Social Marketing

(adapted from materials by the Center for Advanced Studies in Nutrition and Social Marketing)

What is Social Marketing?

“the design, implementation, and control of programs seeking to increase the acceptability of a social idea or practice in a target group(s)." (Kotler 1975)
“the application of commercial marketing technologies to the analysis, planning, execution, and evaluation of programs designed to influence the voluntary behavior of target audiences in order to improve their personal welfare and that of their society.” (Andreasen 1995)

The “social marketing” label is typically applied to causes judged by persons in positions of power and authority to be beneficial to both individuals and society.
Unlike commercial marketing, the agent of change does not profit financially from a campaign’s success.
The ultimate goal is to change behaviors believed to place the individual or community at risk, not simply increase awareness or alter attitudes.
The optimal social marketing campaign is tailored to the unique perspective, needs, and experiences of the target audience, hopefully with input from representative members of this group.
Social marketing strives to create conditions in the social structure that facilitate the behavioral changes promoted.
Most fundamentally, however, is reliance upon commercial marketing concepts. It is often said that there is poetic justice in using the very marketing concepts employed by such “disease peddlers” as the tobacco and fast food industries to combat their negative influences.

Historic Social Marketing Campaigns - The Ad Council

What Concepts are used in Social Marketing Campaigns?

The Five P’s:

The marketing concepts employed in information campaigns based upon the social marketing approach are numerous. The “5Ps” are perhaps the best known among these. The purpose of the 5Ps is to develop a message strategy that offers consumers the optimal “marketing mix” of product, price, place, promotion, and positioning. When applied to social marketing, these concepts can be conceived of as follows:

Product: the behavior or idea that the campaign planners would like the targeted individuals (a.k.a., “consumers”) to adopt. The product can be an action (e.g., performing breast self-examinations regularly) or material item (e.g., fat-free dairy products)
Price: the costs associated with “buying” the product. Costs can involve sacrifices related to psychological well being (e.g., increased anxiety), sociality (e.g., possibility of ostracism), economics (e.g., financial sacrifice), or time (e.g., inconvenience).
Place: the distribution channels used to make the product available to target audiences. When the product is a physical item, it must be easily obtainable by consumers. When it is an idea, it must be “socially available” – supported within the consumer’s social sphere. The target audience must be informed of where, when, and how it can obtain the social marketing product(s). An important placement issue is the competition for finite space in the marketplace for food products, healthy and otherwise.
Promotion: the efforts taken to ensure that the target audience is aware of the campaign. These publicity efforts should be designed to cultivate positive attitudes and intentions regarding the product that pave the way for behavior change.
Positioning: the product must be positioned in such a way as to maximize benefits and minimize costs. “Positioning” is a psychological construct that involves the location of the product relative to other products and activities with which it competes. For instance, physical activity could be repositioned as a form of relaxation, not exercise. Serving low-fat meals to one’s family could be positioned as an act of love.

Social Marketing Vs. Product Marketing

The selling of healthier behaviors and the selling of products have much in common. Even so, neither
health nor brotherhood can be sold like soap. Practitioners remind us that there are significant
differences between social and product marketing. These differences include the following:

Promoted Change: Social marketing campaigns typically seek to change behaviors. Product marketing can strive for behavioral change, but is just as likely to attempt to activate a favorable disposition. In addition, social marketing can also seek environmental and systems change, something that product marketing rarely attempts to accomplish.
Expectations: Social marketers strive to change the behaviors of a large percentage of the target audience. Product marketers are usually delighted with small increases in market share.
Salience: The attitudes and behaviors targeted by social marketers are often fundamental to the people targeted; product marketing more often than not targets less involving behaviors. As such, social marketers must often overcome attitudes and values that are central to the person’s identity. Product marketers typically deal with self-constructs that are more peripheral to the person’s identity.
Certainty of Gratification: Social marketers promise only an increased probability that benefits (e.g., a lower risk of cancer) will come to the person who adopts recommended changes. It cannot be proven with certainty that the behavior change advocated will produce a particular outcome. In contrast, product marketers usually offer unequivocal gratifications, and may even provide a guarantee that benefits promised will result. The causal link between the purchase and these satisfactions is seldom in doubt.
Timing of Gratification: It may take months or years for the benefits offered in social marketing campaigns to result. Indeed, many of the benefits sold are preventive in nature, resulting in the absence of an event (e.g., the non-development of cardiovascular disease). Product marketers offer benefits that are realized soon or immediately after purchase of the product.
Presentation: Social marketers must strive for an “informational tone” and avoid overselling the benefits of recommended changes. With product marketing, overselling, and even some deception, may be accepted by consumers.
Trust: Greater trustworthiness is typically attributed to the sponsors of a social marketing campaign than to the sponsors of product marketers. This trust advantage may be due to the belief that social marketers have no vested interest or other hidden motive, other than the desire to do good. Thus, in social marketing, “purchase” of the product benefits primarily the consumer; in product marketing, the sponsor is the chief beneficiary of the consumer’s decision to make a purchase.
Budgetary Constraints: Social marketers must usually attempt to achieve their goals with small budgets. In-kind services, volunteerism, and donations of other resources may add to the available resources, but the social marketer can seldom match the resources available to product marketers. As a corollary, product marketing campaigns tend to be supported by more extensive formative and summative research and more professional and extensive communications with the consumer.

Questions to ask about the Target Audience:

What does the intended audience already know about the topic? Do intended audience members have any misconceptions?
What are the intended audience members’ relevant attitudes, beliefs, and perceptions of barriers to change?
How "ready" is the intended audience to take action?
What benefit do intended audience members already associate with taking action?
What social, cultural, and economic factors will affect message development and delivery?
When and where (times, places, states of mind) can the intended audience best be reached?
When and where will the audience be most likely to take the desired action?
What communication channels (e.g., mass media, organization meetings, Internet sites) reach this intended audience? Which do its members prefer? Find credible?
Do certain individuals (or gatekeepers) either have particular influence with this intended audience or control access to it? What is their degree of influence?
What are the intended audience’s preferences in terms of learning styles, appeals, language, and tone?

The "Seven Doors" Social Marketing Approach

Poster Campaigns Through History:

Center for the Study of Political Graphics

War in Iraq posters

The Chairman Smiles

Decade of Protest