The City Renewal Authority credits the influencer advertising campaign with bringing an extra 1800 people per day to the Civic district. Photos: Screenshots.
ICYMI: The ACT Government spent $32,000 to get an ad agency to find (and pay) 13 influencers to spruik Canberra’s Civic and Braddon areas.
How exactly the firm found the content creators (with followings ranging from 7000 to 159,000) and what each was paid is unclear.
But we do know the City Renewal Authority (CRA) asked for social media influencers with “strong local followings, consistently high engagement and alignment with Canberra’s lifestyle and event audiences”.
On one hand, this is a bit of a smart play.
These pages will all have different audiences and different strengths, plus while the aim was to get the influencers to entice Canberrans to Civic and Braddon, they would have interstate followers as well.
The government is free to spend its marketing dollars where it likes. But where some mystery lies is in how the government is so sure this ploy resulted in more feet on the ground and more money spent in the Civic district.
The CRA told Region the campaign attracted more than 1800 people per day to Civic, including more than 4000 on Saturday (12 July).
Were they getting everyone to fill out a survey as they entered the precinct to find out “what brought you here today?”. Could they cross-check phone data to see if people followed or looked at the sponsored content?
And of those 1800 people per day, how do we know they spent their money at local businesses?
If the government had spent that $32,000 on, say, handing out a certain number of free plates of food at The Forage and Winter in the City, surely that would be a sight more measurable, and then people could have spent their food money on other entertainment at the festival.
Also, that $32,000 – while a drop in the bucket of the overall budget – surely could have gone towards other things to help the district instead?
Some shiny videos on social media are great but they’re spray-painting over the other issues that are keeping people away from the district.
The listening report on the Canberra Civic and Cultural District found the government needed to address safety concerns around perceived issues with drug activity and homelessness in the vicinity, improve lighting and make the area feel safer and welcoming for all visitors, making sure it’s accessible for people with disabilities, make it more child-friendly, host more regular events, increase greenery, update the paths, etc etc.
Light rail construction may be inhibiting access to businesses, but I never found the Civic area attractive to begin with.
In fact, to me, it feels much better at night when clubs are open and people are about than during the day when you can see how neglected and grimy the area really is.
There have been some incentives to try and soften the impact light rail construction has had on businesses: free evening parking on certain nights in certain carparks, lowered liquor licensing fees, encouraging more outdoor dining permits.
But I think a lot of the Civic district’s issues existed long before the first construction fencing was put up – and a couple of fancy videos on social media aren’t going to change Canberrans’ current perception of the area.
