Croatian mountain rescue service (HGSS in Croatian) is a national, voluntary, professional, humanitarian, and non-partisan association working in the public interest. Established 72 years ago, the association has over 1100 volunteers and over 15 000 actions behind them. Their work consists of rescuing efforts in inaccessible areas and preventative efforts such as providing educational materials and guidelines. Their preventive measures are essential because they significantly reduce the number of rescue efforts.
For this case study, we talked with Jadran Kapović, the Head of HGSS’ Information and Analytics Committee and a volunteer. He’s been a volunteer in the association for ten years and became the Head of HGSS’ Information and Analytics Committee in 2018. HGSS is known for its excellent social media presence, which got them two Grand Prix awards from the Croatia Public Relations Association (HUOJ) for Best Communicators in 2017 and Best Event Communication for their tweet exhibition Trending #HGSS70.
Challenge
Jadran says they realized they needed a solution like Determ when they started working on their 70 years of HGSS campaign. Also, they’ve realized that digital media is far more vital to them than traditional media, but manually monitoring and analyzing what’s being published wasn’t an option for them.
Solution & Impact
Determ proved to be especially beneficial for HGSS in two ways – during the tweet exhibition Trending #HGSS70 and during the 13-hour-long rescue mission of a dog who fell into a deep pit.
In the first instance, Determ’s data and reports helped them document how many online media outlets covered their event and measured social media presence and media value during the exhibition. By proving that their exhibition was widely covered, they secured a Grand Prix award for Best Event Communication.
When it came to the dog rescue mission, they saw another benefit. They noticed that a foreign media outlet published a story about the rescue mission and started getting spike alerts in Determ that other outlets were also picking up the story. Jadran says that spike alerts showed him that the story is quite interesting and that they should start preparing press materials. When the media outlets contacted them, they already had all their materials ready.
Aside from spike alerts, Jadran pointed out that the most significant benefit of the tool was getting measurable data in the reports, which helped them justify their work and results.
