By Rob Grabow

This report looks at efforts by governments around the world to use advertising to support local media. It was written in 2010 by five graduate students at Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs under the supervision of Professor Anya Schiffrin at the request of the Secretary of the Ministry of Information and Communications of the Royal Government of Bhutan.

The government of Bhutan is developing and implementing policies that will set the course for the media’s future and so the report looked at policies in Australia, Canada, India, South Africa, the United Kingdom and to a lesser extent countries in Latin America, the Caribbean, and central Asia and in order to provide some examples of what has worked in other countries and what hasn’t.

The writers provide case studies and analyses of public advertising programs and supplemented their desk research with interviews of experts and meetings in Bhutan’s capital (Thimphu) in the spring of 2011. The aim was to help clarify for the Bhutan government under what circumstances, and using what media, the Bhutanese government can and should advertise.