EP#127 Back to Basics

This weeks episode of GovComms welcomes, Melanie Gibbons Communications Advisor at Elm Communications.

Melanie has over eighteen years’ experience in communications across government, not-for-profit and the private sector in Australia and the United Kingdom. Before moving into consultancy, Melanie worked in the Commonwealth Government for over a decade.

Your host, CEO and Founder of contentgroup, David Pembroke opens by asking Melanie how she found moving from working in government to the private sector; "I decided to... have a bit of a break from being a public servant. I never thought of myself as a very good public servant. I always tried to break the processes and break the mould a little bit, but now I've actually found that is a really good grounding for going back and working into government because I understand procurement, I understand the hierarchy. I understand what's like working with the minister's office."

Melanie shares her insight that going back to basics may be the next thing for government. She explains that "we've gotten quite caught up in social media and creativity and video production and animation and delivering all the big shiny things, which I think are amazing. But what we know is that trust in government has decreased and continues to decrease." In order to tackle this decline for citizens trust in government, Melanie suggests 'going back to those basic strategy skills, stopping and thinking about who your audience is, worrying less about the grand production that you could put on and going, "Well, where are my audience and what are they reading? What do they need to know and what's the information they need?".

Melanie's discussion with David closes with the topic of Human-centred design and how it is the at the core of good communication planning.

Discussed in this episode:

• Top tips to maximise trust in citizens
• The core of good communication
• Where to find good communicators

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