Social marketing

Not to be confused with societal marketing or social media marketing.

Social marketing is the systematic application of marketing along with other concepts and techniques to achieve specific behavioral goals for a social good. Social marketing can be applied to promote, for example, merit goods, make the society avoid demerit goods and thus to promote that considers society's well being as a whole. This may include asking people not to smoke in public areas, for example, ask them to use seat belts, prompting to make them follow speed limits.

Although 'social marketing' is sometimes seen only as using standard commercial marketing practices to achieve non-commercial goals, this is an over-simplification.

The primary aim of 'social marketing' is 'social good', while in 'commercial marketing' the aim is primarily 'financial'. This does not mean that commercial marketers can not contribute to achievement of social good.

Increasingly, social marketing is being described as having 'two parents' - a 'social parent' = social sciences and social policy, and a 'marketing parent' = commercial and public sector marketing approaches.

Beginning in the 1970s, it has in the last decade matured into a much more integrative and inclusive discipline that draws on the full range of social sciences and social policy approaches as well as marketing.

Applications of social marketing

Health promotion campaigns in the late 1980s began applying social marketing in practice. Notable early developments took place in Australia. These included the Victoria Cancer Council developing its anti-tobacco campaign "Quit" (1988), and "SunSmart" (1988), its campaign against skin cancer which had the slogan Slip! Slop! Slap!.

WorkSafe Victoria, a state-run Occupational Health and Safety organization in Australia has used social marketing as a driver in its attempts to reduce the social and human impact of workplace safety failings. In 2006, it ran 'Homecomings', a popular campaign that was later adopted in New South Wales, Queensland and Western Australia, and named the 2007 Australian Marketing Institute Marketing Program of the Year

DanceSafe followed the ideas of social marketing in its communication practices.

On a wider front, by 2007, Government in the United Kingdom announced the development of its first social marketing strategy for all aspects of health.

Two other public health applications include the CDC's CDCynergy training and software application, and SMART (Social Marketing and Assessment Response Tool).

Social marketing theory and practice has been progressed in several countries such as the U.S, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and the UK, and in the latter a number of key Government policy papers have adopted a strategic social marketing approach. Publications such as 'Choosing Health' in 2004, 'It's our health!' in 2006; and 'Health Challenge England' in 2006, all represent steps to achieve both a strategic and operational use of social marketing. In India, especially in Kerala, AIDS controlling programmes are largely using social marketing and social workers are largely working for it. Most of the social workers are professionally trained for this particular task.

Types of social marketing

Using the benefits and of doing 'social good' to secure and maintain customer engagement. In 'social marketing' the distinguishing feature is therefore its 'primary' focus on 'social good', and it is not a secondary outcome. Not all public sector and not-for-profit marketing is social marketing.

Public sector bodies can use standard marketing approaches to improve the promotion of their relevant services and organizational aims, this can be very important, but should not be confused with 'social marketing' where the focus in on achieving specific behavioural goals with specific audiences in relation to different topics relevant to social good (eg: health, sustainability, recycling, etc).

As the dividing lines are rarely clear it is important not to confuse social marketing with commercial marketing.

A commercial marketer selling a product may only seek to influence a buyer to make a product purchase.

Social marketers, dealing with goals such as reducing cigarette smoking or encouraging condom use, have more difficult goals: to make potentially difficult and long-term behavioral change in target populations.

It is sometimes felt that social marketing is restricted to a particular spectrum of client -- the non-profit organization, the health services group, the government agency.

These often are the clients of social marketing agencies, but the goal of inducing social change is not restricted to governmental or non-profit charitable organizations; it may be argued that corporate public relations efforts such as funding for the arts are an example of social marketing.

Social marketing should not be confused with the Societal Marketing Concept which was a forerunner of sustainable marketing in integrating issues of social responsibility into commercial marketing strategies. In contrast to that, social marketing uses commercial marketing theories, tools and techniques to social issues.

Social marketing applies a “customer oriented” approach and uses the concepts and tools used by commercial marketers in pursuit of social goals like Anti-Smoking-Campaigns or fund raising for NGOs.

Social marketing confusion

In 2006, Jupitermedia announced its "Social Marketing" service, with which it aims to enable website owners to profit from social media. Despite protests from the social marketing communities over the hijacking of the term, Jupiter decided to stick with the name. However, Jupiter's approach is more correctly (and commonly) referred to as social media optimization.

History of social marketing

Social marketing began as a formal discipline in 1971, with the publication of "Social Marketing: An Approach to Planned Social Change" in the Journal of Marketing by marketing experts Philip Kotler and Gerald Zaltman.

Craig Lefebvre and June Flora introduced social marketing to the public health community in 1988 where it has been most widely used and explored. They noted that there was a need for 'large scale, broad-based, behavior change focused programs' to improve public health (the community wide prevention of cardiovascular diseases in their respective projects), and outlined eight essential components of social marketing that still hold today. They are:

1. A consumer orientation to realize organizational (social) goals
2. An emphasis on the voluntary exchanges of goods and services between providers and consumers
3. Research in audience analysis and segmentation strategies
4. The use of formative research in product and message design and the pretesting of these materials
5. An analysis of distribution (or communication) channels
6. Use of the marketing mix - utilizing and blending product, price, place and promotion characteristics in intervention planning and implementation
7. A process tracking system with both integrative and control functions
8. A management process that involves problem analysis, planning, implementation and feedback functions

Speaking of what they termed "social change campaigns," Kotler and Roberto introduced the subject by writing, “A social change campaign is an organized effort conducted by one group (the change agent) which attempts to persuade others (the target adopters) to accept, modify, or abandon certain ideas, attitudes, practices or behavior." Their 1989 text was updated in 2002 by Philip Kotler, Ned Roberto and Nancy Lee.

In recent years there as has been an important development to distinguish between 'strategic social marketing' and 'operational social marketing'.

Much of the literature and case examples focus on 'operational social marketing', using it to achieve specific behavioural goals in relation to different audiences and topics. However there has been increasing efforts to ensure social marketing goes 'upstream' and is used much more strategically to inform both 'policy formulation' and 'strategy development'.

Here the focus is less on specific audience and topic work but uses strong customer understanding and insight to inform and guide effective policy and strategy development.

See also

Main article: List of topics related to public relations and propaganda

• Development communication
• Agenda-setting theory
• Health promotion
• Jay Winsten
• Financial literacy
• Propaganda

Further reading

• Andreasen, Alan R. (1995). Marketing Social Change: Changing Behavior to Promote Health, Social Development, and the Environment. Jossey-Bass. ISBN 0-7879-0137-7. {{cite book}}: Unknown parameter |month= ignored (help)
• Weinreich, Nedra Kline (1999). Hands-On Social Marketing: A Step-by-Step Guide. Sage Publications. ISBN 0-7619-0867-6. {{cite book}}: Unknown parameter |month= ignored (help)
• Kaplan Andreas M., Haenlein Michael (2009) The increasing importance of public marketing: Explanations, applications and limits of marketing within public administration, European Management Journal.
• McKenzie-Mohr, Doug. Fostering Sustainable Behavior: An Introduction to Community-Based Social Marketing. {{cite book}}: Unknown parameter |coauthors= ignored (|author= suggested) (help)
• Hastings, Gerard (2007). Social Marketing - Why Should the Devil Have All the Best Tunes?. Butterworth-Heinemann. ISBN 0-7506-8350-3. {{cite book}}: Unknown parameter |month= ignored (help)

External links

• National Center for Health Marketing at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC)
• On Social Marketing and Social Change by Dr. R. Craig Lefebvre
• Social Marketing Institute (SMI) at Georgetown University
• PSI Population Services International - A nonprofit social marketing organization
• National Social Marketing Centre - a collaboration between the UK Department of Health and the National Consumer Council.
• Institute for Social Marketing at the University of Stirling
• The Advertising Industry's Commitment to Social Responsibility and Children's Health and Wellness - a 2005 symposium by the Advertising Educational Foundation
• Social Marketing Quarterly - an academic journal on social marketing