New York Writer
Steve Greechie, MBA, MSLIS, MA
Writer for Business and Personal Affairs
The Merchant's Companion, 1715
Social Marketing: Strategies for Changing Public Behavior
by Philip Kotler and Eduardo L. Roberto
The Free Press - a Division of Macmillan, Inc., New York
1989
401 pages
Book review by Steve Greechie
If the progressive movement is to create a more just society, it will be necessary
to influence the attitudes, behaviors, and values of individuals directly.
Legislation alone will not suffice; a society is only as good as the people
in it.
The first step is the decision to design our programs for maximum effectiveness.
This by no means goes without saying; many of our leaders encourage us to
formulate our programs and platforms according to dogmatic rules - political
correctness. The optimal course of behavior in any situation must be determined
rationally, not ideologically. Don't let's make the errors that the communists
have made since Marx.
The next step is to learn the rules by which the people who shape our voluntary
behavior have been working all along. It is marketers as a class who have
influenced our culture and manipulated our behavior more than any other group.
They've convinced us that smoking Marlboros will make us macho, and that Ultra
Brite will give us sex appeal. We've scoffed, but we've bought the products,
and made middle-class America into a sort of ultra-romanticist, tautological
Utopia, where reality exists as we believe it.
Of course, marketers have concerned themselves with making money, not with
making the world a better place. Greed has made marketing the most pragmatic,
the most result-oriented of disciplines, giving single-minded application
to principles borrowed from more academically pure fields.
Whatever we think of the discipline, it is pre-eminently effective, and we
would do well to study its principles and to apply them to the social welfare.
Social Marketing, by Philip Kotler and Eduardo Roberto, allows us to do just
that.
Social marketing is the use of marketing techniques to effect social change,
the marketing of ideas and behaviors. Its thesis is simple: "...the more
a social change campaign resembles a commercial product campaign, the more
successful it is likely to be."
Kotler and Eduardo are the foremost marketers in the field, and Social Marketing
is an exhaustive investigation of marketing issues applied to social amelioration,
from research and market analysis through volunteer supervision and program
evaluation. At its center is a detailed discussion of the social and psychological
dynamics unique to the adoption of "social products", the ideas
or behaviors we're trying to instill.
THE MARKETING CONCEPT
As marketers we must design the social product in such a way as to meet a
need of the "target adopters", the people we're trying to influence.
This tenet is the essence of the "marketing concept", and it's crucial.
How many social campaigns have presented themselves as meeting the needs of
the people affected, instead of the people acting? We need to make it clear
that racial tolerance creates a better society for all of us, not just for
the minorities, and that aid to refugees will make us feel better about ourselves.
SEGMENTATION
We have to develop the fit between the target's needs and our social product.
First of all, we need to define our target adopters. The public is too heterogenous
to be addressed as a whole. Whom, specifically, do we want to reach? Whose
needs are we meeting and what do we know about them in terms of sociology,
psychology, and behavior? If we try to effect everybody - and we do this a
lot - we'll end up effecting no one.
POSITIONING
Defining this fit - "positioning" the product - is a matter of identifying
the needs of the target segment and matching them with potential manifestations
of the product.
PRODUCT DEVELOPMENT
The target segment itself will determine the ideas and behaviors that we're
suggesting to achieve our larger social goal. For example, professionals might
be asked to fight AIDS by making financial contributions; students might be
asked to volunteer their time. Business commuters might fight pollution by
car-pooling; industry might adopt cleaner technologies.
MOTIVATION
We can then decide what motivation will precipitate compliance. If we're urging
the public to vote, we could appeal, for example, to a sense of duty, or to
a sense of identification with a role model (Madonna has encouraged her fans
to vote). What mechanisms are quicker, and which create a more permanent effect?
MASLOW
Potential motivational forces should be identified, and here we refer to the
familiar hierarchy of needs developed by Maslow (oddly, Kotler and Roberto
neglect Maslow, although marketers routinely refer to him). What need are
we addressing? Is it appropriate for the circumstances of the individuals?
A campaign supporting the preservation of tradition among native Americans
might address the need for belongingness; a program to popularize crop rotation
among third-world farmers will involve a more basic need.
Vis-a-vis the hierarchy of needs, it's worth noting what amounts to an unspoken
tenet of marketers: given the choice, they'd prefer to address a higher need.
They don't market coats to keep us warm if they can market them to make us
beautiful; their cars don't meet our need for transportation as much as they
do our need for prestige. Thus, marketers have been purporting to meet our
spiritual needs with physical goods, while we (who are trying to make the
world a better place) have been irresolute, working with outdated techniques
and false scruples.
CONSUMER BEHAVIOR
What lessons are to be learned from the study of consumer behavior? The various
types of adoption behavior, such as adoption based on information, or adoption
based on values, can be classified according to how quickly they occur, or
by how long we can expect them to last. Which type is more suited to our needs?
PRODUCT ADOPTION
How can we influence the spread of the specific behavior among the target
adopters? The first to comply with our campaign goal, the "innovators",
will be influenced by the accessibility of compliance - how easy can we make
it? Are we offering pre-printed letters for target individuals to send to
their legislators, in a political campaign? Are there litter baskets accessible,
in an clean-up campaign?
ADOPTION DIFFUSION
We can manipulate the factors effecting the spread of the behavior or idea
involved. For instance, we can minimize the costs of adoption. Identifying
and managing intangible costs are particularly important, since we often are
concerned with the effects of stigma, fear, and tradition, but these problems
are often manageable. We can support the spread of contraception by encouraging
community leaders to speak in support of the practice (to reduce the effects
of stigma and tradition), and by distributing information (in response to
a fear of usage).
TANGIBLES
It's helpful to identify the particular elements of a social program that
involve the use of a tangible. The marketing process involves first promoting
the product concept (such as safe sex), and then selling the product tangible
(condoms). In the latter phase, the branding and packaging of the product
will be important.
MAPPING THE ENVIRONMENT
Aside from examining the market itself, we need to understand the salient
factors in the marketing environment. What demographic, economic, physical
(urban vs. rural, for example), technological, legal, and sociocultural elements
might come into play? And we have to do some future mapping. What uncertainty
exists vis-a-vis each of these elements? How can we prepare for them? Not-for-profit
ventures as a whole have traditionally been remiss in long-term planning:
we'd do well to develop contingency plans, not only to respond to untoward
developments, but to exploit potential opportunities, as well.
POSITIONING THE ORGANIZATION
Aside from developing an appropriate positioning for the social product itself,
the social marketer must find a positioning for the organization visibly behind
the campaign. The social message must be perceived as coming from a credible
source. We can acknowledge sympathetic recognized organizations (as anti-abortion
groups have been buttressed by the "religious" right) but we must
also manage the image of our own agency. Credibility is a function of expertise,
trustworthiness, and likability; our job is to maximize the market's perception
of us in these terms, by promoting our credentials, our achievements, and
our ties to the community.
PROMOTION
The promotion function of a campaign is complex, and in no area is the discipline
of marketing more developed. Social Marketing investigates mass, selective,
and personal communication. The focus of promotion must reflect the appropriate
stage of the adoption process, from the intent to adopt the suggested behavior,
through repeated adoption.
Advertising must express succinctly the positioning chosen, reflecting the
target and appealing to the motivation involved. Certain anti-smoking ads,
for example, have used young black actresses to address minority teens.
The text notes effective nonverbal elements of communication: a forceful voice;
open body positions; greater spatial distance for non-intimate messages. We're
struck, here, by the skill of the "religious" right: the televangelist
is knows his marketing at least as well as his Bible.
Of the three promotional tools, personal selling is the most important for
our purposes, and ideally follows media communication. Anti-smoking ads aimed
at teens are augmented by personal participation in high school health fairs.
PARTICIPATORY ADOPTION
Kotler and Roberto present a particularly interesting discussion of participatory
adoption, "an active process by which beneficiary or client groups influence
the direction and execution of a development project with a view to enhancing
their well-being..." Its objective is to empower the target group to
initiate and sustain on their own the beneficial behavior. This is the enlightened
community development strategy that assimilates the cultural and physical
realities of the target population. Decisions concerning the product design,
its pricing, promotion, and distribution, are generated by the community itself.
As Social Marketing notes, we must be careful that the prerequisite conditions
for participatory adoption are present. We would hesitate, for example, to
ask a subsistence economy to defer gratification. This "people-centered"
development is clearly not appropriate for the most needy populations, such
as refugees and famine victims.
INFLUENCE GROUPS
There is in Social Marketing an unexpected chapter on developing support from
"gatekeeper" or "influence center" institutions. Using
a market-motivation approach, we determine the potential motivations of prospective
allies, their sense of responsibility, responsiveness, and/or practicality.
Tactics for mobilizing these groups are determined by the decision-making
style of the group. A rational style demands the transmission of information;
a bureaucracy demands our knowledge of its procedures; groups with a political
decision-making style necessitate negotiation and bargaining.
This approach is contrasted with a power-politics approach, which submits
the five bases of power from which we might effect influence groups: rewards;
coercion; expertise; legitimacy; prestige. Strategies to wield power may focus
on facilitation (minimizing the cost to the target agency) or identification
(the perceived alignment of goals ).
Gaining support from these power bases involves influencing the group's evaluation
process or agenda, building coalition, or co-optation. Of these, it's coalition,
the use of consensus, that characterizes the current progressive movement.
The powerful coalition of the feminist and gay movements for example, developed
when heterosexism was redefined as a subset of misogyny.
The chapter is remarkable in its breadth, if the authors are rather forcing
an inclusive definition of marketing.
MANAGEMENT OF THE CAMPAIGN
Social Marketing explores the management itself of the social campaign. The
structuring of the organization is examined, as are the steps of the implementation
process and the ongoing control mechanisms. Note the emphasis on the necessity
for specific, feasible and measurable objectives, and their development as
the initial step in the implementation of a campaign.
EVALUATION
Social engineers have been generally lax in the area of evaluation. We need
know not only the deliberate effects of our work, but also the unintended
effects, and the causal links. Did the process itself have unforeseen societal
effects?
In the final analysis, the ultimate goal of all social campaigns is behavioral
change. When we focus on the public adoption of an idea, we're really only
setting the stage for the next step, the diffusion of a behavior. Ideas that
don't translate into action are useless to us. Research shows that the overwhelming
majority of Americans favor gun control, but we consistently vote into office
politicians who withhold their support.
ETHICS
The writers address the unprecedented issues of ethical evaluation. What are
the implications of assigning individuals to a control group in experimental
research on nutrition? How do we predict the unintended consequences of a
campaign? What are the effects of raising the aspirations of the target population?
Marketers hardly have a history of impressive concern with ethics, and these
questions present serious challenges to the profession.
II
Of all disciplines, marketing is the most pragmatic. Couple it with ideas,
rather than mere commodities, and the result may well be a field of historic
significance. Kotler and Roberto articulate the point: "...social change
campaigns and social marketing are not simply a set of tools to accomplish
social change. They represent a new ideology, or mindset, the assimilation
of which can prepare the ground for widespread and more effective social change."
The authors choose to "emphasize social causes that enjoy widespread
public support", pointing out that "more people in more societies
are eager for social change ... than ever before" The limitation is stringent.
Much social injustice is so basic to the collective consciousness, and so
institutionalized, that change is not a popular cause.
The restriction is particularly unfortunate because it's unnecessary. There
is a fine line between what people know they need and what they don't yet
realize they need, and marketers have been adept at channeling identified
needs into invented secondary needs. Even D.W. Griffith could not have known
that motion pictures would meet so many of our needs. And who would have guessed
that "pagan" peoples needed Christianity before countless missionaries
told them that they had needed it all the time?
The skill lies in product positioning. The very intangibility of social products
gives them a protean quality that provides marketers with positioning options
any goods-marketer would envy. Hitler marketed evil as virtue, and national
suicide as victory, and millions bought it.
And yet, their choice of examples of successful campaigns (such as the Stanford
Heart Disease Prevention Campaign), does not acknowledge the "ideology's"
real potential or tradition. Such phenomena as spread of Christianity and
the rise of Nazism constitute social marketing's towering prototypes, not
health education campaigns.
These two movements were planned, not spontaneous, and they were comprised
of all five elements of a social campaign: cause; change agent; target adopters;
channels (communication pathways); change strategy. Nazism exploited a favorable
attitude base (canalization).
The campaigns were complex in their goals, involving all four classes of social
causes. The most simple sought cognitive change: religious or racial belief.
Representing the next two classes, single actions and repeated behaviors were
executed. The most difficult class of social product is a change in values,
and both movements had this at their core.
Coercion and legal sanctions aside, the use of social marketing techniques
in these messianic campaigns is striking. The behaviors involved were made
accessible; services were associated with tangibles. We should note, in fact,
that tangibles were used heavily as representations of the ideas themselves.
The assimilation of established ideas, behaviors, and symbols into the social
product is powerful marketing mechanism, and its use was paramount in both
cases. Assimilation was the definitive tool of the missionary, who studied
the customs and iconography of non-Christian cultures, and then "dressed
up" Christianity in these traditions; Buddhists used the same technique
in the conversion of Japan. Hitler used it in draping fascism in the symbols
of the romantic Germanic tradition.
One of Hitler's greatest advantages was his monopolization of the media. The
Church has revelled in censorship from the Index of Prohibited Books in 1559.
While granting the importance of media monopolization, Kotler and Roberto
disregard it as inapplicable. In fact, the American media exhibits a strong
trend toward conditions that allow for ideological monopolization. The very
structure of the industry exhibits the problem: the number of American cities
with competing newspapers has decreased substantially in the past decades.
As any activist will tell you, fewer newspapers mean fewer points of view.
Moreover, as the national movement toward censorship gains momentum, the monopolization
of messages becomes increasingly apparent. We can only hope that social marketers
as a class will exhibit Kotler and Roberto's concern with ethics, a concern
that must be married to the discipline.