Creative industries (including marketing and advertising) boost Australia’s economy by $45bn

WARC, 19 February 2014

CANBERRA: Creative industries, including marketing and advertising, contribute some $45bn annually to the Australian economy a new report has said, and the government is hoping for more.

A study – Valuing Australia's Creative Industries – for the Government's Creative Industries Innovation Centre (CIIC) by SGS Economics and Planning found that the marketing and advertising sector alone was responsible for $7.2bn.

This amounted to 8% of the total, including a 7% contribution to GDP, putting it ahead of sectors such as agriculture and utilities, and 10% of exports.

Creative occupations employed more than 430,000 people across 123,000 businesses. Advertising and marketing was the biggest employer in the sector, accounting for 37% of people working in the creative industries and a 1.7% share of total employees in Australia.

A significant percentage (43%) of those employed in creative occupations actually worked in non-creative industries as "embedded creatives". The proportion was even higher when considering the advertising and marketing segment, where 83% were classified in this way.

Lisa Colley, CIIC director, said the report highlighted "the exciting opportunities these sectors and skills can offer Australian businesses."

The report also pointed to the "undeniable worth" of the intangible impact of creative industries to the nation and Colley added that "they really are becoming a key enabler to the broader economy."

In a foreword, Ian Macfarlane, Minster for Industry, wrote of the next step being to "ensure we are drawing links across innovation to ensure we are getting the most out of these creative industries in terms of productivity and global competitiveness".

Australia produced several award-winning campaigns during 2013, including one for Art Series Hotels, the boutique Australian hotel owner, by Naked Communications Melbourne. 'The Overstay Checkout' picked up the Warc Prize for Innovation with an idea that mixed PR, word of mouth and new product development.

Warc's Innovation Casebook Trends Report noted how innovation could become a broader form of creativity and make a small budget go a long way. This had been demonstrated particularly well by another Australian campaign, the much-feted 'Dumb Ways to Die' from Metro Trains Melbourne, which generated huge word-of-mouth on a small budget.

Data sourced from CIIC; additional content by Warc staff

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