#59 Dr David Marshall’s Ph.D on government communications

Dr David Marshall has over 25 years’ experience in the media industry. David Marshall started as an on-air personality on local radio to eventually become General Manager of radio stations in Adelaide, Sydney and Canberra. He then transitioned to Chief Executive of the Canberra Tourism and Events Corporation, where he worked on major events for the ACT Government. David is now Director of Talkforce Media and Communications Strategists, where he works with government and private sector organisations around Australia in media training and strategic consultancy. In 2015, David completed his Ph.D. in Communication and Media Studies on Prime Minister John Howard’s media and communications operation.

In this episode, you’ll learn:
4:32 The foundation of the Howard Government’s communications strategy and how they stayed in power for so long
10:25 How to make a complex policy simple
15:42 Does politics undermine the ability to communicate effectively?
20:29 The most common challenge for government communicators when dealing with the media
27:32 Why presentations fall flat

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2 thoughts on “#59 Dr David Marshall’s Ph.D on government communications”

  1. David – those stats come from some pretty biased sources. Not that email isn’t important, when social media control the thickness of the pipe emails are the only way to guarantee that someone gets your message.

    1. The respondents to the surveys in the National Client Email Report 2015
      and the Email Marketing Industry Census 2016 are likely to be skewed
      slightly higher than the average, as you say. The way these
      organisations conducted the survey meant those interested in email
      marketing were more likely to respond. What we can note is email is
      working significantly higher than other sources, so even taking into
      account a slight bias, it is still a higher ROI than social media. These were
      more cited to show everyone the potential of email over social media
      (such as several marketers receiving an ROI of of over 70x). The report
      cited in the McKinsey article did not have such a bias. The results by
      Custora were “derived from data spanning 72 million customers from 86
      U.S. retailers across 14 industries. Acquisition channels were obtained
      via the “utm_medium” tag in Google Analytics.” Custora’s report summary can
      be found here: http://blog.custora.com/custora-content/uploads/downloads/2013/07/Custora_EcommSnapshotQ213.pdf
      And you’re right about email being the only way to guarantee your
      message gets out. This is why email has a much higher ROI. Facebook is
      too busy breaking their platform, so you can pay to fix it.

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