The Voice of Region: c7even launches national study into what matters most outside of metro Australia.

The Voice of Region

Independent marketing and communications agency c7even has launched The Voice of Region, a national survey designed to uncover what people living and working across regional, rural and remote Australia really think.

The survey explores confidence in the future of regional communities, the biggest challenges people are facing, how they spend and make major decisions, and where they turn for news and information.

Founded in Tamworth by Adam Arndell and Sara Crowe, more than a decade ago, c7even has built its business living and working in regional Australia, delivering marketing and communications campaigns for global brands and government departments and agencies seeking to better understand and connect with regional audiences.

c7even Managing Partner Adam Arndell said the research would build on that experience by creating a fresh body of first-hand audience intelligence.

Regional Australia is often treated as a single audience, but that is one of the biggest mistakes organisations can make,” Arndell said.

“The economic pressures, community priorities, media habits and decision-making behaviours of people in regional Australia are not uniform. If organisations want to build trust and relevance, they need to understand those differences rather than rely on broad assumptions about what ‘regional’ means.”

“The Voice of Region is about creating a stronger evidence base for that understanding. It allows us to combine what we have learned through more than a decade of working across regional Australia with current, firsthand insight into what people are thinking, feeling and doing now.”

The findings will feed directly into The See Beyond Method, c7even’s proprietary audience intelligence system, which seeks to identify the gap between what organisations assume about their audiences and what those audiences actually believe and do.

For organisations, brands and government departments, the value is not the data alone. It is what you do with it,” Mr Arndell said. Arndell said.

“Better understanding should ultimately lead to better outcomes for regional communities. When organisations have a clearer picture of people’s priorities, behaviours and lived experience, they can make better informed decisions, develop products and services that more closely meet local needs and move beyond broad stereotypes about regional Australia.”

“For us, it’s also about placing greater value on the voices of regional, rural and remote Australians and ensuring those perspectives are better reflected in the decisions, strategies and communications designed to reach them,” Arndell said.

The Voice of Region 2026 is open to anyone who lives or works outside Australia’s capital cities and takes less than 10 minutes to complete. Each participant will go into the draw to win one of five $100 fuel cards.

The survey is open from 15 October, 2026 with findings to be released in a landmark report, The Voice of Region in early 2027.

The 2026 study will also establish a benchmark for an annual Regional Australia index, with its core set of questions repeated each year to track shifts in sentiment, priorities, behaviours and confidence over time.

Have your say: The Voice of Region 2026