Caroline Berryman Offers Insight into Social Marketing in the Public Sector
This post is for the purposes of a college assessment.
Marketing can take extremely varied and multifaceted forms based on the industry’s nature and goals. In George Brown College’s Digital Marketing Seminar Series, Caroline explains how community engagement and customer goodwill are at the heart of marketing operations in the public sector.
An active member of the Canadian Association of Marketing Professionals, Caroline Berryman is a refined communications professionals and a keynote speaker for many organizations. She packs 13 years of experience in retail marketing and transitioned to social marketing in the public sector in 2016. Her overall experience arches over 25 years, making her a seasoned communications expert.
Caroline’s undertakings in the retail industry include work experience with ICG KeepRite Inc, St. Hubert restaurants and The Cadillac Fairview Corporation. In 2016, she commenced working for York Region’s transit branch.
The key learning from Caroline’s presentation was the importance of perceptions in public sector marketing. Shared values have increased enormously over the last many years: Climate change (clean energy, green energy) and human rights (women’s rights, Black & Indigenous Rights) are two good examples. Organizations must work harder to gain loyalty in this everchanging environment and marketers need to conduct regular perception mapping exercises to ensure they understand public discourse and sentiments.
While I do believe that the private sector has evolved to be more socially driven, marketing efforts in the public sector still require a highly conscious approach given that it is funded by the taxpayers. Indeed, I can see the differences in how Caroline’s public sector marketing efforts differ from my own marketing experience in the private sector. While private firms do increasingly act with a socially responsible approach, their budget, survival, and success is largely tied to the private stakeholders and customers of the organization. Thus, there is an inherent operational mechanism that drives public sector organizations to respond to the preferences and beliefs of people at large.
Caroline stressed on the importance of social marketing in the public sector. She makes a case for educational campaigns that influence positive behavioral changes, are community-centric, and sell ideas rather than products. These are arguably the three pillars that form the bedrock of any successful social marketing campaign.
Nonetheless, Caroline’s career insights suggest that private sector firms can adopt the social marketing tactics employed by public sector organizations with socially-optimized leadership, management and implementation structures. Successful, consumer-sensitive campaigning has the capacity to flourish when aligned with the organization's business goals.
