celebrities, thought leaders and more widely recognised Australian celebrities, including media personalities Adam Spencer and James O’Loghlin.
AJP CEO David Weston said: “This is the beginning of a new phase for the AJP. We really wanted to be seen by our readers not just as a print publication or an online publication, but active across all media including social media.”
Publishing over 50 videos across the three-day event – many of them via Facebook Live – meant the AJP was able to capitalise on the excitement of the conference during the conference, creating an unprecedented buzz of social media activity for a B2B event.
Mike McKenzie, creative director of Streamz – the company which directed the AJP Live videos across the APP conference, said the journal’s objective this year was to use existing technologies in a way that would bring an immediacy to event activities during the week.
“By incorporating Facebook Live into the workflow, we were able to cover APP 2017’s breaking news while it was actually breaking,” he said.
Jon Simmons, co-founder of Pacific Content – the company which produced the event – said: “We think of it like micro-television. The AJP Live project proves you can deliver a huge amount of information to an audience in a short time and not have to sacrifice on production values. No one else is doing it that way.”
AJP editor Chris Brooker said the journal understands that in order to maintain relevance to the evolving demographics of their audience, they must push further into the digital space.
“Without this commitment to innovation, publications will perish,” he said.
