The government has frozen spending on advertising and marketing, and will cut staff at the COI by 40%. According to Marketing Week, “Those responsible for the Government’s marketing and advertising freeze are more concerned with ‘getting to the right number’ and less concerned with trying to understand the value of marketing”.

What is the correct role of marketing in government? What do we even mean by government marketing anyway?  Is government really anything but marketing?

Since we don’t have any major government business here at MZ, it’s probably safe for me to say that a cut in government advertising is probably a good thing. Wearing my voter’s hat, I have a sneaky suspicion that not all government advertising is entirely necessary. Wearing my professional hat (which is far less fetching, but more pointy), I can’t believe that it’s particularly cost-efficient.

Is TV, for example, the best place to spend a multi-million dollar budget to reduce domestic abuse? (I’m not saying it’s not – I’d need to see the brief before forming a definitive opinion.  I’m just asking the question. Your thoughts are most welcome.)

Notwithstanding thorny issues of funding and access, it’s fine for political parties to advertise to get themselves elected. But once a party wins government, the voters are not prospects any more – they’re customers. So a CRM approach would be more appropriate. And given that we know it costs 7-10 times more to acquire a new customer than it does to retain an existing one, CRM would also be more cost-efficient.

And the best CRM tools are effective personal service and, increasingly, intelligent use of social media. Above the line advertising is not particularly useful.  I’m not sure what the new government’s plans are for these activities, but whatever they are, they should be considered whenever anyone talks of ‘government marketing’.

Clearly, there are some areas where government advertising is necessary. Recruitment is an obvious example. And when there’s a change in the law or a public health issue that needs to be communicated quickly to a mass audience, don’t we have public service announcements for that? (Or do these not exist any more…?)

In any event, there does seem to be a lot of money spent on telling us how we ought to behave. It’s hard to argue with the sentiment – we should all behave nicely. But the medium is problematic. When an unfriendly foreign regime uses advertising techniques to tell its population how to behave, we call it propaganda.

So my question is this: is it a good or a bad thing that the government is cutting the propaganda budget?

Simon is still trying to figure out whether or not he agrees with Nick

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1. david sloly says:

   27 August, 2010 at 10:38 am

   most public messages pushed by government in the last 5 years appear to be in response to scaremongering by the press. wouldn’t it be amazing if they delivered relevant information, to the right people, through the most appropriate channel. That would be more like marketing and less like PR.

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