Why should I?

The Information and Advertising Campaign Planning Guidelines require all agencies falling under the Financial Management and Accountability Act 1997 to make use of the australia.gov.au address in campaigns of over $250,000. The web address for government advertising campaigns must be australia.gov.au followed by the campaign name, for example australia.gov.au/campaignname.

The campaignname suffix should clearly identify the individual campaign. You can use its ‘call to action’, for example measureup.

Advertisements using australia.gov.au must feature the website address: australia.gov.au/campaignname.

Exemptions

Our program/initiative is a special situation. How do we get an exemption for this requirement?

In exceptional circumstances an exemption from using australia.gov.au can be sought by writing to the Special Minister of State. Contact the Australian Government Information Office (AGIMO), in the first instance, to discuss the basis and rationale for the proposed exemption by phoning (02) 6215 1653.

How do I?

Does my agency still have to establish its own website and web content for each program/initiative?

Yes. The australia.gov.au address assigned to you is not a website. It redirects users to your campaign web content. You still need to develop and host your own content.

You may host the content on a sub domain or sub directory of one of your agency’s existing websites. If absolutely necessary, you can purchase a .gov.au domain name for your website. In all cases, the campaign web address for approved advertising must be australia.gov.au/campaignname. All advertising costs on australia.gov.au are managed by Department of Finance and Deregulation (Finance).

How do we register our program/initiative with the Finance australia.gov.au team?

The first thing to do is contact the Finance Service Management team, who are responsible for australia.gov.au, on (02) 6215 2638 or email australia.gov@finance.gov.au

You will need to provide the:

• primary contacts at your agency, both for content and technical matters
• proposed redirection address and the actual website address to be used
• proposed text and images for use on the front page of australia.gov.au
• preferred start date and start time of launch of proposed campaign on australia.gov.au site

The proposed text should feature an easily understood ‘call to action’ from your program or initiative. Speak to your target audience in an active voice, for example:

Raise your awareness of healthy lifestyle choices and the links between lifestyle behaviours and the risk of chronic disease.

Not

Your awareness of healthy lifestyle choices and the links between lifestyle behaviours and the risk of chronic disease should be raised.

You can usually find useful information for the text on the home page of your campaign website or in your advertising material.

Don’t use the campaign title in the proposed text.

The campaign title will appear as a linked heading immediately above the text, with an extra link immediately under the text. (See the Government Initiatives section on the home page of www.australia.gov.au for examples).

Include the numbers of your help lines, if there are any.

Your campaign title can be up to 25 characters long. Your preferred text should be no longer than 100 characters.

You should use images from the campaign material as a visual link to the campaign advertising.

Provide your graphics as a 66 x 66 pixel image, or an image Finance can manipulate to this size. Any text in these images must still be legible at 66 x 66 pixels. They can be in .gif, .jpg or .png format.

The text and images used will be based on what you provide, but the size, exact content and placement of the entry will be at the discretion of Finance and subject to australia.gov.au style conventions.

What will Finance do with this information?

When we receive your information, Finance will establish the redirection address. The australia.gov.au team will also contact the Communications Advice Branch to confirm approval of your campaign, and its start and end dates.

Finance will promote your initiative on the front page of australia.gov.au for the length of its scheduled advertising period. The text and images will be based on what you provide, but the size, exact content and placement of the entry will be at Finance’s discretion.

When the advertising period ends the redirection address will remain live so future site visitors can still access it.

Can you provide information about the number of people visiting our redirection address?

Finance can provide data on the number of users who have navigated to the redirection address directly, and on the number of users who have clicked the link on the front page of australia.gov.au during the advertising period. We do not do this automatically: you will have to request the information.

Subjects:

• government initiatives
• campaigns
• Australian Government Central Advertising System
• australia.gov.au