Creative Business Wrap – October 2022

Let’s start with the October budget, which had little in it to note for small businesses, creative or otherwise. The government’s one big move in this area is the establishment of the National Reconstruction Fund, a $15 billion fund to co-invest with businesses to build manufacturing capability. The fund will target seven industry sectors: resources, agriculture, forestry and fisheries, transport, medical science, renewables and low emission technologies, defence and enabling capabilities. And if none of those sound particularly creative industries focused, consider “enabling capabilities”, which might include software development, design and associated disciplines. We’ll keep an eye on it, but for now, InnovationAus has a brief interview with Industry minister Ed Husic which sheds a little light on his plans for the new fund.

There wasn’t much more news for the arts either, but as The Guardian highlighted, the return of funds to the ABC will be widely welcomed by those in the business of creating broadcast content. One budget measure to note is the merger of Creative Partnerships Australia with the Australia Council. Over the last 10 years, CPA has done a huge amount of work in fostering private support for the arts and screen industries, delivering programs, funding, and through its network of state managers, ensuring access to artists of all stripes to advice and mentoring on building philanthropic income streams. Let’s hope these efforts are maintained by Australia Council, but for now, it’s a good time to browse through CPA’s online resources on the good, bad and the ugly of arts fundraising. So much useful information there.

Let’s talk podcasts. According to a report from Commercial Radio Australia, and reported by Mumbrella, “Australia has officially overtaken the US as the biggest podcast-listening nation on the planet, with the number of people who listened to a podcast in the last month growing to 40%, up from 37% year on year.” Apparently, the average listener spends over 7 hours a week listening to podcasts (and if you’re wondering who has 7 spare hours a week to spend on podcasts, I presume the ability to multitask while listening is a factor here).

It’s not uncommon for small businesses to consider starting their own podcasts, but it’s an increasingly crowded market, meaning it’s getting harder for listeners to find exactly what they want. Google “reasons to start a podcast” and you’ll find no end of opinions the topic. I prefer this article from Improve Podcast on why you shouldn’t start a podcast. Lots of (ahem) sound advice there, but the points about maintaining consistency, not underestimating how much work’s involved and have strong audio production values ring true.

But let’s say your heart is set on broadcasting your thoughts to the ears of the nation, what’s a way to get into it which means you won’t suffer the pitfalls mentioned in that article? Firstly, think about what you’re trying to achieve. Perhaps you can get the coverage you want by “guesting” on other people’s podcasts. Secondly, consider using a professional production company to produce the podcast. Might be more of an investment but worth it to have a great sounding product. Finally, start small: perhaps a short series of 3-4 episodes on a distinct topic, rather than establishing a punishing regular schedule which might be hard to keep up.

It’s good to see the creative industries looking at their role in addressing the impact of climate change. This report from the UK looks at initiatives, frameworks and toolkits developed for subsectors of the creative industries and has some useful case studies from the performing arts, fashion, design and film amongst them.

The “eocdisco” re-useable cup project caught my eye as it links two pleasurable activities, listening to music and liquid refreshments. In 2020, ecodisco built a novel service for the urban events industry including nightclubs and theatres whereby reusable cups are delivered, collected and washed off-site. The cup designs are standardised with no branding so they can be used for their maximum life-cycle. Electric bikes and vans are used to transport the cups where possible and hyper-efficient washers and dryers keep the cups clean and dry for the next customer. I don’t think reusable cups are going to have a huge impact on climate change but I found the report interesting in the variety of examples and predict that many creative organisations may soon be asked to produce a framework and strategy in response to the climate emergency.

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If you’re looking for a funny and candid puncturing of the tech hype balloon, Disrupted: My Misadventure in the Start-Up Bubble by Dan Lyons is one of my favourites. It’s the true and sometimes incredulous tale of his time working for online marketing platform HubSpot, after he lost his job as a journalist at the age of 53. He realises on day one that he won’t be a good fit but stays with the company in order to pay his bills and in the hope of making a financial windfall when the company launches on the stock market and just maybe, writing a best seller about his experience.

Lyons previously wrote a very successful blog called The Fake Steve Jobs and in a similar vein, Disrupted mercilessly mocks the chaotic management style and ludicrous buzzwords employed at HubSpot and other tech start-ups. Some of the names have been changed, but the excerpts from HubSpot’s “culture code” are real: one of the founders really did take a teddy bear called Molly to meetings to represent the customers, getting fired was called “graduating” and marketing emails known to you and me as spam were called “lovable marketing content”. HubSpot was far from unique in Silicon Valley in having a hugely successful Initial Public Offering, despite losing millions of dollars year after year. Without spoiling the ending, Lyons made much less from his stock options that he made from the book. It’s an easy read with the right mix of comedy and business content and analysis, just right for plane trip or a long wait at an airport.

I was delighted to read that the NSW Government is attacking unnecessarily complicated forms and processes to make its services accessible to customers. They recently held a sludge-a thon where teams from government agencies came together to eliminate “sludge” that was creating barriers for customers and staff. Think forms that are poorly laid out, badly written letters, overuse of technical jargon and multiple layers of delegations to approve a process.

Jo Medlin, literacy and numeracy consultant to SBS program “Lost for Words” helped the teams to analyse the literacy implications of Sludge and increase readability of documents. With 43% of workers in Australia having literacy, language or numeracy gaps, there are lots of customers who can benefit from eliminating sludge. The Australian Council for Adult Literacy has some free resources to help increase the readability of business documents, both internal and customer facing. Apparently the NSW Govt plans on having a “Sludge Showcase” in November, let’s hope the momentum continues and spreads to all levels of government.

In the meantime, perhaps there’s some sludge in all of our systems and processes we can clean up? Spring clean, anyone?