Northern Services Courier
209/440 Flinders Street,
Townsville, 4810
PO Box 1498,
Townsville, 4810

Ph: 61 07 4772 2466
Fax: 61 07 4772 2797

Email: co@nscnews.com

The Northern Services Courier is a unique publication servicing the tight-knit defence community in the North of Australia. It is a community with a disproportionately large disposable income since the advent of extended overseas tours of duty in war zones for Australian troops. The Northern Services Courier is the ONLY publication trusted and welcomed through the gates of Australia’s largest barracks: Lavarack Barracks. It is a relationship that has been growing for almost 20 years.

Townsville hosts the country’s main ready deployment force, so many of the city’s soldiers spend up to six months of the year overseas in places like Timor-Leste, Iraq and Afghanistan. When they return, they have a sizeable nest egg as a consequence of the extra pay earned in battle zones. Typically, after a six-month tour of duty overseas, soldiers get as much as two months “downtime”. They work hard – and they play hard.

In the New Year, the paper will be available online to EVERY Australian soldier no matter where they are in the world. Virtually every soldier takes a laptop with them on duty overseas. And those few that don’t have access to broadband-connected computers in “welfare cells” within their unit compound. The paper will be delivered to them in EXACTLY the same form as the hardcopy printed edition except that it appears on their computer screen and is delivered literally seconds after it is produced. Those soldiers posted near a “print on demand” facility can also ask for an A4-size copy of the paper as soon as it is available online. It is yet another means by which the serving soldier can stay in touch with home. If he sees something for the house, the car or his hobby advertised in the paper he would like to be able to buy, it is a simple matter for him to email his wife pointing out the item or advertisement and she can look it up in her copy as well.

NSC has also introduced a new concept in newspaper promotions: Digger Dollars and it is already proving very popular. Each month, the name of a serving ADF member is drawn at random, and published somewhere in the paper followed by a special code. The winner has a week to claim his prize (currently $500) or it jackpots to the next edition. We ran two of these competitions in the first edition and both prizes were claimed by 3pm on the day of publication. Both winners were tipped off by several friends so there is a lot of talk about the competitions and the paper all over the bases in the North.

It is a vehicle you should consider for your business.