3 Challenges of Building Brands for Government Institutions

Over the past 12 months, I have been working closely with various stakeholders within The Indonesian Ministry of Education Research and Technology's Initiatives, to help them build a few brands for their products, organizations, and programs. And I will put concisely the journey into 3 main challenges that I personally face.

One; Understanding the difference between public and private sectors.

You might think that it's easy to build brands as long as you have the right vision and values. But guess what happens when you're dealing with:

Religious View & Biases that spreads over 17,508 islands — that each has its own interpretation from the tone of your voice, the color you're planning to use, and the message that you aim to portray.
Political Agenda, that might get in the way of media and public's focus, therefore this might affect your timeline very rapidly. If you're not fully aware of the political status, your timeline projection might slip.
Term of Office & Project Attachment — when working for the government, more often than not, you're working towards a goal that a certain representative tries to achieve. Knowing that the scale of the problem you're working on is bigger than your life's work, you need to understand how to build a brand that's scalable, and can be passed down as a legacy.

Two; The amount of audience.

Knowing that the contextual work I am doing for them is mostly Tech-related Brand Initiatives, and understanding the right research for the right brands, diving deeper about the type of audiences we're serving can be intimidating.

For example, almost everyone in Indonesia speaks the National Language; Bahasa Indonesia. But there are over 800 local dialects spread within the country. And with that itself, the way they perceive our key messaging for each and every brand we build has to be as generic as possible.

"It is less of who we speak to — it is more of how can the message be simplified as concise as possible, yet it doesn't lose its meaning."

Three; Imagining the desired outcome of the next generation of our education system.

With the vision driven by our ministry of education, research and technology alone, it is not enough for us to synthesize those into actionable key points and items. The challenge here is making sure that those visions are aligned with both the public, the government staff, and other stakeholders.

"I do find that when challenged with changes, a system that's based on legacy of our predecessors, it is much harder to encourage when the incentives are not seen as instant as buying peanuts."

So, those are the challenges I've had for the past 12 months. Do you have similar stories or challenges that you find during building brands?

3 Challenges of Building Brands for Government Institutions

One; Understanding the difference between public and private sectors.

Two; The amount of audience.

Three; Imagining the desired outcome of the next generation of our education system.

Reach out and see how we can exchange thoughts!

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