Imagine if you were to buy today’s national paper, The Australian, and on the front page was an advertisement with the headline, “30minute City! #WhyWaste$50M #Rockhampton – the Smarter Choice”.
With the federal budget likely to have mentioned $50M funding towards the dream of enabling a 30 minute commute to and from work for our capital cities this would be an opportunistic time to push Rockhampton as a place to relocate to.
It’s called opportunistic marketing, taking advantage of an event, like the federal budget, and having a relevant ‘clever’ message run at that specific time.
It may not immediately generate 1000 new residents, but it would, because of the time and environment it was placed, be memorable, mainly because it was relevant and clever.
That could pay dividends in the future.
When I heard about 30 minute city budget talk I thought what a betrayal of regional centres.
Federal and State Governments love talking about decentralisation but when it comes to action they go to where the votes are, the capital cities and the sprawl that keeps their limits undefined.
Despite even their muted admissions that urban sprawl is not efficient in the costs to keep residents connected they really do little to limit the population concentration to the metro markets.
I recall one’s capital city Mayor’s answer to the lack of inner city car parking was to cut the amount of space available. I thought ‘what’, doesn’t that increase the problem, but the Mayor realised the more difficult it was to find a park the more people would resort to public transport. Smart.
But now we have a Prime Minister who wants to make the commute time less.
Public transport, light train I imagine particularly, would be part of the plan, but how is this is smart move in encouraging capital city residents to move to regional centres, if that is a real proposition.
Thus it appears if we do agree more needs to be done to promote Rockhampton to encourage new residents to move to the region as 82% indicated in the recent ‘Be Heard’ survey it has to be something we drive ourselves.
Opportunistic marketing needs to be utilised, in conjunction with the Council’s Smart Way Forward Strategy.
This is the time of year those who live in Melbourne, Canberra and Adelaide would love to see images of people in short sleeves, even bathers, picturing themselves enjoying Rockhampton’s autumn.
A lot of work needs to be done to effectively get people to consider then actually move here.
Recognising that we have to drive this and not expect that State and Federal Governments respond logically to problems like urban sprawl by seriously encouraging people to relocate to where underutilised infrastructure already exists rather build more infrastructure to get people to work quicker will make the task simpler.
Yes we have our problems, but we have a lot more going for us.
Let’s start selling #Rockhampton to our southern social media friends with photo’s of us enjoying the autumn lifestyle and talking it up, reminding them 30 minutes going to and from work is 15 minutes too long.