Evolving Adelaide
Posted by Jason Dunstone on October 20th, 2007 at 1:06pm
Adelaide is upbeat and positive. Consumer and business confidence is strong. As a city we have gone through a metamorphosis over the past decade and are set for a strong future. What does this mean for marketing and how we engage with local consumers?
Real estate prices are strong, shopping is well entrenched as a leisure activity and seats at our multitude of cafés and cosmopolitan eating establishments are like hen’s teeth. From a business perspective many claim to be dealing with frantic workloads. Organic growth of existing businesses has been further fuelled by the ‘new industries’ building in SA such as defence and mining. Numerous of our local business successes are also leveraging their growth interstate and overseas – Sydney, Melbourne, Dubai.
We now have a stylish new airport, Waymouth Street is now a hip commercial precinct and the new HQs of SANTOS, SA Water, Channel 10, the Federal Law courts and KPMG are adding a depth and vibrancy to our society. Adelaide is becoming a modern and unique city.
Consumer and business research I have been involved in over the past decade has illustrated a clear trend of an evolving city. Not just aesthetically, but how residents think and the confidence to which they are facing the future.
When I first moved back from Melbourne a little more than a decade ago I was part of the team on some research that eventually saw the end to the ‘SA going all the way’ campaign. There was a clear message coming from the groups that Adelaide was “like a big country town”, “embarrassing” and “boring”. Our own residents had a sense of embarrassment and almost depression when thinking about Adelaide. They could not forget the State Bank disaster.
Research I’ve been involved in recently illustrates a dramatically different local mind-set. Our local consumers are demanding corporate and government enterprises in Adelaide to be brave, bold and invest in a manner that befits a modern city as we have become. This includes major developments such as the Marjorie Jackson Nelson Hospital and AAMI Stadium. There is a desire for investment in continuing to build a city that they can be proud of. Expectations are much higher than they once were and those living in our city demand the best.
A similar trend has been observed in how our local residents see and absorb advertising and marketing. They are now more marketing savvy than ever and expect high quality and strategic advertising and marketing, to the standard that would be seen in any city.
It is essential that advertising and marketing strategies adopt appropriate levels of thought and investment. Campaigns that aim too low intellectually or are not developed to be clever and engaging will simply see those they aim to motive to action to switch off and revolt against the brands that treat them like idiots.
The evolution of our city combined with a more sceptical and marketing conscience consumer means that poorly constructed advertising is at high risk for those brands, and potentially to all marketers as our local savvy consumers become more and more frustrated with advertising clatter.
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