Meet the Instagrammers invited into the Federal Budget lock-up
The past 36 hours have seen a number of media headlines surrounding the Albanese Government's decision to allow influencers into the budget lockup (and also the buses on the looming Federal Election campaign).
As today's edition of The Australian Financial Review points out, there appears to be a clear and deliberate communications strategy on the part of Labor* to use creators to speak directly to voters (including debate over whether it should have disclosed that Labor paid some of the creators' travel costs).
Why it matters: The decision of the Albanese government to allow a dozen or so Instagram creators into the Federal Budget lock-up for the first time represents an interesting moment for the Australian media and also professional communicators (who are all watching this closely).
If nothing else, it will likely set a precedent that will be built on in future Federal Budgets. Much like what we've seen at the White House in the US, a Rubicon has been crossed.
Go Deeper: For those not familiar with the Budget lock-up, it is a secure, closed-door event (you can't take your phone/have internet access etc.) where journalists, economists, analysts (and now creators?) are given early access to the federal budget documents before they are publicly released that evening. This year, a dozen or so creators, most of whom are primarily on Instagram, have been given access in a move that mirrors the White House's decision to open up room for creators in the White House briefing room.
Who did they allow in: The first thing to note is that they haven't gone for Australia's biggest political or 'newsfluencer' creators - think the likes of Friendly Jordies, Sam Fricker or Abbie Chatfield.
Instead the government appears to have picked finance / business focused creators, among those included were: Ladies Finance Club, Equity Mates, TashInvests, Emma Edwards, Milly Rose Bannister, Hannah Ferguson/Cheek Media. All of these were Instagrammers with follower counts largely in and around the 50,000 - 150,000 mark.
What is interesting is that many of these accounts skew heavily on one side of the gender divide or the other and their audience appears to be primarily 25-34 year olds.
What sort of content did they do: Unsurprisingly, a lot of the creators focused on personal finance stories or asked questions that their audiences had given them to ask. It appears the Instagrammers were given their own room to work in with Finance Minister Katy Gallagher coming in to answer the creators' questions.
Below is a wrap of some of the creator's posts from Budget Lock-Up:
Interested in a twice weekly snapshot on the latest happenings across the Australian Creator Economy? Click here and hit subscribe.
*Disclosure the author consults to Fabulate on communications / PR who were quoted in the AFR article.
