Scottish Government marketing campaign and media spend: FOI release

Information requested

Confirmation of every Scottish pound spent by Scottish Government or invested in Scottish and UK cross cutting media, without qualification and any related conflicts of interest.

Response

The answer to your question follows.

All costs relating to Scottish Government marketing campaigns including media spend have been published annually since 2013 and can be found at the following link: www.gov.scot/collections/marketing-spend.  The spend for 2023 – 2024 will be published later this year.

Scottish Government marketing campaigns target the population of Scotland, so no media is bought across the rest of the UK. Brand Scotland marketing, which is funded by the Scottish Government, has run in England (primarily London), Ireland and Wales across various campaigns at a cost of £489,948.66 since 2020.

The Scottish Government Resourcing Team advertises external vacancies for the organisation, listingall vacancies on websites (Work for Scotland https://work-for-scotland.org/ and Civil Service Jobs https://www.civilservicejobs.service.gov.uk/).  Paid advertising is commissioned infrequently and on a case-by-case basis. Between 22 December 2022 and 14 May2024 a total of £16,342 was spent on paid media for recruitment advertising.

Beyond the information noted above, the Scottish Government does not directly provide investment or funding to media outlets, owners or channels. No funding beyond the spend noted above is provided to media outlets. The Scottish Government provides funding to Screen Scotland, which is part of Creative Scotland and operates as the dedicated public sector partnership for the film and television industry in Scotland. You may wish to contact Screen Scotland/Creative Scotland’s Government Relations Officer on communications@creativescotland.com, who may be able to advise further. You may also wish to contact media providers directly for further information regarding sources of funding.

About FOI

The Scottish Government is committed to publishing all information released in response to Freedom of Information requests. View all FOI responses at http://www.gov.scot/foi-responses.