Evidence Based or Ideologically Driven?

The dividing line between Social Marketing and Political Marketing

Dr Stephen DannSchool of Management Marketing and

International BusinessAustralian National University

Background

The context

When the Government said they wanted less regulation interfering with people’s lives, we never thought they meant social marketing campaigns for healthy eating would be withdrawn...We thought they just meant stuff about the banks.

New Zealand Social Marketing Academic

Laying out the ground work

Political MarketingA set of activities, processes or political institutions used by political organisations, candidates and individuals to create, communicate, deliver and exchange promises of value with voter-consumers, political party stakeholders and society at large.

Hughes and Dann (2009)

Social MarketingAdaptation and adoption of commercial marketing activities, institutions and processes as a means to induce behavioral change in a targeted audience on a temporary or permanent basis to achieve a social goal”

Dann (2009)

Social marketing within the evidence sphere

Using a ‘neutral’ toolkit

“Social Good”

Evidence based intervention

Achieving Societal Outcomes

Social marketing within a political sphere

Using a ‘neutral’ toolkit

Ideological framework

Evidence based intervention

Achieving Political Outcomes

‘Evidence’

What counts as evidence?– Evolution, Intelligent design, FSM?

• Neutrality of Medical Science– BMI

• Neutrality of Evidence– Human Created Climate change and Pevensy

Castle

Data Point 2010

Louis I. Dublin (1882–1969), a statistician and vice president of the Metropolitan Life Insurance Company, was the first to lead the development of tables of normal weights, based on the average weights recorded for a given height. However, as data accrued, he noted a rather wide range of weights for persons of the same sex and height, which he attributed to differences in body ‘shape’ or ‘frame’. To resolve the problem, he divided the distribution of weight at a given height into thirds, and labelled them ‘small’, ‘medium’ and ‘large’ frames.

The average weights of those thirds were then termed ‘ideal’ weights, later less presumptuously labelled ‘desirable’ weight, for each of the three frame types. For purposes of insurance, undesired weight was considered at 20–25%, and morbid obesity at 70–100% above the desirable weight for a given frame.

Eknoyan (2008) http://ndt.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/reprint/23/1/47

BMI

1. Data captured between 1830 and 1850 1. "average man" (l'homme moyen) characterized by

the mean values of measured variables that follow a normal distribution.

2. BMI categories do not take into account 1. frame size 2. Muscularity3. varying proportions of fat, bone, cartilage, water

weight, and more.

3. Will the Quetelet Index hold if tested on 2010 data?1. What else from 1850 do we accept uncritically?

BMI 2009

Average male height

Average female height

Height (cm) 174.8cm 161.4

Weight (kg) 84 kg 68kg

Ratio 2.08 2.37

Inches 68.82 63.54

Pounds 185.2 149.9

Midpoint BMI 27.5 26.1

Evidence II

•Schuchat was commenting on this Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report (MMWR), Hospitalized Patients with Novel Influenza A (H1N1) Virus Infection — California, April–May, 2009. This MMWR looked at the characteristics of 30 people hospitalised for severe H1N1 flu infection. •How many of the severely ill were obese? 4. FOUR. •That’s 13%. That’s 41% LOWER than expected, if people were sickening randomly with severe swine flu.

•http://viv.id.au/blog/20090615.5376/obesity-drops-risk-of-severe-swine-flu-more-than-40/

Pevensy Castle

Beginning in the 4th century as one of the last and strongest of the Roman 'Saxon Shore' forts - two-thirds of whose towered walls still stand - it was the landing place of William the Conqueror's army in 1066.

At one time Pevensey formed, with Hastings, one of the Cinque Ports. It began to decline as a seafaring place with the loss of its harbour, owing to the receding of the sea along the Sussex shore–the walls, which were formerly almost washed by the waves, being now quite a mile inlandhttp://www.authorama.com/what-to-see-in-england-53.html

The Seaside Fort

Back to the original question

Evidence Based or Ideologically Driven?

Social Marketing

• induce behavioral change • targeted audience • temporary or permanent basis • achieve a social goal

• Let’s take a minute…

And now a word from our sponsors…

The Governing Political Party

Political Marketing

• create promises of value • communicate promises of value • deliver promises of value • exchange promises of value

• with voter-consumers, political party stakeholders and society at large.

Drawing the dividing lines

Political versus Social…

Change?

Social Marketing as ideological intervention

Evidence based government social marketing is purporting to “be above

political considerations”

Evidence based intervention

What constitutes evidence?

Ideological based intervention

• What constitutes evidence?– Evidence of impact?– Evidence of outcome of behavioral change?

• When is evidence actually ideological?– Right of choice – Upstream Intervention– User pays versus subsidized interventions?

So where are heading?

Do marketing metrics count as evidence?

Source Credibility Issues

Pragmatic research questions

Does the credibility of government social change campaign lie with the credibility of the political figures?

Does the general public neatly box up the various roles of government into isolated elements?

Does the public see “Government” as all encompassing?