Xero launches new national advertising campaign to deal with the financial elephant in the room

Melbourne, March 9, 2016 — Xero, the leading cloud for small businesses, has launched phase one of its widest-reaching advertising campaign to date, in conjunction with APN News & Media (APN) companies including Emotive, Australian Radio Network (ARN) and Adshel.

The campaign addresses the burden that many small businesses have to deal with: the piles of paper receipts and invoices that often fill desks, back offices, and shoeboxes. Just like Xero has made accounting beautiful, the campaign turns paper receipts and invoices into objects of beauty: ‘Xerogami’.

Tapping into the combined power of the APN’s assets, the Xerogami campaign sees Emotive join forces with Adshel and ARN to create a truly integrated strategy for Xero across online video, radio and OOH that aims to entertain, educate and engage the core Xero audience.

Hero video content created by Emotive speaks directly to the target audience by emphasising the autonomy, power and freedom Xero affords small business owners, leveraging the wide reach of ARN and Adshel to accelerate distribution.

“Just like an idiom transforms the meaning of words, Xero has transformed the finances of 600,000 small businesses around the world into beautiful accounting,” said Trent Innes, Managing Director of Xero . “With Emotive, ARN and Adshel we created a campaign that used popular idioms and the concept of receipt origami, to make something beautiful out of the often chaotic paper-based accounting systems that many Australian businesses continue to use today.”

Simon Joyce, CEO of Emotive, said: “Emotive led the core strategy and hero content creation for this campaign. Our challenge was to create an engaging content idea that would demonstrate how business finances could really be something insightful. Using a simple visual mechanic we were able to craft a content-first strategy that helped land the message and works seamlessly across social video, radio and outdoor.”

APN CEO Ciaran Davis said: “The audience ARN and Adshel provides advertisers is unrivalled in power, combination and reach. When you overlay this with the content expertise and creativity by Emotive, you can see the sort of effectiveness APN assets can offer. The collaboration between Xero, Emotive, ARN and Adshel has led to this unique and high-impact campaign that delivers ease to business owners nationwide.”

The Xerogami campaign is accompanied by a number of activities from Xero’s retained PR agency Sling & Stone, to show how they can make their finances more efficient through cloud accounting.

Resources

Xerogami Media Kit

Xero In Video: It’s time to deal with the financial elephant in the room

Credits

Creative:

Xero -

Shane Hurt - Design Lead

Clare Ralston – Producer

David Brand – Copywriter

Steve Benn – Designer

Ben Erskine – Partner Marketing Manager

James O'Connell-Cooper – Direct Marketing Manager

Ross Purdy – Project Manager

Emotive - Creative & Production lead

Mark Harris – Agency Creative Director

Hayley-Ritz Pelling – Agency Producer

Simon Robson – Creative Director

Kyra Bartley – Director

Jacqui Hudson – Lead Paper Artist

Outdoor: Adshel

Radio: ARN

PR: Sling & Stone

Media contact

Klara Kalocsay

Sling & Stone [email protected]

+61 414 401 994

About Xero

Xero is beautiful, easy •to •use online accounting software for small businesses and their advisors. The company has over 600,000 subscribers in more than 180 countries. Xero boasts more than 500 third- •party integrations, and was ranked No. 1 by Forbes as the World's Most Innovative Growth Company in 2014 and 2015.

About Emotive

Emotive is an independent social video content marketing business that brings a new model to the content marketing landscape. Helping marketers inject emotion into content creation, Emotive specialises in the creation of social video content and events in entertainment culture. Uniquely, Emotive is able to offer its clients a ‘right audience’ guarantee by pinpointing the ideal consumer for the content, wherever they may be. Adding to Emotive’s innovative amplification model is a partnership with APN News & Media, which includes ARN and Adshel, giving Emotive special access to a huge weekly audience to further boost content distribution. Check out Emotive’s recent work HERE.

About APN News & Media

APN News & Media is a media, entertainment and technology company with diverse assets in Australia, and . In Australia, APN owns leading radio business Australian Radio Network (ARN) – home to the KIIS and Pure Gold networks; as well as regional media company Australian Regional Media (ARM).

APN also owns NZME, New Zealand’s premier media and entertainment company which operates some of the country’s leading publishing, radio and eCommerce brands including The New Zealand Herald, NewstalkZB and GrabOne.

APN’s Hong Kong business Cody specialises in outdoor billboard advertising.

APN also has 50% ownership of Australian and New Zealand outdoor advertising company, Adshel.

About Adshel

As a leading out-of-home media company, Adshel allows advertisers to connect, engage and influence commuters where they work, live, shop and play across Australia and New Zealand. Formed in 1997 as a joint venture between APN News & Media and Clear Channel, it is now one of the most recognised names in street furniture and a key player in the out-of-home media market reaching 92% of Australia 68 times a fortnight.

Looking ahead, Adshel will continue to lead the market in innovation and insights with an ongoing digital expansion across Australia and New Zealand coupled with data and geo-targeting solutions, offering advertisers new ways to reach, engage and impact their audience.

For more information, visit www.adshel.com.au

About ARN

ARN is one of the leading broadcasters in the country with ownership or investments in 12 radio stations nationwide. Its brands KIIS, Pure Gold, iHeartRadio, and The Edge96.ONE entertain and influence over four million listeners across Australia.

In 2014 KIIS 1065 was launched with Kyle & Jackie O in and immediately went to #1FM. In 2015 the KIIS network launched nationally with KIIS 101.1 and now incorporates the Sydney and stations, ’s Mix102.3, ’s #1 97.3FM and ’s 96FM, all with Dave ‘Hughesy’ Hughes & Kate Langbroek in national Drive.

ARN also launched iHeartRadio, the world’s fastest growing digital service, to the Australian market in 2013 and the platform has had over 500,000 downloads. iHeartRadio is a free, all-in-one digital radio service and live events platform that lets audiences listen to their favourite live stations across Australia, New Zealand and the USA. Listeners can also create commercial-free custom stations, and find the best audio casts to create personalised daily custom talk stations.

ARN is an APN News & Media company.