Twelve months can make quite a difference! If you attended last year’s GAIN conference for marketing and communications professionals in the government contracting space, you may have noticed a distinct focus on percolating questions around artificial intelligence (AI) such as: How can marketing professionals leverage AI to do their jobs? To what extent will their government customers embrace AI tools themselves? And of course, will AI take jobs away from marketing professionals?
Fast forward to GAIN 2025, AI remained a topic of discussion but was not nearly as front and center as it was just a year ago. In fact, the first real deep-dive discussion about AI didn’t happen until just before noon when speakers from IT integrator Alpha Omega talked about how marketers and others can use AI tools to address the challenge of keeping up with the constant changes happening in government over the past several months.
Keeping Tabs on a Rapidly Changing Government Market
If there was a theme that emerged from the conference this year, it was just that: How marketing and communications professionals can operate effectively in a chaotic and often confusing government market. All politics aside, few would argue that the past 10 to 12 months haven’t been a time of uncertainty and concern for government contractors. Regardless of whether you view that uncertainty as a feature or a bug, it’s been undeniable.
At the conference, GovExec CEO Tim Hartman kicked things off with the sobering statistic that 300,000 decision makers have recently left government service, leaving contractors to scramble to rebuild trust in the face of this churn. Hartman described an environment in which contractors have been forced to walk into conversations with customers “flying blind” while facing a general decline in both familiarity and favorability when it comes to how government workers view their companies.
Using AI to Inform Marketing and Communications Strategies
Contractors are discovering that much of the government market information they traditionally relied upon to guide their marketing efforts has quickly gone “stale” in the age of cuts and changes wrought by the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE). Alpha Omega’s solution was applying AI tools to analyze information like government policy briefs, speeches and online media to discern patterns in government decision making to inform their strategy. As described by company speakers at GAIN, AI doesn’t necessarily find the needle in a haystack, but it can remove some of the hay to make a solution easier to identify.
Indeed, one takeaway from GAIN ‘25 was that today’s uncertainty might actually be viewed as an opportunity – not only to test new approaches such as AI applications but to double down on efforts to push out your company’s message. GovExec Editor Frank Konkel noted at the conference that publications like his have been frantically rushing to keep up with news emanating from the government – much of it not great for contractors (contract cancellations, government personnel reductions and a likely continuing resolution that will extend the uncertainty for several more months).
In light of all this “bad news,” Konkel said he and his staff are on the lookout for positive stories such as how agencies are improving their operations through the use of technology such as agentic AI. Konkel believes there is an opportunity for contractors to help reporters identify trends and developments that reflect positively on both their companies and their government customers. As he said recently on the W2 Communications “Gov & Beyond” podcast: “The one thing I will tell the contractor folks is – and some of these companies know who they are because they’ve pulled back their messaging – you do that at your own risk…If you don’t want to engage the press and if you don’t want to tell your story, [there are plenty of other companies] who will tell their own story.”
Growing Trust in Government Tech Media
Konkel’s invitation should be welcomed by contractors, especially in light of the presentation at GAIN ‘25 by Aaron Heffron, GovExec’s president of Research & Insights. Heffron gave an overview of the results of the GovExec Intelligence/Market Connections Media Engagement Study, which found a decline in government trust in information received from contractors and an increase in reliance on government trade press sources.
All of this underscores the importance of contractors sharing their stories with trusted media – whether through interviews with reporters, byline articles submitted by company thought leaders, sharing the results of your company’s research into relevant government trends and issues, or telling reporters about your government success stories and case studies.
The changes of the past several months have driven lots of eyeballs to government tech media outlets that are hungry for information. Contractors should seize the opportunity to tell their stories to the media in a way that is both compelling to reporters and reflects positively on their companies and its customers.