CEO Update | April 2022

Our strategic priorities for the new financial year

​April heralds the start of a new financial year for the Comms Council. It’s a chance to re-set our strategic focus for the year ahead and prioritise our resources in the areas that matter for our members.

In February we consulted with leaders from across the industry to inform our strategy. I am happy to share where we have landed, with the intention of providing deeper commentary on specific initiatives as they progress this year.

2022 Commercial Communications Strategy

Our Purpose is to advance the reputation, influence and impact of the advertising & communications industry.

We exist to:

Work on behalf of our members to promote the value of their work to clients, business and government.

Enable a rich and diverse industry that fully represents the cultures that it informs.

Celebrate great work, enable personal growth, and share the thinking that elevates our industry’s craft.

Provide support to our members to enable them to thrive. Unite and empower members to rally our industry around causes that are bigger than any individual member agencies.

Our guiding principles:

Be visible: show up in a timely, relevant and consistent fashion. Understand our audiences and how to communicate with them in the most impactful way.

Be distinctive: Our industry has a personality. It’s confident, brave and creative. We’re serious in intent but disarming in our method.

Be accountable: We’re driven by the utility of our outputs. We measure our impact and deliver to a deadline.

Strategic priorities:

Three key themes emerged from our discovery process in February. With limited resources, everything we do will be in service of these priorities:

1. Grow the stature of our industry

Champion the value our industry creates.

Defend the industry’s right to operate.

2. Attract, train and retain the right talent

Promote a desirable career for fresh and diverse talent.

Lead the charge towards inclusivity.

Facilitate individual growth.

3. Deliver member benefits that are valued

Make our members more confident through the services we deliver.

I will be sharing initiatives that deliver to these priorities as we develop them. As we enter our first quarter of the year, we are already well underway progressing the following:

- A new website. Our new site, designed to provide more utility, engagement and ease of use, will be ready in June.

- Employment brand: We’re working closely with member agencies to develop an industry-wide employment brand platform to attract more diversity, more talent, and increase visibility of the wealth of career options our industry provides.

- Advocacy. We’re actively in discussions with government and key stakeholders on issues including Strong Local Media, our right to self-regulation, and content regulation.

- Learning & Development. Our 2022 prospectus will be launched in the next couple of weeks.

- Thought leadership. A newly updated version of Peter Field’s ‘Why Aren’t We Doing This?’ will be available in April. We are aiming to add to this with more content gathered from around the world to be available when our new website launches. We intend to focus the industry’s attention on Climate Action in Q2.

As ever, if you have any questions, would like to be involved in any of the initiatives above, or just want to share your thoughts, please get in touch.

Simon Lendrum