Marketers are often “missing the mark” when it comes to reaching regional, rural and remote Australia, with too many relying on “assumptions, generalisations and stereotypes” about the people who live there, according to c7even founder Adam Arndell.
The independent marketing and communications agency is looking to challenge those perceptions with the launch of The Voice of Region, a national survey designed to uncover what people living and working across regional, rural and remote Australia really think.
Founded in Tamworth by Arndell and Sara Crowe more than a decade ago, c7even has built its business living and working in regional Australia, delivering marketing and communications campaigns for global brands and government departments and agencies seeking to better understand and connect with regional audiences. The agency works with the likes of Telstra and Transgrid.
“Often what happens is when people think about regional Australia — a market that’s a third of Australia’s population — organisations just group it as one market. What we’re seeking to do with The Voice of Region is to highlight the differences across regional, rural, and remote Australia, and why those differences matter, and how they’re changing over time,” Arndell told B&T.
“If I live in a major regional centre like Tamworth or Toowoomba my regional experience is very different to someone that lives in a very remote outback community, and we’re trying to highlight to to brands and organisations that there’s vast differences in how you should be communicating and engaging with those different audiences.”
One of the biggest misconceptions brands and organisations have been making as a result of grouping regional, rural and remote Australia into one homogenous audience is the path to purchase.
“Often the TV networks here are covering very large areas, and it’s not a simple case of pop into your local shopping centre to come and buy this product. Often, people have to travel large distances. The way things work and operate in the metro areas can’t just be replicated,” said Arndell.
“For Government agencies as well, what tends to often happen is when they’re communicating to audiences in regional Australia the message seems quite relevant and simple for a major regional centre. Then rolling that out across rural and remote areas is so much more tricky, and they end up getting into this situation where there’s backlash to either messages or communications that Government are putting forward because it just misses the mark. It doesn’t represent them.”
Arndell did say brands have moved past utilising a middle aged white man in a chequered shirt and an Akubra hat. But, “we see so many examples of brands that get it wrong”.
Earlier this year Vodafone launched a campaign urging customers to stop paying for what they did not need.
The spot opens with American comedian Ali Wong standing in the outback alongside an emu, stating, “I don’t know what the hell this is, but I do know that it can’t use a phone.”
“Another big telco spends millions to build towers out here and charges customers for it. Well, Vodafone doesn’t, cause clearly nothing’s out here, except massive chickens,” she continued.
Vodafone finishes the ad by stating it has “doubled its network to cover where 98 whatever per cent of you actually live”.
“That had a lot of backlash from people in regional Australia because it was seen as having a go at regional Australians. The brand really missed the mark and was on the verge of being cancelled with that audience because they got it so wrong,” added Arndell.
B&T reached out to Vodafone’s creative agency Howatson+Company, who declined to comment.
The Voice of Region will set out to make sure brands don’t make similar mistakes.
The findings will feed directly into The See Beyond Method, c7even’s proprietary audience intelligence system, which seeks to identify the gap between what organisations assume about their audiences and what those audiences actually believe and do.
The Voice of Region 2026 is open to anyone who lives or works outside Australia’s capital cities and takes less than 10 minutes to complete. Each participant will go into the draw to win one of five $100 fuel cards.
The survey is open from 15 October, 2026 with findings to be released in a landmark report, The Voice of Region in early 2027.
