COMMENT By STEVE GRAY
ONE of Australia’s biggest companies, with a public relations budget exceeding $200 million, wants your tiny community newspaper Southern Free Times to do their advertising for free.
According to AdNews magazine “Telstra would not be drawn on its total marketing budget, but it is likely to be north of $200 million,” a figure backed by the Sydney Morning Herald.
A call from a Telstra media person to the Southern Free Times wanted us to tell you that the National Broadband Network in now available in areas around Warwick.
Apparently they not only want their advertising for free, but they don’t even read this newspaper.
If they did they would have read our front page story of 14 November “NBN black hole” which explained just exactly that – NBN is available around Warwick, but not in the city centre itself.
So Telstra spends north of $200 million on public relations. Obviously most of this goes towards making Australians feel warm and fuzzy about the company, one of Australia’s 10 biggest.
But when it comes to informing the public, giving them the news about new available services, they want small newspapers like ours to do it for free.
Why could this be?
Perhaps it’s because they want you to visit one of their many retail outlets where you’ll be subject to professional sales staff attempting to sell you products you don’t necessarily need.
It’s little surprise that new telco Yatango this week released research which they claim shows 60 per cent of Australians think the big telephone companies are taking advantage of their customers.
In Telstra’s case they have hundreds of thousands of customers held hostage because they are the only telco which can provide adequate coverage to rural and regional Australia.
