Would you advise starting with a free platform like WordPress or go for a
paid option? There are so many options out there that
I’m totally confused .. Any recommendations? Thank
you!

Thank you!

A hot one at the moment is ‘our’ ABC. “Who is our Customer” is a relatively easy question for a commercial TV or radio station to answer – the Customer is the advertiser. It’s not the audience – the audience is a product provided to the advertiser. That product is measured for its quantity and quality by ratings, and the advertiser Customer is charged a price determined by those ratings.

But what about ‘our’ ABC? I believe that as the national broadcaster, the nation is the ABC’s Customer. It’s not the audience and it’s not the government (even though the government funds the ABC). It’s the nation as a whole and the ABC’s success is measured by national surveys of its value and the trust in which it is held by the population. Something like 80% say that the ABC is valuable and trusted, although many of that 80% probably rarely if ever watch, listen or log on to the ABC. That’s why I reckon the Customer is the nation rather than the audience or any other body.

So does the ABC have a product like Channel 7? “Who is our Customer?” is a critical first question, but “what do we provide that Customer?” is an almost as critical second question. “What we provide” can be a product (as with Unilever’s Persil), or a service which is a here-and-now interaction between the organisation and its Customer, or it can be a complex package which is often intangible (such as the feeling of security provided by a fire insurance policy, where we hope we won’t ever have to use the service or claim the product).

I reckon that Our ABC provides the nation with a complex package, but as an outsider I don’t really know what it is. I just hope that somebody inside the ABC has thought it through and that chief executive Mark Scott does know what it is. (His grandfather was WD Scott, one of Australia’s pioneer management consultants, so he should be genetically equipped for answering difficult strategic questions.)

Anyhow. whatever that complex package is that the ABC provides, most of us feel pretty good about it and want the ABC to keep doing it. (Maybe George Brandis doesn’t, but lots of others do.)

As with the FAA example, whatever the real answers, they aren’t always the obvious ones – not the answer to “who is our Customer?” and not the answer to “what do we provide to that Customer?” But they are questions that demand a lot of thinking through and a clearly defined answer.