How can state agency reach out to an attract the younger elements of the population? How can directed communication initiatives contribute to rejuvenating the judiciary by attracting younger lay judges? And above all, how can we measure and monitor the effectiveness of this marketing?
The Swedish National Courts Administration is a state agency answerable to the Government and acting as a service organisation for the country’s courts. They have no authority to interfere in the courts’ judicial activities or judgements.
The Swedish National Courts Administration works on development issues and is also responsible for the overall coordination and common issues within the Swedish Judiciary.
To be selected as a lay judge is an honour and, even though the assignment is not in itself political, it is necessary to be nominated by a political party in order to be chosen. Lay judges are intended to serve as the people’s representative in courts and it is therefore necessary that they reflect the population as a whole. However, this is not the current situation; especially in terms of age.
The Government therefore tasked the Swedish National Courts Administration with carrying out an information campaign that, another other things, would contribute to lowering the average age of lay judges.
The challenges were many and the campaign’s goals were that:
Knowit was involved in the development of a responsive website for the 2014 campaign, to be further developed during 2015. All advertisements have pointed to the website, where the facts regarding the task of the lay judge are collected in the form of interviews, videos, statistics, FAQs and contact channels to local courts and nominating parties. The website also contains support to the nominating political parties in the form of local statistics, videos and informational material.
“At first we viewed the website as an online campaign but we have now discarded the word campaign and see it as a permanent website regarding the lay judge assignment. It has actually become the hub of our communication initiative and has worked very well as such. We have been able to build the campaign around the website and drive traffic more purposefully,” explains Andreas Fritz, campaign project manager at the Swedish National Courts Administration.
Measuring the activities of visitors to the website, their interactions with the content, the level of engagement and whether the conversion goal is met, is more important than counting the number of visitors to the website during the campaign. Transparent goals also make it easier to monitor the projects economy; what sources do visitors come from and which media exposure gave most in relation to invested budget?
“Something that has proved valuable is that we have extracted more information about visitors at a somewhat deeper level than simply counting the number of visits. It was interesting to be able to decide in advance the intended routes visitors should take through the website to reach the goal. The results were better than we expected! I was positively surprised about how engaged visitors proved to be, that so many fulfilled the goal of visiting 5 or more pages. Statistics were also able to confirm that we made the correct choice of channels in our marketing; something that was important to us,” says Andreas.
Transparent goals and carefully selected strategies proved to be a recipe for success. Follow ups to the campaign show that the average age of lay jurors has decreased somewhat and that the percent of those selected who fall into the 18-44 age group has increased from 21-23%.
Even if this is not a revolutionary rejuvenation to the ranks of lay jurors, it is at least a step in the right direction. The Swedish National Courts Administration are of the opinion that long-term communication initiatives are required to achieve the desired injection of fresh blood and the work is set to continue until the next election in 2019.
“I can’t say that I’m disappointed. On the contrary, I’m pleased by the results given the preconditions. Collaboration with Knowit has worked splendidly. They are responsive to our needs as a government agency and have a good understanding of how our organisation functions. At the same time, Knowit have contributed solutions to our problems that we ourselves might not have been capable of,” says Andreas.
Communication initiatives have had a great deal of impact and reached the intended target groups. A survey reveals that of those selected as new lay judges, 61% had visited blinämndeman.se and, of those, 86% responded that the website had contributed to their interest in becoming a lay judge.
´The majority of visitors found their way to the website via adverts, primarily in local newspapers, although Facebook proved to be in a class of its own with regard to cost-efficient advertising.
Photograph: Patrik Svedberg
