With estimates of the worth our bauxite North of $3 billion and REE North of $10 billion (give or take a few billion), our overall exposure and awareness is a "squeak" at best when we should be "roaring".
Some of us have held this view for a long time and always been shouted down. It's always been: no, you're wrong - wait for the resource estimate, or wait for an offtake agreement, or wait for the FS, or wait for all the planets to come into alignment or the latest, now that we have the FS, wait for funding....?
However, good marketers know that is not how you build a big community of followers who have a vested interest in a common success.
You want as many people to come along for the ride as possible so when you have a critical mass of followers, they become your oracles through word of mouth and personal recommendation to their friends and family and then the number of followers continues to build exponentially (like the spread of a virus) and with it, brand value.
However, even more than the many $ billions in value, we have a unique hook; the largest and greenest RE resource in the world.
This makes it so much easier to stand out and be noticed amongst the ever-increasing noise out there.
The fact that this still is not happening can only come down to one of or a combination of these 3 things:
a) For some reason, Mgmt want to keep this a secret. They don't want to let the world know?
b) They don't have the skills to do this. This is not particularly surprising as people in the mining industry typically just follow what everyone else does. If anyone has been to a mining "conference" you'll have seen all the sheep like behaviour at play. There'll be 70 odd booths, all carbon copies of each other with a few blown up diagrams of drilling and assay results with no point of difference, no real understanding of marketing whatsoever. Similarly, video presentations and ASX announcements all fall into the same predictable pattern of sameness.
The problem is that when you have a really good announcement (like our recent FS), unless you have a lot of followers, not many people see it because they're not aware of it so you're effectively trying to sow seed on fallow ground.
c) Mgmt don't have the courage to stand out and be different.
Now of course, this too will be shouted down. Mgmt supporters will point to Alwyn's statement about soon taking this to the world etc. However, whilst I'm really impressed by what Alwyn is saying and doing so far, I can't see anything in his track record to suggest that he is a great marketer capable of breaking the mould of sameness which seems to govern the mining company world (save for the few unconventional and very successful 'entrepreneurs' who have demonstrated the value of being different and standing out).
The good news is that Alwyn doesn't have to do to try to do it himself. He's the CEO and has other skills and responsibilities; what he does have to do though is to recognise that it needs to be done and then to find someone really good and capable of doing it.
Then, we would all benefit enormously. We would roar like a lion not squeak like a mouse!
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