Supporting independent media and the arts
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September 9, 2022
As part of our 2022/23 democratic budget, our endorsed marketing strategy was to build community awareness of us through supporting independent media and the arts. With this mandate we surveyed our customer members to work out what independent media and journals they consume.
We didn’t have the resources to conduct in-depth market research but we made the assumption that we want to reach more people who are like our people.
We basically settled on an audio-forward strategy since most independent media outlets that do advertising are radio and podcasts and we just can’t afford substantial print or video advertising (both too expensive to produce and run). We could do digital visuals but with the small spend we’ve got planned it wouldn’t be very impactful as the lead part of our strategy.
Total Spending Pool
We have approximately $27,000 in the budget for marketing to spend over the next 9 months. This translates to an average of $3,000 per month.
Creative
Of this spending pool, we will set aside approximately $3,000.00 for creative audio production so we have quality audio that we can use on community radio and podcasts into future years.
Continuing Support
We have existing commitments to continue to advertise with Overland and Jacobin Australia.
Subscriberthon Fund
We are investigating the possibility of offering free electricity as a prize for community raffles and subsciberthons. We need to pay careful attention to the compliance aspects of this but having a prize available for independent media to use in fundraising would be a useful additional capacity builder.
Prospective Spend
So of these we have fixed costs for this financial year:
- Creative production: $2,850
- Ongoing commitments (Overland and Jacobin Australia): $6,840
This leaves further spend of approximately $17,300 over the next nine months (roughly $2,000 a month). Here are some options we have sourced from outlets flagged in our members’ survey (but aren’t so expensive that it would dominate our spend while being ineffective, like print advertising).
Obviously we can’t afford all of them but this is the list that we will be working from for the balance of our marketing expenditure this financial year.
| Outlet | Annual Cost | Package |
| PBS Melbourne | $4,300 | Business membership plus ongoing package 1: 6 ad reads per week for 26 weeks + weekly ‘thank you’ on show of choice + business name listing on pbsfm.org.au |
| 3CR Melbourne | $3,400 | Two community announcements, 12 months of bi-weekly spots, sponsorship of 1 weekly show |
| 3RRR Melbourne | $6,000 (tbd) | |
| 2XX Canberra | $3,000 (tbd) | |
| 4ZZZ Brisbane | $2,900 | Business membership plus Package B (60 spot reads, newsletter takeover, 2 social media posts + giveaway) |
| Subscriberthon Fund | $3,000 | Putting aside money for 6 prize packs for magazine and radio subscriberthons to offer 3 months or $500 credit on bills (this is dependent on meeting all compliance aspects) |
| Guardian podcasts | $6,000 | Ad reads on podcasts via Acast |
One of our core three objectives as a cooperative is to support community democracy, and a thriving independent media and arts sector is a critical part of a broader democratic ecosystem. If you have any questions, comments or suggestions feel free to reach out to us on [email protected]
