I almost fell off my $800 Aeron chair! Not an easy thing to do if you have ever sat in an Aeron. These are the facts:
OurBrisbane.com.au was established in 2001 to offer a quality online presence for the wonderful city of Brisbane by the then Lord mayor Jim Soorley, it was targeted at the tourism market mainly though it merged more into a local community portal in my opinion. It’s Search Engine Optimisation was poor, i know because they had presence in many markets that we are involved in and we consider them pretty low grade competition. However the extraordinary thing that has been revealed by the recent press release and a bit of detective work is that the site ate $55million in costs over 10 years !!!! In the last set of accounts the site turned over 2 million dollars in revenue but it’s running costs were over $4million and the original budget for the site’s creation was $18 million. Now i have heard a few crazy Brisbane Online Marketing stories but this beats the lot and shows exactly how bad Online Marketing can be executed if poor planning and execution are involved. The floods were cited as the reason to close the site down, COST SAVINGS………well yes if that site had been created in the private sector it would have cost less than $100,000 versus $18million and it’s running costs could 
easily have been brought below$250,000 versus over $4million per annum so absolutely close it down on cost savings grounds but having pumped $55 million into this white elephant don’t you think it deserves some sort of return eg rent it to a private concern to maximise it’s content,commercial attractiveness and most importantly SEO……the council receives a rent(with a $2 million turnover this could be $500,000 per annum) and the private concern inherits a $2million turnover to create a workable business model out of, with yes covenants that enforce quality guidelines and areas of content.
Just a thought,Campbell.
