Smart50 rank: 19
Revenue: $3,200,000
Growth: 68.17%
Founders: Bec Brideson, 37; Miles Mainwaring, 41
Based: Victoria
Employees: 18
Industry: Communications
Website: www.venusadvertising.com.au
The majority of discretionary household spend is controlled by women, yet 90% of advertising directors are men. That means we have a disproportionate number of men telling women how and what to buy, says Bec Brideson. So she founded Venus, an advertising firm specialising in marketing to women.
The most challenging part of the business, which started in 2004, was educating the marketplace about the difference between the way men and women receive information, shop and respond to advertising cues.
"We learned that challenging the status quo takes time and belief in a vision, and that often the originator of an idea is a few years ahead of the curve. But the curve does come," she says.
Early on, clients took advantage of the enthusiastic start up. "We have suffered from ‘scope creep' with a horse racing club, which cost us any profit from the business, and they enjoyed over 70% more resources allocated to the business than they paid for. We learned to stick up for ourselves, value our knowledge and have faith in our skills," she says.
Brideson says that learning you can be better off without a client was a valuable lesson. "It makes sense to tie your remuneration to your client's profitability. We also learned that clients don't necessarily share the same view on remuneration."
She says the industry is changing rapidly. "We are moving from traditional media platforms into a new era of connection to consumers. Standard media options are from a past era, the consumers' appetite for information has changed," she says.
The next big move is to shift the business into a digital model that specialises in women, online communities and communication.
The Venus site is optimised for marketing to women, constantly updated. They regularly contribute to global blogs, have pieces published regularly, and a quarterly email alert is sent to a growing database of current and potential clients.
