In a world where talking about the future can often lead to gloomy chats about the cost of living crisis and world war three, Bernard Salt offered an optimistic outlook at yesterday’s AANA’s Reset for Growth in Sydney.
Salt, who is a futurist, author and columnist for The Australian, delivered a cheery opening address for the event, entitled ‘The best is yet to come’.
The primary question that any Aussie working in the advertising, media, and marketing industry should be asking is whether they should invest the best years of their life working in the industry.
“The unequivocal answer to that [question] is yes,” he said.
The reason for that is due to the GDP of the average Australian, Salt said, pointing to data from the International Monetary Fund which shows Australia to be the 10th richest country in the world.
Unfortunately, the wealth is not distributed evenly so the industry needs to understand the areas of growth, he said.
“Where are these pools of money? Who is actually doing well in the Australian environment?” Salt said.
“I know people are struggling I get all that. The idea of marketing and advertising is to understand the market and to target with rifle-shot accuracy, those deepening pools of spending capacity.”
A key area of growth is immigration, he said. In Australia, 31 per cent of people were born outside the nation. “Australia should have the Statue of Liberty,” he joked.
In Australia, the “Indian population is growing by 12 percentage points per year” and therefore the industry should be asking what their preference and languages are. Australia is heading towards a “fusion culture” he said.
Another key trend was demographic shifts, namely in relation to boomers and millennials.
Millennials, now in their mid-thirties, will be going into their mid-forties in the next decade. This means we could see a big shift of people moving out into more residential areas with larger room for children.
Meanwhile, there will be 6 million baby boomers going over the age of 65 in the next decade where they will enjoy the ‘lifestyle’ period of retirement. This is also a pocket of wealth, Salt said.
