Pretoria – The Government Communication and Information System’s (GCIS) Government Segmentation Model will help communicators better understand their target audiences and ensure that the intended messages reach home.
This is according to GCIS Acting Director-General, Donald Liphoko, who was speaking at the launch of the Government Segmentation Model (GSM) on Thursday.
He said the changing communications environment required communicators to revisit the methodologies used to reach South Africans.
He said in the campaigns run by GCIS, one of the flaws identified was not being able to accurately segment the audiences.
“We talk about South Africa being a diverse country but it is not reflected in our approach, in the methodologies that we are using to target the public.
“We’ve been looking at this for several years now and we’ve been trying to understand how we could build a toolkit that will enable communicators to appropriately speak to the audience they need to target,” added Liphoko.
While communicators relied on the Living Standards Measure (LSM) model previously, the time had come to revise this approach.
“We’ve come to the point now where it is important that we assess the LSM model. On its own, is it sufficient for the work that we do?”
He noted that the LSM model did not give sufficient guidance on the impact of investment in education, health, fighting crime, job creation and rural communities over the past two decades.
The GMS enables communicators to better understand citizens, Liphoko said.
“This segmentation model divides the population into a handful of audience groups and it starts to give us a more precise sense of who we are talking to…
“These five segments give us the opportunity to choose which communication channels are likely to be the most effective in reaching the intended audiences and they go further because the segmentation allows us to construct messaging that is individualised, and speaks to the interests, the abilities and motivation of people.”
Chief Director: Policy and Research, Tasneem Carrim, explained that the GMS was a result of comprehensive research around understanding the behaviour, aspirations and concerns of South African citizens defined through five population segments.
She said one of the objectives is to understand audiences better so that government communication campaigns have better success.
Using the segmentation model, communicators can tailor their messages for each segment and even target them through their preferred message platforms, Carrim added. – SAnews.gov.za
