It’s been an interesting couple of months here in Australia.
Talk about a PR nightmare – Qantas had a lot of bad worldwide press with their staff striking and then the issue escalated when CEO Alan Joyce grounded the Qantas Fleet until the matter was resolved affecting tens of thousands of passengers world wide. Australia Prime Minister Julia Gillard was forced to step in and then matters came to a quick resolution. I don’t know how it was publicised in the UK but it was a round the clock commentary here and Julia Gillard was criticised for not stepping in soon enough.
One could argue that Alan Joyce’s decision was a brilliant one PR wise as no PR is bad PR right? Although he had just given himself a nice 71% pay rise which further rubbed salt into the wound. Not great timing.
We’re seeing the aftermath of the strikes now with Qantas sweetening customers up with frequent flyer offers and complimentary gifts, and today Alan Joyce has been plugging Qantas’ new investment – the Boeing 787 which one could say is interesting timing.
We’ve also had the Carbon Tax passed here in Australia recently which if you don’t know what it is basically means that companies that generate pollution will pay per tonne of carbon they release into the atmosphere. The cost will increase up until 2015 when there will be a move towards a trading scheme that will let the market set the cost.
Many people have been for and against the tax so it will be interesting to see how it goes.
More recent news, Queensland is celebrating having just been awarded the right to host the 2018 Commonwealth Games on the Gold Coast. This will be excellent PR for the Gold Coast as it often gets a lot of bad press, although the Acting Queensland Premier Andrew Fraser has been a bit of a killjoy over the announcement today suggesting that the financial gain for the Gold Coast was completely unquantifiable.
Finally, Canberra has been at a standstill recently as US President Barack Obama was there Canberra on a whistle-stop tour. So it’s all go here down under at the moment.
Read more…
Things in Australia are up and down at the moment.
On the good side the marketing and design industry seems to be improving job wise, and there are more and more jobs being advertised. As well as my 9-5 job I have picked up some freelance work which is all helping and giving me a good range of experience.
On the down side, you may be aware that Borders and Angus & Robertson have gone into liquidation (as well as the US) which is a blow for the industry here. In saying that though, the one thing I noticed when I first arrived into Australia was the cost of books.
I can actually order books from England and get them a lot cheaper (like $10-$15+) even with postage than paying the Australian book shop price – so it doesn’t come as too much of a surprise to me that Aussies don’t want to pay the high street book shop prices anymore.
Bookdepository.co.uk has a very strong presence here and they don’t charge for postage to Australia so I’ve been telling anyone and everyone to use them. Amazon.co.uk recently pushed themselves onto the scene too offering free postage on purchases over $50 – so interesting times for the book market, but I am hoping definitely for the better so I can buy my books at a fair and reasonable price.
Speaking of books, I just finished a great book that as a marketer you might be interested in, by Paul Arden called It’s not how good you are but how good you want to be. Sounds like a self help book but it’s a small book full of interesting work soundbites from a marketing and advertising point of view.
Anyway bye for now.
Zoe
January 13, 2011
by zoemichelle
in Careers
Hello from down under
I hope you all had a festive Christmas and New Year, I just got back from skiing in Japan which was amazing.
I’d like to say that things have been good here in Australia since I last wrote but as I write Queensland is being ravaged by severe floods. According to the latest news reports ten people have been killed and at least 80 are still missing. These floods are the worst since devastating floods that swept through Queensland in 1974.
The rain and floods started a week or so ago devastating Northern Queensland city – Rockhampton and more recently they moved onto Toowoomba and its surrounding regions, which ironically has suffered for many years with droughts.
Yesterday Queensland Premier Anna Bligh made many emotional speeches talking about the devastation and the toughness and spirit of Queenslanders, and Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard confirmed she would give whatever resources necessary to Anna Bligh in order to help our state.
Brisbane is next on the list. Thankfully the area in Brisbane that I live does not seem to be on the flood list, we have just had heavy rain. But for those that are, their areas have been evacuated and for those that have nowhere to go, centres have been set up in order to keep them safe. The Brisbane CBD has closed as it is heavily flooded and the banks of the river is due to peak today which could have devastating consequences.
24/7
It’s amazing in terms of the way that we now use the internet and social media that now literally we can get a blow by blow account of what is going on in real time. People are tweeting under hash tags #bnefloods and photos are constantly being uploaded of new flood areas and warnings.
Facebook groups have been set up and the Council websites are the central point for information about the floods and people trying to find out about missing people.
The next two days are critical for Brisbane and by Friday the worst of the flooding will be over.
I hope that next time I write I will have better news for you. For the Aussies out there or anyone that wants to help you can do so by going to http://www.qld.gov.au/floods/donate.html
Bye for now
Zoe
I can’t believe it is nearly Christmas. The silly season crept up on me and santa is everywhere, even for pets (Santa Paws!)
We’ve been watching the scenes from the UK here with great interest. The snow scenes are incredible and it looks like it’s pretty cold over there. Over here we have had the worst spring/summer in a long time apparently. It has rained and rained which is good for Australia as they have struggled with droughts in the past, but when it rains here in Brisbane it really rains if you know what I mean and the thunder storms are seriously scary – we had five days in a row with storms and rain and huge floods.
So other than that it’s been pretty busy. I finished a role in the city and managed to get a new job that starts in January and I also qualified as a graphic designer . I did a year long course part time as marketing jobs here seem to require you to know Adobe Creative Suite as well as your core marketing skills, so I figured an extra skill would help, and it did. The job market seems to be picking up which is good news for unemployed marketers and it has been a hard year so hopefully next year will be much more productive.
I’m still helping CIM Australia out which is interesting as the number of members is increasing now that CIM courses are happening so I think 2011 will be an interesting time for CIM here in Australia.
Anyway I hope you all have a wonderful Christmas and New Year, and best wishes for 2011.
Bye for now.
Zoe
G’day from Australia
It’s starting to warm up here in Australia with the weather finally starting to improve. We’re in the mid twenties at the moment so I can finally get rid of my coat!
Have actually been a bit homesick lately, missing London and the buzz of it. I figured Australia would be an easy place to settle in but it hasn’t been as easy as I thought. Most of the expats I have spoken to say it took them 3-5 years so I guess I have a way to go yet…
Lots going on here at the moment. Since I last wrote the election fever has ended and Julia Gillard remains our Prime Minister. She seems to have got off to a reasonable start, but only time will tell.
This week saw the event of the year here in Australia – the Melbourne Cup – similar to Ascot and they even get a days holiday in Melbourne for it. See the Melbourne Cup site for more information about it. The number of people I saw here in Brisbane in hats was incredible and apparently Melbourne Cup day is less productive than the Christmas period.
Also the month of November sees another marketing event for a real worthy cause – Movember. The event which involves men growing a moustache throughout November to raise money for Prostate cancer and depression was first born in 2004 and started in Australia and New Zealand. It is now run in a few other countries including the UK – but the event is a nation-wide event in Australia. See the UK Movember site for more information and here are the guys I work with and their page - their photos that they did are amusing!
I’m still working with the Australian CIM Chair to help collate and send out a regular newsletter. The CIM offerings in Australia are not as comprehensive as in the UK so I think there are plans to improve sooner rather than later. We’re getting ready to send out our second updated newsletter now, so all good and all relatively new.
Bye for now.
Zoe
March 9, 2010
by Stephanie
in Careers
Hi there!
We are well and truly into autumn now and it’s still dark at 5.30am now so harder to get out of bed in the mornings! But life is ticking along here down under.
For today’s update I thought I would give you an insight into the marketing industry here in Brisbane at the moment.
Marketing – smart recruitment or not?
On a marketing front things are slowly picking up work and employment wise but it is still proving a difficult nut to crack for marketing peeps out of work especially for those with many years of experience. It’s very much an employer’s market which is great for employers but not for people trying to get jobs. I would imagine it is the same in London?
Many people that I know are actually taking lower level jobs simply to pay the bills and what this is producing is very happy employers but not necessarily employees! Why you may ask…well my theory is they figure that they can get someone completely over qualified for a position which means they are not only filling the position but are then hiring someone that they can tap into for their higher level expertise, all for the grand cost of a lower level salary.
Read more…
Hi again,
Well what a weekend it has been. I went to the coast up to Bunderburg and my husband and I got caught in all the Tsunami warnings for South East Queensland. So on the way home we drove inland and discovered some tiny towns that we never even knew existed such as Goomeri – the winner of the ‘neatest town’ award, Ban Ban Springs which I got excited about and then discovered there were no springs, and Nanago which was a very small country town and made me feel like I was really in the outback!
The latest news in Australia hot off the press at the moment is that Kmart has decided it wants to go against tradition and open on Anzac Day which is a memorial day that Aussies take very seriously over here – so there is a public outcry at the moment. It will be interesting to see how it affects their brand in the long term.
Australian market recovery
Things are looking up here in Australia economy wise with Reserve Bank Governor Glenn Stevens recently reporting that Australia’s economy is stronger after the GFC which is very positive – see the article for more details. In addition Stephen Long of ABC News recently reported that Australia is showing encouraging signs of economic strength, with new figures showing a 5.5 per cent increase in new business investment in the final quarter of last year. See link. At the end of his article Long remarks that the Reserve Bank is worried that Australia is entering a new economic upturn with spare capacity.
Bye for now! Zoe Gell
February 19, 2010
by zoemichelle
in Careers
Hi again,
I recently celebrated being in Australia for one year! Time has gone so fast. The Australian Immigration agency didn’t forget as I got a nice big wad of paper from them to complete within the next couple of months – then after that I will be on my way to becoming a fully fledged Aussie!
It hasn’t been an easy ride
Looking back over the last 12 months, making the move from London to Brisbane it hasn’t been as easy as we thought it would be. We arrived when the economy had taken a dive and finding jobs wasn’t that easy. We thought we would make friends easily and it took a while. I thought the marketing industry would be the same as in the UK and it wasn’t so I have had to play catch up in the last 12 months!
Read more…
November 27, 2009
by CIM GLR
in Careers
Hi from Brisbane.
I am sat here wishing for cooler weather would you believe? It is 35 celcius here today and my husband still hasn’t sorted our air conditioner!! I’ve got every single window open, my fans going and I feel like I am sat in a sauna! But hey I guess you are sat in London thinking shut up and enjoy the warm weather…
This week over here marketing news wise, Virgin Blue’s loyalty program team are in trouble for ‘accidently’ sending out an upgrade offer to more than 1 million members. See for more details. I think the moral of the story here is always double check your emails you are sending out along with your mailing list! Read more…
Zoe Gell
The social media scene in Brisbane is rife with Facebook, MySpace and Twitter groups to join and get involved with and jobs are also advertised this way. In fact I read when I first arrived into Brisbane that it is the Facebook capital of Australia, and more recently a survey by Scientific American Mind revealed that Australians rank 17th in a worldwide study of top social networking users.
Digital Marketing in Australia
Australia is really embracing the digital age especially where marketing is concerned, with many companies now expecting to see digital resumes with examples of work in the marketing arena as well as candidates with their own websites and wacky ideas about how to get themselves noticed. Read more…
October 13, 2009
by CIM GLR
in Careers
Zoe Gell
Hello again from sunny Brisbane. It’s been all go here – dust storms for starters!! It was like the Sahara here for a while….
I have to say I am actually missing the cooler London weather, the heat here is starting to really drive me crazy and my husband has been consulting numerous air conditioning companies to sort some out for our house – but as of yet can’t decide which to go for, so in the mean time I am frying like a proper English breakfast!
So last time I was telling you how I had packed up, left my lovely marcomms job and moved my life down under to Brisbane. I thought it would be so easy to breeze into a new marketing job but as I soon discovered I couldn’t have arrived at a worse time.
The recruitment consultancy I registered with at the time said had I arrived six months earlier I would have been fighting off employers with a stick! Read more…
