Direction des communications, du marketing et de la consultation

(DCMC)

Communications, Marketing and Consultation Directorate

(CMCD)

Social Marketing …New Weapon in an Old Struggle

Jim Mintz Director, Marketing and Corporate Communications Division Health Canada www.hc-sc.gc.ca/socialmarketing

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Definition of Social Marketing

“the application of marketing technologies developed in the commercial sector to the solution of social problems where the bottom line is behaviour change.”

It involves

“the analysis, planning, execution and evaluation of programs designed to influence the voluntary behaviour of target audiences to improve their personal welfare and that of society.”

Alan Andreasan

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Social Marketing …Health Canada

• Integrated with overall health promotion strategies e.g tobacco, diabetes, healthy pregnancy

• Social marketing team integrated with program and communication functions

• Functions include: marketing research, strategic planning, partnerships and strategic alliances and delivering all elements of campaign in conjunction with agencies

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Health Canada Campaigns

• Substance abuse: tobacco, alcohol and drugs impaired driving

• Healthy living: physical activity, nutrition, diabetes prevention and CVD prevention

• Healthy pregnancy: FAS, folic acid, tobacco etc.

• Children issues: injury prevention, parenting immunization, SIDS

• Communicable diseases: hepatitis C, SARS, AIDS/STD’s, West Nile virus

• Others: healthy environment, organ and tissue donation, seniors issues, aboriginal campaigns

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Integration with other Components

• Social marketing campaigns integrated with other components of health promotion strategy, including:

training, education, community mobilization legislation

research

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Purpose of Social Marketing

• Social marketing used to:

Establish themes and provide focus/profile for health promotion strategy

Reach many people at same time

Inform public that government is concerned about a specific issue

Main task is to influence behaviour change (long term)

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Uniqueness of Social Marketing

• Is different from public education and other communication /health education strategies in that its ultimate goal is to influence and change behaviour, not just to increase knowledge and/or change attitudes

• May seek to change values and attitudes as a means of influencing behaviours

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Challenges of Social Marketing

• More difficult to change behaviours that are:

high involvement (e.g. donating blood, stop smoking,) vs. lower involvement.

continuing (stopping smoking, flossing) vs. one-time only decisions (donating blood).

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Challenges of Social Marketing

• Low situational involvement for most people

many people not interested in social and health causes

• Level of Perceived Consumer Efficacy often low

even when people aware of a social or health problem they feel helpless and ineffective to help solve it .

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Challenges of Social Marketing

• Attitude change is difficult

the less palatable the behaviour change, the more difficult to change.

• Lack of immediate reinforcement.

Often solution to problems depends on collective action of many people reduces sense of self-efficacy.

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Influencing Behaviour

• Recognizes the need for consumer orientation and analyzing behaviour from the point of view of target audiences.

recognizes markets are comprised of market segments requiring different marketing strategies to generate behaviour change.

analyzing social behaviours and segmenting markets requires innovative marketing research.

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Segmentation

• Two key ways to segment:

Demographic – age, gender, occupation, income, marital status etc.

Psychographic – lifestyle, social class, values, personality

“It’s more important to reach the people that count, than to count the people you reach”

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Marketing mix

• Coordinated set of interventions including:

supporting products and services, (tobacco cessation products, condoms)

using marketing communication techniques like advertising, direct marketing etc.

distribution ( channel marketing) and pricing strategies

developing network of strategic alliances to leverage resources.

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Rationale Underlying Social Marketing Campaigns

• Contribution to the reduction of social costs generated by undesirable social behaviours.

• Costs are borne by society which justifies the investment of government resources to reduce them.

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The Strategic Marketing Planning Process (SMPP)

• The Situational Analysis (Internal and External)

involves gathering and analysis of information on the organization’s market and other audiences (e.g. sponsors, partners, the public), on the organization itself, competitors or competitive campaigns, and other elements that may likely influence the outcome of the campaign.

includes evaluation of the impact of previous marketing efforts.

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SMPP

• Five stages of change:

Precontemplation: no intention to change behaviour in the foreseeable future.

Contemplation: people aware that problem exists and thinking about changing but have not made commitment to take action.

Preparation: combines intention and behavioural criteria. Individuals intending to take action in next month.

Action: individuals modify behaviour, experiences, or environment to overcome problems.

Maintenance: people work to prevent relapse and consolidate the gains attained during action.

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Best Practices…Our Experience

• Focus on audience segment, message and on most appropriate media vehicle.

• Focus on personal relevance of issue to each member of audience.

• Specify the desired outcome.

• Positive reinforcement seems to be effective.

• Specify the desired action required (call to action)

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Best Practices…Our Experience

• Adapt creative style to specific audience.

• Messages should portray people with which members of target group can identify.

• Message is crucial and need to pretest

• Play on emotions.

• Celebrities and popular spokespersons can be effective to change social norms .

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Best Practices…Our Experience

• Communicate benefits

focus attention on immediate, high-probability consequences of positive behaviour.

• Do not be moralistic

guilt messages work less well, however can be effective in certain circumstances

• Pity appeals and altruistic appeals do not work well

• Humour can be difficult – use with caution.

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Best Practices…Our Experience (Youth)

• Do not highlight that communication came from an authority.

• The web and e-mail are important tools.

• Do not present adult viewpoint, or lecture

• Use self-confident, attractive actors that look a few years older than the target.

• Do not show high risk youth in negative light.

• Do not talk over youth heads or talk down to them.

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Best Practices…Our Experience

• Focus on well-defined market and promote alternative behaviours as substitutes for undesirable present behaviours.

• Examples: designated driver in drinking and driving campaigns, or suggesting daily actions as ways to be physically active (use stairs, not elevator) sell benefits of mass transit rather than car.

• Showing the desirable behaviour serves as a guide to appropriate behaviour.

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Multi-Year Consistency in Theme…Hallmark of Success

• Consistency required to move target audiences through the various “stages of change”.

• Variety in creative approach from one period to the other and one group to the other is required to keep the attention grabbing power of the campaign (however message has to be consistent)

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Meaningful Impact Takes Time

• Only long-term cumulative efforts can produce significant measurable changes.

standard time frame is 3 to 5 years.

period for achieving results depends on various factors. (sufficient investment, measurable goals, differentiation from other campaigns, creative approach, continuity in message)

most campaigns adopt phased approach, each phase building on the results of the preceding one. A solid base for annual plans.

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Measuring Performance

• Intermediate goals are used to measure impact:

awareness of campaign, attitude and preference changes, intermediate changes in behaviour, and/or behavioural intent.

increases in 2-4% are common objectives for health promotion related campaigns.

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Key Challenges

• Confusion about what is marketing i.e. advertising/promotion/cost recovery

• Concern that Government…big brother is in the behaviour change business

• Difference between social marketing and:

Health education

Public education

Strategic Communications

Community Outreach

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Key Challenges (cont.)

• Issue overload

• Reaching the “hard to reach” e.g. aboriginal peoples, isolated communities, low income

• Many social marketing initiatives are not designed or lead by marketers and tend to be strategic communication/public relations initiatives

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Key Challenges (cont.)

• Political environment and public scrutiny

• Marketing in public sector much different than private sector (Madill article)

• Uncontrollable factors (tax cuts on alcohol and tobacco, new legislation)

• Attribution is “tough nut” for social marketers…

strategic evaluation

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What Have We Learned

• Strategic alliances are extremely important, but you must have guidelines and policies

• With rare exception only long term multi year campaigns can produce measurable changes…but management/funders want immediate results

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What Have We Learned (cont.)

• Too much emphasis on behaviour change (individual rather than the community). Much more emphasis in creating a social climate/consensus conducive to social change…(e.g. tobacco in the 80’s)

• “Blame the victim” approach…hurts credibility of social marketing (Low SES and Active Living)

• Upstream approaches and strategies helps credibility of social marketing (Heather Crowe)

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What Have We Learned (cont.)

• Call to action is crucial for social marketing campaign

• Need to be much more strategic on selection of promotional mix…new media, TV programming (Degrassi), non-media approaches

• The messenger in many cases can be much more important than the message.

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What Have We Learned (cont.)

• Too much emphasis on promotion and not on other 3 P’s e.g. channels.

• “End runs” and “challenge the bureaucracy” if you are going to get anything done (e.g. jurisdictional issues…schools)

• Segmentation/targeting fundamental to marketing, but need to be balanced against government mandates.

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Requirements For Success

• Management must understand and accept client oriented social marketing approach .

• Extensive training in marketing for key staff, as well as use of consultants.

• Information systems are needed to:

provide information on target audiences.

track program costs and performance.

track competitors strategies and tactics.

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Requirements For Success

• Ensure that programs are truly social marketing (not public education) - i.e. their long-run objectives are focused on behaviour change.( note: public education is an integral part of social marketing)

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Final Thought

• Be the first, be the best, take risks, think big and think outside the box

• Francois Lagarde: “The Mouse Under the Microscope”…Keys to ParticipAction’s Success (Canadian Journal of Public Health, May/June 2004)

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Resources

• New tutorial being developed ( Health Canada) to be launched on August 9th.

• www.hc-sc.gc.ca/social marketing

• Donovan and Kotler books

• Carleton, Sprott School of Business Professional Certificate in Public Sector and Non-profit Marketing

• http://www.carleton.ca/ppd/indepth/cpsm.htm

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Jim Mintz

Director, Marketing & Corporate Communications Division Health Canada – Santé Canada

Telephone/Téléphone: (613) 954-8839

Fax: (613) 957-1395

E-mail/CE: Jim_Mintz@hc-sc.gc.ca

Web: www.hc-sc.gc.ca/socialmarketing