 Hi, I'm Trisha Hughes. I'm with Massage and My Therapy Australia. I'm this CEO and today I'm here at Six Degrees of Association with Sarah and Andrew. Hello and welcome to Season 2, Episode 2 of Six Degrees of Association, the world's first TV show that's online and dedicated to the pursuit of association success. My name is Sarah Gonzalez and I'm from Redback Conferencing. I'd like to welcome my co-host, sorry, almost got that one wrong, didn't I? Andrew McCullum. Hello Sarah. Good to be back. From the Association of Corporate Council Australia. Thank you. Good to be back. We made it. Good to be back. Episode 2. Season 2. We're on a roll. Absolutely. So once again we're here and we're going to go through our usual segments but today we're also joined by another special guest from the sector and she'll be joining us a little bit later on. She is Trisha Hughes from the Massage and My Therapy Australia. How are you? Good to be back. Thanks for coming on and joining us. That's great. Good to see you. Thank you. All those calls and emails. Thanks for replying to one of them. I appreciate it. It took a while. I only took one. Before we get to the questions we're going to go through a very regular thumbs up, thumbs down. So once again this is where we spotlight either something in the industry or some sort of association that has actually given us a wow or given us a wow. Here we go. Let's hand it over to you. Thank you. Thank you. First off again. I'd like to give a thumbs up to the Master Builders Association of Victoria following the appointment of their first woman president in what's traditionally a male dominated industry. Melanie Fasham is her name and after several years of service on the board she recently assumed the role as president. So certainly a win for equality and a thumbs up to the Master Builders Association of Victoria on that appointment. Welcome Melanie. And well deserved I'm sure. Thumbs down. I have to give a thumbs down to what I guess is the increasing digitization of association magazines. I think we might have a few. I know I'm showing my age here. 26. And look everyone has an iPhone and an iPad. We know that. But I really yearn for the days of a physical paper based publication. But what I really it's not just that. But what I really don't like is this argument that you hear from associations that say well we've gone digital because it's cheaper. You know we've gone digital because it's you know more efficient. And you know tell me you've gone digital because that's what your members want. Tell me you're going to get more engagement out of your members. That's why you've gone digital. But don't do it purely because oh it's cheaper for our members. Listen to what your members want. So you know cost efficiency is great. We all need to save money but listen to your members and think what do they want. Are they going to read it. More likely to read it. If it's print or are they more likely to read it because it's digital. But as I say maybe I'm a second. Maybe I'm a dinosaur. Well there's nothing wrong with having a hybrid solution. The lack of a bit of firm I guess. If you have both and then you're catering to a certain demographic. What do you do. We have print. Proudly print. And that's what our members want. I must say they really do overwhelmingly say that. Always comes down to what the membership wants. It should do. So it comes down to that digitalisation of association magazines. Excellent. What have you got for us. So being a marketer I do love a good refresh every now and then. Believe it or not. It can be what I've found over the years is it can be a little bit hard for a lot of associations to reinvent themselves. Whether it's a lack of costs or there's a reluctance because they're worried about their membership or whether it's age old politics or something like that. But RE the Australian Human Resources Institute has just done it. But they've done it really really well. So it's fresh and it's exciting and they've got this new focus and it's really on what good HR looks like. So it's about helping the entire industry and not their members. And I love it when I see that because it's almost like you're engaging this whole new area with this thought leadership and this area that is untouched by a lot of industry as I find. So funny thing is it's also their fourth refresh since 1943. So I dug a little bit and they were previously known as Personnel Officers Association of Australia. And then from 1954 to 1992 they were the Institute of Personnel Management Australia. So this shows they're not scared to reinvent themselves and they have done it a few times and they talk about it quite upfront on their website as well. They're up to the challenge even though they do have over 20,000 members. So they realise that obviously it can be difficult but we're going to keep reinventing ourselves whether it's to attract new members or to just keep the industry fresh. And I applaud that. Thumbs up then. And you're right. I mean I love that. You're speaking to your potential membership not just your membership. Yeah. Much more thought leadership like. Which is a word. Thumbs down. So a little bit similar to yours in that poor user experience for members when it comes to events. So whether people are running online events or face-to-face physical events there's always getting people to those events. So there's getting people to register. There's getting people to convert and to sign up and to attend. But I found that user experience is really, really lacking. So I'll give you an example speaking to an organisation, an association about six weeks ago about their registration forms for their digital events that were coming up. And I wonder, you know, we're not converting. We're getting heaps of people looking at the page and I went to the page. They had 17 registration fields. I am not kidding. I counted them all. I actually printed them out to show you because I didn't think you'd believe me. 17. And so think about the information you want to capture and think about that experience for someone. But one of the questions was okay, what's your role? That's fair enough. You might want to capture that. Other one, how long have you worked in this role? What does your organisation do? I don't see how that's relevant to the event and I don't see how you can't capture that from someone when they're at the event. So you know, people talk about we need more members and we need to encourage and engage our existing members. But what's that experience for them like? It doesn't matter what you want to capture. Think about what they want. What barriers are you putting in front of people from actually doing that? And not only are they just going to not fill it out and then close the browser or just walk away from something. They're also going to walk away with that. Oh, do you know what? They don't really get me attitude. This is not worth the trouble. Yeah, so poor user experience. So think about, you know, if you are doing online events, what additional information can you get from people there? Or if you are doing live conferences, can you get more info through the app that you're using or when delegates are there? So you know, you talk about the online age and I think we're quite similar in terms of our thumbs down. Yeah, I think yours were really long and mine were quite concise and short. Well that's a change. So look what's happening. Maybe you've become a little bit more concise this year round. Who would have thought? Anything more concise will be a full stop. So let's welcome our guest now. Her name is Trisha Hughes and she's from Massage and Myotherapy Australia. How are you today? Good. Thanks for the invite, Sarah. Thank you for joining me. Thank you. Thanks for coming in. So just want to ask you a few questions now just about the association itself and what you see for the future. So first up, can you just tell us a little bit about the organisation and what it does and a bit about your members? Okay. Our association is 13 years old now so it's relatively new in the world of associations. What we do is ensure that the therapists that are working out in the sector are professional and professionally educated as opposed to those that are operating outside of that scope. We check for education conditions, making sure they're working scope of practice, making sure they're employing properly if that's what they're doing. And also we audit them for the health fund, private health fund insurance schemes. So they funds use us as a auditing tool to make sure that their members are getting quality practitions. Great. And of course Sarah mentioned very, you know, an elongated way about Human Resources Institute undergoing a rebrand. Yes. So Massage in Myer Therapy Australia obviously previously known as the Australian Association of Massage Therapists. Yes. How did the rebrand come about? Australian Association of Massage Therapists is a mouthful and it's very dated. It's very 1970s when people had associations and institutes and it was pretty dull and boring. And what we tend to do in Australia is acronize everything. So it became the AAMT. I would say, where are you from? AAMT? Well actually is that. Sounds like an ingredient in a process, muffin. It doesn't sound like anything whatsoever. So then we would have to explain what it is we do. And so through the 2014 process of developing the strategic brand the members said, we want something that profiles us all that is just one brand but identifies me as individual because we have massage therapists, remedial therapists, smile therapists, social, soft tissue therapists, bachelor degrees. So trying to get one name that covers that whole scope of modalities wasn't particularly easy. So we engaged a consultant and sat with the board in discussion and said, this is what the members are asking for. And they said, well, what do you do? And we said, well, massage and my therapy in Australia with practitioners of excellence. And it's like, hey, there's the brand. There you go. There it is. It's easy. Everybody knows what it is and knows what our practitioners do. It's like you just need to simplify it sometimes, don't you? Yes. Some names of associations are made for importance or status instead of telling the public what you do. And it's important the public understands what associations do. It's a good distinction, actually. So you mentioned a bit about, you know, there was two stages, I imagine, one determining what the name would be. Yes. Then rolling it out. Tell us how did the rollout process go? How did you go about telling your members and I guess telling your public as well? We went through. We haven't got to the public stage yet. So we launched it to the members in May. And it's a very slow process, launching new concepts to membership basis. They take a little while for them to gain ground. And a lot of them were concerned where did this come from? And it's like, well, from the strategic plan, which you actually filled in a survey for. What we've done is given, we've compacted what you've asked for and put it into one brand for you. So once they've understood that, they were okay with it. So we launched it in May last year. We then drip fed it through our digital newsletter, which said something new coming, something fresh. It was more of a teaser rather than a, this is what it's going to be. They already had the name. Then when we relaunched our hard copy journal, which we do quarterly, with new colors, new branding, new profile, and it just looked modern, fresh and amazing. And they love it because the members can put it in their waiting rooms for clients. And that shows that they belong to a professional body. At the moment, what we're doing is we're making collateral for members, all new branding on their certificates, and going through that whole range of basically putting a whole new face on what it is we do. Okay. So it's sort of like an ongoing process from ours. It's a big process. Depending on how you do it, if you want to spend a lot of money and engage a huge company to specialize in this thing, it can be done quite simply. But we find for our membership, the slower we go with it, slow and steady, the more they accept the difference, the more they accept the change. Nobody likes change generally. It's like, well, now I've got to change on the stationery. It's like, wait a minute, no, it's okay. The information is coming. We're doing it for you. You'll get all that. And once they realize that you're actually there trying to help them, whilst on the other hand, educating the public about what a professional therapist is and the brand they should be looking for, they settle down and they're comfortable with it. It's just that initial fear. It's easy, yeah. So just touching on that, the whole money aspect. So associations do tend to have quite tight budgets, especially when it comes to things like this. Do you under any pressure or anything when it came to measuring that return on investment when it came to dollar figures? Or is it still happening? No, no, it's not. And it's a very hard one to actually measure because you've got 9,000 practitioners and they're not going to ask each and every one of their clients, did you notice we've got a new brand? Yeah. Because a lot of people identify with the practitioner themselves individually. What we did notice though, that all the key stakeholders in the industry said, hey, this is great. This really indicates to us that you're serious about what you're doing and you're moving forward and you're keeping yourself fresh. You can engage some pretty expensive consultants in this area. We didn't. We kept it fairly low profile because we'd rather use the money on communicating it out to the sectors and profiling the member. I think the dollar is better used there than it is in the development. Because you can get presentations and they'll have five brands and this there and they can't make their minds up. So we made it a fairly streamlined process at that point and from there in the money will be spent on actually promoting. And it's such a hard thing to put a dollar value on sometimes, isn't it? Like you said, sometimes it's just that gut feeling, finger in the air. Do you know what we think everyone does like it? Let's focus our efforts elsewhere. We had an open line, email a line, people could email us in. We hate it, we love it, whatever. And generally most of the members love it. And the thing with changing your profile as we were talking about RE before is that business change is really fast now. And so your identity with the public has to keep pace with that. And the really key point I think out of it was whatever brand you do choose has to work digitally, has to use on apps, has to use on your documents, has to use on all your publications. So you need to see in all those formats as samples first before you decide on it. Because it can look really bad on some, you know, like on a little bone screen. Good tips, definitely. And so I guess, you know, nearly 12 months in, as you say, March, what would you do differently next time from a rebrand perspective? Oh goodness me. What would we do? Probably not involve, this sounds strange, not involve the board as much in the decisions. They, everybody thinks I know everything about technology, everybody thinks I know everything about artwork and it should be this and it should be that. If you're engaging professional people to go away and design you something, let them do their job. If it comes back and it's really bad, you've given them a bad brief. So you need to go through the process of thinking what is it we want to tell our membership, what is it we want to tell our community, what is it we want to tell the public and let the professionals go away and put that brand together into two or three options for them to go yes, no, yes, no. Oh wait, you have too many chefs, don't you? Too many chefs. We all know what that's like. And the final question that we do like to ask all of our guests and it's a little bit more about you personally. So what do you find most satisfying about working in the sector? I've worked for not-for-profits now for 35 years, all different types and sorts across a range of different sectors. For me it's about, there's always within organisations this committed group of people on their boards or committees of whatever level they're at and they're passionate about what they do and they're emotional about what they do and it sits with their core values. Yet they don't often have the knowledge, experience or education in governance to get it to work. And so they just plod through year after year after year after year. For me it's that building that bridge for them when they're up and running and they don't need me anymore. That's the best bit I love because they've taken on the governance they've evolved to a place where they can run the association and just do my job. It's great to hear. Thank you, some great insight and also some great tips for some other organisations out there looking to go through a similar process. Now we would like you to stay with us because this is Andrew's favourite section. He wants an audience for it every time. An association for everything to work in this sector for so long you've probably gotten to know that as well. So we send Andrew out every fortnight to go and find an association that is a little bit obscure and one that we haven't actually heard about. And I think you've got a ripper for us today, don't you? I do. Thank you. Of course you do. Sarah, thank you. And as you know, I recently holidayed in Iceland. Have you been there? Oh yeah. I just keep going. Put it on your list. Put it on your list as soon as you can. But yes, I was recently there and obviously I'm never really on holiday so I'm pleased to introduce the Hand Knitting Association of Iceland. That's right. There's one thing the Icelanders do well. It's woolen clothing. So the HKAI, as I like to call them, they actually found it back in 1977 by some ladies who knitted and sold hand knitted goods. Woolen think gloves, think jumpers, think socks to supplement the family income. A few of them got together to facilitate, work together to coordinate some marketing and importantly to set some standards for hand knitted woolen goods in Iceland. Today they boast about 200 members. They work above a shop in Iceland that sells hand knitted products as manufactured by HKAI members. So really fantastic. Keeping, and you know, they're still there. They're still maintaining standards. They're keeping the knockoffs out of the market. And good on the ladies of the Hand Knitting Association of Iceland. I know you're watching today and very pleased to feature you on this segment. Excellent. Thank you. Very enlightening as usual. Thank you. Thank you. It's a good view. It's a great use of culture and national pride. Absolutely. It'll take seduction. Yeah. Well, that does bring us to the two-minute morning. So this is where we look back at the episodes we've had. Gather your feedback and then bring it to live. So one episode down, but we do actually have some feedback that's come from the public and we encourage you to share it with us good or bad, either by hashtag 68 on Twitter or go into our On Demand episodes or contact us. So we did have some feedback about themes moving forward for the rest of the season. And someone did mention they liked to hear more about advocacy within associations. And I think I've heard a lot about that. You and I were talking about it previously. And it would be great to get someone online to talk about that. So if you're a CEO or you know someone out there, it would be great to have on as a guest. Yeah, it's no. Really, be a bit susceptible to some really probing tough questions. But advocacy is such an important thing for our sector. It's how you, you know, what is a measure of success from an advocacy perspective and how do you portray that to your members? So that's a great topic and we've got a lot of episodes lined up for this season. So we'll make sure we feature that one on there as well. Absolutely. And we could also talk about publications for member associations as well. Well, yeah, that brings up another topic when it comes to, we've got two right here who are still doing those print publications. So perhaps we bring someone doing digital in. We'd love to hear from you guys and hear your thoughts and feedback on how it's gone for you or perhaps someone who is using both forms. And the reason is why and we can talk about that next time. Yeah, we can debate across the table. It would be lovely. Look forward to it. So thank you everyone for joining. Apologies for my really, really long thumbs up, thumbs down. But it is passion. I'm just going to let you know. I have passion. So we'll take that offline. But thank you everyone for joining. As always, feel free to join the community and share your thoughts on associationsuccess.org. Also use hashtag 68. Look at our previous episodes and why not subscribe to the channel so we can let you know when we're live every second Tuesday. Thank you, Trisha. It's been amazing. Thank you, Sarah. Getting to learn more about you and others. Thank you, Andrew, as always. Thank you, Sarah. Thanks for having me back and you did a good job as well. Oh, thanks. Yeah. So once again, thank you for joining us. And remember that too much conversation always kills a chat. Bye for now.