In the early 80s I was employed at a Sydney advertising agency. We had many smart clients but one in particular stood out: BP.
The ABC 7.30 negative events of the past few weeks tell me that the retirement village sector (and the aged care sector) needs to learn from BP.
At that time BP was planning to be a major explorer for oil off the Victoria coast, uranium in SA and gas in Northwest Australia - all very controversial projects.
Three years before they had concrete discoveries and plans to build, they commissioned our agency to conduct an education and positioning media campaign. That campaign was titled The Quiet Achiever – a line conceived by Leo Schofield, my boss. See it here.
It worked brilliantly; when it came time to start digging BP was understood and positively received by the public and the Government.
My point? The retirement village sector has not been proactive; it has not explained what it is and its value proposition to the community and Government at all levels, despite the leaders talking about this need for as long as I have been in the sector.
Individual operator complacency dominates the sector. The same (mainly large) operators do the hard advocacy yards, but all operators hold back on forward investment in the sector’s community brand.
After the June 2017 Four Corners exposé (“Bleed them dry until they die”) where village sales stopped, the village sector took seven months to acknowledge the sector had a big problem and to raise a media fighting chest of $2.5 million. It then took another six months to develop the “Wise Move” campaign (great promo line by the way), which after creative costs left just $500,000 for media. It disappeared and has not been revisited, because thanks to COVID-19 the good times have returned – and more complacency.
Daniel Gannon (RLC Executive Director) did some good work late last year with News Limited media delivering press features for a week, but a week does not create education.
My callout is that the sector needs to learn from BP and proactively develop a long term education program. All operators have a vested interest in its success.
By way of example, a fee of $500 could be added to each ILU sale across the sector without it impacting sales at all. Over 12 months this would generate $11.5 million.
Compare this to the cost the ABC has delivered the sector in 2017 (our estimate is around $3 billion) and the last month (lets say sales hit by 10% in prices for six months – a financial hit of $750 million).
And this does not take in the hit to the valuation of villages and support banks and other funders will give operators.
With an NPS of +44, retirement villages are the quiet achievers of the seniors housing sector and have been for 50 years – but very few people know it.
It is time to change this.
The second complacency issue is operators getting their house in order. The ABC made a big issue of the Code of Conduct – how few operators have signed up and implemented its requirements.
The Code of Conduct was the RLC and now ACCPA joint solution to demonstrate to Government and customers that the sector will take responsibility in its performance, after the 2017 media crisis. Operators not signing up are creating their own home goal when the media calls – and their failure is slated to the whole sector.
NSW didn’t trust the Code of Conduct and brought out the Rules of Conduct and made compliance mandatory. One of the requirements is staff training. We have researched this and can report just 230 of the 550 villages in NSW have any form of staff training – despite it being a requirement with penalties.
It is time to change this as well.