Policy reforms do not fail for lack of ambition. They fail because governments failed to explain them appropriately. This study examines how government marketing communication strategies shape policy acceptance among civil servants and policymakers in Nigeria, focusing on two fiscal interventions that tested the limits of official communication: the 2023 fuel subsidy removal and the Finance Act tax reforms. A convergent parallel mixed-methods design combined a survey of 320 federal civil servants with 15 purposive in-depth interviews. Pearson correlations and multiple linear regression processed the quantitative data; abductive thematic analysis using NVivo 12 structured the qualitative strand. Marketing communication quality (beta = .312, p < .001), government trust (beta = .287, p < .001), perceived fairness (beta = .241, p < .001), and reform awareness (beta = .198, p = .001) together accounted for 48.7% of the variance in policy acceptance (R-squared = .487). Five qualitative themes emerged: communication deficit and information asymmetry, trust erosion and institutional credibility, economic hardship framing versus reform necessity, demand for participatory policymaking, and social media as a double-edged sword. Social Marketing Communication Theory provides the primary theoretical lens, with Policy Framing Theory and Public Sector Brand Equity Theory serving as explanatory mechanisms. The study's central novel finding is a communication-trust nexus: communication quality does not merely predict acceptance on its own but generates institutional trust capital, which then independently amplifies that acceptance. These findings extend public sector marketing theory well beyond its Western empirical base and carry targeted, actionable implications for reform communication practice in Nigeria and comparable developing country settings.