During an interactive session on the second and final day of the International Government Communication Forum, Mike Kujawski, Managing Partner at Canada’s Centre of Excellence for Public Sector Marketing, emphasised the need for government communication departments to adapt to changing technologies. In tandem, he said, they need to hire trained people who could appropriately manage and react to these technologies’ repercussions.

Kujawski opened the session by encouraging government communication workers to grasp how vital marketing is to the government communication process. “Marketing is not often referenced in the public sector as much as it is in the private sector, but it should be. Marketing is essentially the planning process of creating, communicating, delivering and exchanging to create for your audience,” he pointed out.  “Communications is separate, in that it is only one part of marketing – it’s the process where the final message is delivered.”

Kujawski added that the cost of not undergoing efficient marketing is high, and could result in government communication departments not being able to effect long-term behavioural change that benefit both society and target audiences. “This marketing must be genuine, and created for the long-term good of citizens,” he added.

Social media is transforming and governments must adapt

Kajawski pressed on the fact that technology is changing rapidly, mentioning that while the airline industry took 64 years to reach 50 million users, Facebook took just four years, and ‘Pokemon Go’ only 19 days. “Technology will grow even faster in the next two years, and governments must be ready,” he said.

One of the aspects that governments needed to move away from was seeing social media as separate from marketing and communication strategies. “Fifty-five per cent of the global population has Internet access, while 40% use a smartphone,” he said. “It is vital that social media become an active part of marketing and communications. Social media teams should not be seen as separate.”

The public is moving to dark social media

Kajawski urged government communication departments to understand that traditional social media is changing. “People are moving away from public platforms to smaller, closer groups – as in WhatsApp, or WeChat. Governments and organisations can’t analyse these. With that in mind, you might have a campaign that is doing well but doesn’t look like it on traditional social media, only because people are sharing and talking about it in dark social media, or private social media.”

Facebook’s potential move to amalgamate Facebook Messenger, Instagram and WhatsApp was illustrative of the tech giant’s understanding of this move, Kajawski said. “They’re moving towards dark social media because they see it’s where people are going,” he added.

Understanding technology’s new challenges

The Canadian marketing guru said that the democratisation of social media meant that it presented new challenges, and that governments had a role to play in recognising these and acting on them before they happened, or at least as soon as possible afterwards.

One of these challenges is personal digital footprints, especially when these were negative. “When people share emotional content, and react to emotional content, the benefits can be positive, but the negative aspects could ruin lives forever. Digital footprints last forever. People perceive media in a certain way, and it’s important that governments educate citizens on digital literacy so that they understand that what they see online might not be the truth, and that technology can manipulate media content. People already react emotionally to fake news, fake images and so on. As fake media gets more sophisticated, this could spell trouble for governments, unless they train citizens to recognise it. Their teams also need to recognise truth from untruth.”

Disinformation, misinformation and malinformation

Of critical importance to governments was understanding the difference between disinformation and misinformation, and bringing them into their communications strategies, Kajawski said. “Misinformation is when someone shares the wrong information innocently and by accident. This needs to be addressed immediately before long-term damage is done,” he explained. “Disinformation is when people share information with malicious intent. This must be addressed straight away too, but government communication teams also need to understand who spread the information, from where, and why. These are two extremely vital terms and they should be incorporated into government communication strategies so employees can learn how to handle them,” he added.

Findability is key

Kajawski stressed that findability is vital to effective behavioural change. “Many website and social media platform visitors find pages through search engines. With this in mind, knowing what your audience is searching for is vital because you can target your messages around those searches. These searches are easily discoverable. If you’re creating messages around what people are already actively searching for, you’re more likely to effect behavioural change.”

The eighth edition of IGCF was held under the theme ‘Behavioural Change Towards Human Development’ and was organised by the International Government Communication Centre (IGCC), an SGMB subsidiary. It concluded on Thursday.