Innovation Case Study: Peninsula Tales
Mornington Peninsula Shire Council
Building Community Pride by Sharing Positive Local Stories
Peninsula Tales is a digital-first strategy highlighting local heroes, grassroots projects, and heartwarming moments that define the Peninsula. Through short videos and articles shared via social media, the Peninsula Buzz newsletter, and Peninsula Wide magazine, these stories engage the community, fostering pride in environmental achievements and everyday human connections. The editorial team carefully selects content to inspire and unite residents.
2025 MAVlab Innovation Awards Winner:
The Engage Award for Impactful and Inclusive Storytelling, supported by Fireside Agency.
Project statistics:
- Team: 4 staff involved, as part of existing roles alongside other duties
- Duration: 12 months, ongoing.
Project goals:
- Build goodwill, trust, and community pride through authentic, empathetic storytelling
- Strengthen reputation among residents and ratepayers through consistent, meaningful communication
- Develop a forward-thinking council positioning strategy to improve how information is shared with the community
- Celebrate positive stories from across the Peninsula, including local people, places, and Shire-led initiatives
- Use emotive storytelling to highlight the impact of council projects and services
- Proactively identify stories that demonstrate council’s commitment to people and place
- Take a digital-first approach to reach a broader and more diverse audience
- Reduce reliance on traditional media for sharing council updates.
Challenge and context:
Local government plays a vital role in shaping communities, yet positive stories about councils rarely make headlines. Despite the many ways our work improves lives on the Mornington Peninsula, our efforts were often overshadowed by criticism, misinformation, and a hostile media environment.
Our team became stuck in a reactive cycle — responding to complaints, correcting false claims, and battling audience fatigue. The impact of traditional media was declining, and our digital content needed a reset. While we value constructive criticism, we were contending with declining media literacy and an algorithm driven by outrage. We needed to rebalance the equation.
As the closest level of government to the community, we struggled to secure coverage of the good news and the meaningful local connections created through our daily interactions and projects. Our community did not see us as real people, and as a result, trust was lacking. We needed a new narrative — one that humanised our work and communicated the breadth of our services. It needed to be strong enough to cut through the noise and create a cultural shift.
As a small team of four, resourcing was a significant challenge. We were managing full workloads while responding to the constant pressure of a 24-hour news cycle. With limited time and resources, we had to be deliberate in our approach. Rather than producing content at volume, we chose to slow down and focus on stories that would genuinely resonate with our audience.
Peninsula Tales was our response.
Solution and innovation:
Peninsula Tales wasn’t just a new content series — it represented a complete shift in how we communicate. We moved from reactive, media-led communications to proactive, strategic digital storytelling. Our goal was to connect emotionally, not just inform. That meant doing things differently.
We now produce a new Peninsula Tales video and accompanying article each week to meet social media expectations. This has changed our entire rhythm — we plan content like a newsroom, actively scout for stories and talent, build strong relationships with teams across Council, and manage a demanding production schedule with a small crew of four.
We fully utilise our in-house production skills — video, copywriting, photography, design, music, and editing — to create engaging, high-quality content that showcases the breadth of Council services. We apply a “good news” storytelling lens to everything we do, taking the time to uncover the human story, consider who is best placed to tell it, and determine how best to present the content.
Research has shown that featuring an expert alongside a local representative strengthens storytelling. For example, community housing stories for women and children included local experts and a person with lived experience. Smoke-free signage at reserves and beaches featured a medical professional and a local sporting club coach. NAIDOC Week stories highlighted local mob and allies.
We also place Shire officers on camera to share their expertise and genuine passion for their projects, celebrating the pride they take in their work and service delivery.
Using a weekly content calendar, we maintain a consistent, positive drumbeat of stories — building trust and connection by highlighting the real people and real impact behind council’s work.
Peninsula Tales represents a cultural shift — embedding storytelling as a core function and advancing local government communications to be more human, inclusive, and community-focused.
Negative sentiment has reduced to 20%, the need for reactive moderation has decreased, and authentic engagement and meaningful conversations continue to grow. Audience burnout has also reduced — people are staying with us.
Impact and outcomes:
Together, Peninsula Tales stories have achieved more than 240,000 organic views across social media — demonstrating a strong appetite for local, uplifting stories that make people smile, feel pride, and connect with their community.
Our goals were clear: to flatten peaks of negative sentiment, balance difficult news with positive storytelling, build emotional connection, improve digital engagement without causing fatigue, and clearly communicate what Council does — and why it matters.
Over a 12-month period, social media sentiment shifted to 80% positive or neutral and has remained stable, even during the caretaker period. Negative sentiment has reduced to 20%, the need for reactive moderation has decreased, and authentic engagement and meaningful conversations continue to grow. Audience burnout has also reduced — people are staying with us.
We now have more than 60,000 followers across Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn, with annual growth between 12% and 23% across the three platforms. Over the past year, we published 1,620 social media posts, including 50 Peninsula Tales stories.
Below are examples where a “good news” storytelling approach delivered significant impact on community sentiment and campaign outcomes:
Pawsitively Amazing: Leash-Free Consultation
- 844 consultation submissions — more than double the target
- Video reel reached 70,362 views
- 793 Facebook poll responses
- Peninsula Buzz generated 2,326 clicks.
Small Business Festival
- 1,200 attendees
- 120,213 impressions
- More than 32,000 webpage views
- Delivered with only a $500 social media budget.
Roads, Roads, Roads Campaign
- Three reels with strong engagement
- 45% increase in click-through rate
- Noticeable positive shift in community sentiment
- 100% organic reach.
Budget Consultation
- 243,342 impressions
- 158,999 views
- 3,573 community submissions with no incentives
- Simplified survey design improved accessibility and participation.
Summer of Golf Promotion
- Sold out in two hours
- 98,394 impressions
- 24,559 reach
- 889 results
- Best January income on record for Mount Martha Golf Course.
Scalability:
Peninsula Tales offers a powerful, replicable model for councils to transform their communication channels into people-centred platforms that build trust, celebrate communities, and spark positive change.
This model can scale through knowledge sharing, templated workflows, and cross-council collaboration. With a consistent structure — including weekly content planning, in-house production, and story scouting by frontline teams — other councils can tailor this approach to their unique communities and service priorities.
We’ve found success by embedding storytelling across all departments, empowering staff to share stories from their day-to-day work. This model can be shared through workshops and digital toolkits that outline production practices, story frameworks, and content strategies for communicating complex issues in accessible ways.
Peninsula Tales supports key United Nations Sustainable Development Goals through purpose-driven storytelling. Our stories highlight initiatives such as community housing, local food and farming programs, and public health services, all of which contribute to community wellbeing and inclusion.
By featuring female leaders, Indigenous voices, and members of the LGBTIQA+ community, we showcase underrepresented perspectives. Stories such as our Urban Forest Strategy campaign also address the sustainable management of our natural environment.
Beyond content, Peninsula Tales builds capability within our workforce, providing experience in creative media and digital production while shining a light on lesser-known roles across the Shire. The platform gives voice to both Shire officers and residents, strengthening trust and reinforcing the value of transparency and community-led service design.
The initiative is also being replicated internally, sharing good news stories from across the organisation to boost morale and foster a thriving organisational culture.
We hope Peninsula Tales inspires an innovative storytelling network across councils — co-producing content, exchanging talent, and elevating local voices. This initiative demonstrates that good news stories have the power to shift perceptions, combat digital fatigue, and build more inclusive, connected communities.
Learn more:
Watch these additional Peninsula Tales videos on YouTube:
Peninsula Tales videos on Instagram: