Current status: Answered by Shona Robison on 20 November 2024
To ask the Scottish Government, further to the letter of 3 October 2024 from its Directorate for Culture and Major Events to the managing director at The Orcadian, how it defines "essential need" relative to paid-for media activity.
As part of the process to assess essential marketing expenditure for 2024-25, the use of paid-for-media activity is considered where it is required to help achieve specific policy outcomes. This can include a requirement to reach specific audiences or to ensure audiences are presented with messages a number of times to achieve the desired impact.
Marketing activity and campaigns that are without expenditure, such as no-cost approaches that have no external production, service or media costs, continue to support delivery of policy outcomes as part of the communications mix.