ORANGE CITY COUNCIL

Employment and Economic Development Policy Committee

 

Agenda

 

7 November 2017

 

 

Notice is hereby given, in accordance with the provisions of the Local Government Act 1993 that a Employment and Economic Development Policy Committee meeting of ORANGE CITY COUNCIL will be held in the Council Chamber, Civic Centre, Byng Street, Orange on  Tuesday, 7 November 2017.

 

 

Garry Styles

General Manager

 

For apologies please contact Michelle Catlin on 6393 8246.

    

 


Employment and Economic Development Policy Committee  7 November 2017

Agenda

  

1                Introduction.. 3

1.1            Declaration of pecuniary interests, significant non-pecuniary interests and less than significant non-pecuniary interests. 3

2                General Reports. 4

2.1            Evocities update. 4

 


Employment and Economic Development Policy Committee  7 November 2017

1       Introduction

1.1     Declaration of pecuniary interests, significant non-pecuniary interests and less than significant non-pecuniary interests

The provisions of Chapter 14 of the Local Government Act, 1993 (the Act) regulate the way in which Councillors and designated staff of Council conduct themselves to ensure that there is no conflict between their private interests and their public role.

The Act prescribes that where a member of Council (or a Committee of Council) has a direct or indirect financial (pecuniary) interest in a matter to be considered at a meeting of the Council (or Committee), that interest must be disclosed as soon as practicable after the start of the meeting and the reasons given for declaring such interest.

As members are aware, the provisions of the Local Government Act restrict any member who has declared a pecuniary interest in any matter from participating in the discussion or voting on that matter, and requires that member to vacate the Chamber.

Council’s Code of Conduct provides that if members have a non-pecuniary conflict of interest, the nature of the conflict must be disclosed. The Code of Conduct also provides for a number of ways in which a member may manage non pecuniary conflicts of interest.

Recommendation

It is recommended that Committee Members now disclose any conflicts of interest in matters under consideration by the Employment and Economic Development Policy Committee at this meeting.

 


Employment and Economic Development Policy Committee  7 November 2017

2       General Reports

2.1     Evocities update

TRIM REFERENCE:        2017/1955

AUTHOR:                       Kathy Woolley, Director Corporate and Commercial Services    

 

 

EXECUTIVE Summary

This report provides Council with information from the Evocities campaign.

Link To Delivery/OPerational Plan

The recommendation in this report relates to the Delivery/Operational Plan strategy “11.1 Our Economy – Encourage the growth of local business, support emerging industry sectors and attract new investment to Orange”.

Financial Implications

Council contributed $70,000 for the 2017/18 membership.

Policy and Governance Implications

Nil

 

Recommendation

That Council note the Evocities 2016/17 outcomes and update on the 2017/18 program.

 

further considerations

Consideration has been given to the recommendation’s impact on Council’s service delivery; image and reputation; political; environmental; health and safety; employees; stakeholders and project management; and no further implications or risks have been identified.

SUPPORTING INFORMATION

Evocities has supplied the following information for Council’s information.

Since its launch in September 2010, Evocities has recorded over 3,100 households as having relocated to one of the seven cities. The campaign has generated over 6,200 relocation enquiries; the Evojobs website has advertised over 37,000 local jobs, resulting in 2 million sessions on the site; and Evocities generated 2,694 media placements.

Evocities.com.au

Over 368,000 people have visited the Evocities website since its launch in September 2010. This past year (2016/17) saw the highest level of web traffic in the marketing campaign’s seven year history.

·    Website traffic (sessions) to Evocities.com.au increased by 4% (98,130).

·    70,034 people visited the site and 70% of these people (49,023) were visiting the site for the first time.

·    67% of all Australian traffic originated from Sydney based locations.

·    There was a significant increase from Melbourne sources – up by 9,685 sessions or 223%.

·    38% found the site through Organic Search (typing Evocities into a search engine) and Direct (typing Evocities.com.au into the address bar), up from 29% the previous year.

The Organic Search and Direct traffic is still making up a high percentage of all web sessions which indicates good brand awareness reinforced by the combination of Evocities’ traditional and digital advertising. Visitation from these two channels always represents the highest quality of traffic with time spent on the site always much higher than other sources.

Evojobs.com.au

The new Evojobs website went live in January 2017 and the site was officially launched in March. Merging the seven Evocities job sites into a single platform improved the site’s capabilities, expanded its reach and further enabled the site to be utilised in leveraging the availability of current jobs to attract skilled relocators. Radio and bus advertising for Evojobs.com.au resulted in both the Evocities and Evojobs website receiving increased traffic:

·    There were 6,430 job vacancies listed in the 2016/17 year.

·    The average number of jobs posted each month is 535.

·    Since September 2010, there have been 37,783 job vacancies listed on the Evojobs site/s.

·    Since the new site went live in January 2017 to June 2017, 41% of all users return to the site.

·    The Evocities website pushed 11,692 sessions to the Evojobs site over this 6 month period.

Public Relations and Media

In 2016/17 Evocities received a total of 30 national and metropolitan placements, and 107 regional media placements.

Website and Media Statistics:

Statistic

2016/17

Total (cumulative)

No. of sessions on evocities.com.au

98,130

521,626

No. of sessions on evojobs.com.au

272,874

2,000,211

No. of media placements

137

2,707

Total potential audience reach

17,262,430

135,026,677

 

Marketing

In July 2016 Evocities launched its new advertising campaign, which involved:

·    Ambassador videos featured on YouTube and Facebook

·    Radio advertising for three weeks in August 2016

·    The radio campaign’s success was evident with a marked increase in website traffic with 5,348 sessions in the three weeks of the campaign from 14 August to 3 September 2016, which was an increase of 60.75% on the previous period, and the organic search traffic increased by 100% from 933 to 1866.

·    Billboards installed at two major railway platforms in the Sydney CBD from the beginning of September 16 and advertising on two buses in the West Sydney area.


 

Social Media

Information below shows Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn outcomes for 2016/17.

·    Facebook - The page made 4,326,112 impressions, 321,811 of these were organic. 58,041 post engagements were recorded, including 7,493 reactions and 998 comments.

·    Twitter - The Evocities Twitter account received 93 mentions and its followers increased by 4.7% in the 2016/17 year. .

·      LinkedIn - 866 engagements. In 2016/17 followers increased by 41.3% to 130.

Impact

In January 2012, research was conducted to estimate the economic benefits to the Evocities of attracting new residents. This research found that the relocated households had a median annual income of $90,000 to $100,000, which was above the adjusted median income of all the Evocities. It was reported that Evocities has the potential to lift the median incomes of the participating regional cities in the future, as it attracts higher-than-average income earners and those with professional qualifications and skills. In turn, the Evocities project has the potential to deliver a higher-than-average boost to overall economic activity in the participating regional cities, as these above-average incomes are spent in the regions and are further boosted by the multiplier effect.

Evocities began sending ‘Welcome Home to your new Evocity’ postcards to new residents in December 2016. Since this time, responses have been received from 152 households that have recently relocated to an Evocity. Details gained from the respondents have been useful in the organisation of welcome events and identifying potential case studies. Of the 152 relocators to date 30% said they were familiar with Evocities.

The Evoindex research conducted in March 2017 found:

·    66% of Sydneysiders have considered leaving Sydney with cost of housing and quality of life being the top two reasons.

·    48% of Sydneysiders spend anywhere between 31 mins to over 1.5 hours getting to work each day, while 88% of relocators get to work in less than 30 mins after moving.

·    Only 34% of Sydneysiders felt a connection to their local community.

·    58% of Sydneysiders renting are paying over $400/wk. in rent compared to just 29% in 2010.

·    31% are paying over $500/wk., compared to just 12% in 2010. The average rent in an Evocity is $320/wk., 55% of relocators who were renting decreased their payment after relocating.

·    55% of Sydneysiders pay over $2000/month to their mortgage, up from 38% in 2010.

 

Statistic

2016/17

Sep 2010 to

Jun 2017

Number of families (households) who have relocated

This figure represents the number of households who relocated to an Evocity and directly confirmed their move with that Evocity (through the Evocities website or with Council customer service for example).

325

3,100

Number of families (households) indicating their intention to relocate

329

1,805

Number of direct enquiries to councils from potential new residents

717

6,251

Number of new resident / business / investment case studies submitted

36

255

 

Number of households who relocated from Sydney and Surrounds to an Evocity according to Australia Post Movers Data:
From Region	Sep 2010 to Jun 2017
Sydney CBD	164
Central & Northern Sydney	2,055
Southern & South Western Sydney	1,114
Western Sydney & Blue Mountains	1,651
Hunter & Central Coast	2,108
Total	7,092

Australia Post Movers Data

Number of households who relocated to an Evocity according to Australia Post Movers Data:

Period

Number

July 2016

259

August 2016

273

September 2016

247

October 2016

227

November 2016

246

December 2016

333

January 2017

339

February 2017

275

March 2017

282

April 2017

206

May 2017

214

June 2017

186

Total for 2016/17

3,087

September 2010

to June 2017

30,029

2017/18 aCTIVITIES

NSW Government Funding - In July 2017 Evocities received a $300,000 grant under the NSW Government’s Regional Growth – Marketing and Promotion Fund. These funds will be used to reach a mass audience including Melbourne, Brisbane and Canberra throughout July to December 2017.

The main activities will include:

·    Radio advertising in Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane and Canberra (four months, two stations per city) and traffic report and news bulletin sponsorship in Sydney through the Australian Traffic Network (ATN);

·    Large scale billboards on M4 and M5 motorways (four months); and

·    Digital advertising into Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane and Canberra using Facebook, YouTube, and search and display advertising.

·    The billboards were installed and the ATN sponsorship commenced on 6 August 2017 and the radio ads began airing on 14 August 2017. Since this time the traffic to the Evocities and Evojobs websites saw instant increases in traffic and engagement.

The following statistics report the 31 days since the mass advertising commenced (6 Aug 17 to 5 Sep 17) compared to the previous period (6 Jul 17 to 5 Aug 17):

 

Statistic

% Difference

Month since advertising

Month prior to advertising

Evocities.com.au

Sessions

Users

Pageviews

Pages / Sessions

Average Session Duration

Bounce Rate

Organic Search

Direct

 

37.00%

28.82%

62.20%

18.39%

71.74%

-9.51%

209.44%

50.50%

 

13,941

10,642

33,210

2.38

02:01

55.12%

5,771

3,293

 

10,176

8,261

20,475

2.01

01:10

60.91%

1,865

2,188

Evojobs.com.au

Sessions

Users

Pageviews

Pages / Sessions

Average Session Duration

Bounce Rate

Organic Search

Direct

 

11.11%

13.77%

13.59%

2.24%

8.95%

-0.45%

12.89%

24.57%

 

38,083

24,573

74,141

1.95

01:34

70.91%

9,241

2,545

 

34,276

21,599

65,268

1.90

01:26

71.23%

8,186

2,043

Enquiries (through the Evocities website only)

97.62%

83

42

 

Marketing and Public Relations

·    the Evocities image and video library will be refreshed and updated and new case studies will be gathered.

·    Evocities PR is now run out of the secretariat from within Tamworth Regional Council. New PR initiatives include the use of Instagram and utilising the Evocities blog to refresh the Evocities.com.au homepage regularly. In addition to maintaining a presence in metropolitan and regional newspapers and other news outlets, there will be a specific and separate PR effort to secure coverage in lifestyle focused media.

Website Management

The Evojobs website is currently being set up to ‘scrape’ job listing from the Councils’ employment websites and this will continue with the linking of select major regional NSW employers.

Research - Evocities will conduct further research to acquire updated information such as the estimated contribution of each relocated household to the local economy, as well as the broader economic benefits to the Evocities of attracting new residents, encouraging business growth and even encouraging tourism and attracting visitors to the participating regional cities.

Attached in a summary of the Evocities research and survey information as supplied by the Evocities project officer.

In addition to the above information,  Council sought further details on the marketing activities regarding advertising on motorway billboards.  The schedule for these is attached for information.

 

 

Attachments

1          Addendum - Evocities Research and Survey Summary 2006 - 2017, D17/52391

2          Evocities Billboard Schedule August - November 2017, D17/62781

  


Employment and Economic Development Policy Committee      7 November 2017

2.1                       Evocities update

Attachment 1      Addendum - Evocities Research and Survey Summary 2006 - 2017

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Employment and Economic Development Policy Committee                             7 November 2017

2.1                       Evocities update

Attachment 2      Evocities Billboard Schedule August - November 2017

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