Social Marketing

The primary aim of social marketing is behaviour change. More specifically, social marketing
is most commonly utilised for the sake of improving health, public safety, or for
environmental causes (Kotler & Lee 2004). This is the key differentiating factor between
social marketing and other corporate social initiatives such as corporate philanthropy and
volunteering. These other social initiatives exist to spark awareness (of a cause or brand),
generate goodwill amongst stakeholders, or raise money. They generally do not aim to
change behaviour (Kotler & Less 2004).

In his book Social Marketing: Influencing behaviours for good, Kotler & Lee (2008, pp. 7)
provide a list of useful definitions from social marketing academics. These include

“Social marketing is a process for creating, communicating and delivering benefits that a
target audience(s) wants in exchange for audience behaviour that benefits society without
financial profit to the marketer” (Bill Smith, 2006)

“Social marketing is the application of commercial marketing technologies to the analysis,

planning, execution, and evaluation of programs designed to influence the voluntary
behaviour of target audience in order to improve their personal welfare and hat of their
society” (Alan Andreasen, 1995)

“Social marketing is the systematic application of marketing concepts and techniques to

achieve specific behavioural goals relevant to a social good” (Jeff French and Clive Blair-
Stevens, 2005)

Philip Kotler is the recognised authority in social marketing. He identified and named the
discipline in the 1970’s. His book Social Marketing: Strategies for Changing Public
Behaviour, which he wrote in partnership with Eduardo L. Roberto, was the first complete
text book devoted to the role of marketing in social campaigns (Bates 1991, pp. 108).

Kotler saw social marketing as an alternative to coercion, illegal actions and education. The
former two options were inherently unethical. The latter he believed was too slow in
appropriating desirable change (Kotler 2005, pp. 146). Social marketing generally achieves
its behavioural change goals through the use of incentives, facilitation and promotion (Kotler
2005, pp. 145).

Because social marketing results in changed behavioural patterns, it is believed to be one of

the most effective mechanisms for supporting key marketing objectives. These objectives
may include brand positioning, brand preference and increased sales (Kotler & Lee 2004).

Kotler suggests that the reason for this (in a corporate setting) is that when people change the
way they act, and then personally (either directly or indirectly) benefit from this change, they
are likely to have a strong positive association with the company that motivated the change
(Kotler & Lee 2004).
To put this in the (non-corporate) context of this report, a child’s caregiver may observe a
particular set of benefits when they follow the advertised recommendations. A bicycle
company may become involved in an initiative with the state government to encourage
children to ride to school A caregiver may observe the promotional campaign around the
initiative and encourage their child to ride to school. They may also notice that after a month
of riding their bike to school, their child has more energy, is more social, and has lost weight.
Therefore they are likely to develop a positive image of the particular brand of bicycle. They
now associate it with a more energetic, social and healthy child.

Kotler states that corporate social marketing is also useful when utilised in partnership with
government and the non-profit sector. He notes that the greatest benefit of social marketing is
that (over time) it is the surest way to have a measurable impact on a social issue because it
increases the number of people who are willing to act in a way that benefits society (Kotler &
Lee 2004).

In addition to motivating behavioural changes within a target public, social marketing can
also bring about changes to secondary target publics whose cooperative actions can
contribute to the success of a campaign. These publics can include, but are not limited to, the
media, family members of target, funders, and policymakers (Andreasen 2002, pp. 8).

Social Marketing as distinct from other change strategies

In addition to social marketing, a number of other concepts have been utilised by

organisations to induce voluntary change. Certain similarities can be drawn between social
marketing and elements of these alternate concepts (Andreasen 2002, pp. 6). Some of these
alternative concepts include guise

1. The Health belief model (Rosenstock 1990), which emphasizes communication

information about the risks and benefits of action so as to change the knowledge,
attitudes, and intentions of target individuals

2. Social learning theory (Bandura 1997), which emphasizes building up the target
audience’s sense of self-efficacy: their belief that they can make the behaviour
happen.

3. Behavioural reinforcement theory (Bickel and Vuchinich 2000, Rothschild 1999),

which emphasizes the manipulation of rewards and punishments in the environment
surrounding desirable and undesirable behaviours.

4. Enter-educate programs (Piotrow and Coleman 1992), which combine educational

messages with entertainment to change behaviour.

5. Strategic communications (e.g. health communications and health promotion), which

emphasizes the creation of appropriate and powerful messages to bring about change

Social Marketing as distinct from other forms of Marketing:

In the early 1970’s Kotler began to distinguish between business marketing, non-profit
marketing, social marketing and societal marketing (Kotler 2005, pp. 141). There is little
academic dispute about the classification of business marketing which primarily aims to
achieve financial outcomes (however it should be noted that business marketing can also
contribute to social good). Kotler defines non-profit marketing as “the efforts of non-profit
organisations to attract clients and funds to support social and cultural services” (Kotler 2005,
pp. 142). He distinguishes this from social marketing (a discipline of his own creation).
Social marketing, rather than support social and cultural services, aims to encourage healthy
behaviour (for example healthy eating) and discourage unhealthy behaviour (for example
smoking) (Kotler 2005, pp. 142). Kotler also distinguishes social marketing from societal
marketing. Societal marketing focuses on the impacts that marketing practices have on the
well being of society. It is closely associated with corporate social responsibility and other
corporate social initiatives. Societal marketing is the process by which practitioners look at
the difference between satisfying a person’s needs, weighting up the impact on a person’s
well being, and the overall impact on the wider publics wellbeing (Kotler 2005, pp. 142). The
concepts of social marketing and societal marketing appear to be closely related however
there are disparities. Traditionally societal marketing is more often used in a corporate setting
and is closely related to issues of overall brand/cause perception through corporate social
responsibility initiatives. Conversely, social marketing is primarily focused on changing
behaviours for purposes of wider social good, “social marketing is the application of
marketing techniques to increase adoption of the high-consensus ideas and causes” (Kotler
2005, pp. 145).

History:

Academic Time Line:

The idea of social marketing was first examined as an academic concept in the 1951 article
by G.D Weibe (Andreasen 2002, pp. 3). However, it wasn’t recognised as a distinct
marketing discipline until the 1970’s (Kotler & Lee 2004). Early academic works based on
the idea that social marketing was a divergent marketing practice include Kotler and Levy’s
‘Broadening the concept of marketing’ in 1969, and Kotler and Zaltman’s ‘Social Marketing:
An approach to planned social change’ in 1971. During its introductory period (the 1970’s
and 1980’s), social marketing struggled to establish a separate identity from generic
marketing practice (Andreasen 2002, pp. 3). It wasn’t until the 1990’s that a general
acceptance of the concept was realised. This became apparent through the publication of
books devoted entirely to social marketing, the inclusion of chapters devoted to the subject in
marketing text books, a journal on social marketing (Social Marketing Quarterly, founded in
1994), executives within advertising and public relations firms with ‘social marketing’ in
their titles, the establishment of social marketing conferences, social marketing centers
(Scotland, Canada, and Poland) and finally the Social Marketing Institute which was
established in 1999 (Andreasen 2002, pp. 3). Through the development of social marketing
Kotler aimed to provide a more proactive tool kit for social action, creating voluntary and
ethical behavioural change within society (Kotler 2005, pp. 146). According to Andreasen
(2002, pp. 4) the development of social marketing fits consistently with the general pattern of
inter-sector transfer of marketing concepts where by the concept takes on a broader
application. In the case of social marketing, it has moved from being purely viewed as an
agent for marketing products of social change (for example contraceptives) into a multiple
sector encompassing behavioural change model.

Social marketing in the corporate environment

It has only been in the last 15 years that social marketing has been prevalent in the corporate
arena. Before the mid 1990’s many corporations adopted a “doing good to look good”
mentality which did not often extend past writing out a check to a ‘fashionable’ cause or
charity (Kotler & Lee 2004). The corporate world was relatively slow in the uptake social
marketing. However, the foundations of the practice can be traced back to the same
techniques corporations use to persuade us to consumer their product, “It is all based on an
in-depth understanding of the behaviours of the ‘customer’” (Lilley 2007, pp. 22).

Another suggested reason for the late development of corporate social marketing is a basic
misunderstanding around its goals and challenges. Often corporations who undertake
corporate social marketing label their initiative something else: “cause marketing” or
“corporate social responsibility”. Fundamentally, this is a result of companies failing to
distinguish between raising awareness (which is often more closely related to societal
marketing) and changing behaviour (which is the goal of social marketing) (Kotler & Lee
2004).

While this report is largely focused on social marketing in a non-corporate environment, it is

important to understand social marketing in its wider context. Increasingly non-profit
organisations are calling for more professional, business like behaviour from managers and
trustees (Bates 1991, pp. 109). Due to a rapidly shifting economic climate and social needs, it
is becoming harder for non-profits to operate “outside the “rules and regulations” of for-profit
enterprise” (Bates 1991, pp. 109).

Social marketing in the non-profit environment

Social marketing was first used by governments and non-profit organisations for health and
environmental campaigns such as childhood immunisations and recycling (Kotler & Lee
2004).

Non-profit organisations are under intense scrutiny from the public. They need to be
accountable and prove that they produce tangible outcomes that benefit a wide section of
society (Bates 1999, pp. 109). This is especially important for organisations that are taxpayer
funded. Taxpayers want to know that their money is going towards causes and initiatives that
are making a marked difference in the community (Bates 1999, pp. 109).

In Social marketing: promoting the causes of public and nonprofit agencies, Fine highlights
the fact that marketing theories are similar for both non-profit and for-profit organisations
(Bates 1991, pp. 109). However, the way these two sectors manage themselves is vastly
different, “the nonprofit sector is also known for the vaguely defined character of its product
offerings, absence of competition, short-term planning, and difficulty in measuring
performance or cost benefits” (Bates 1991, pp. 109)

Fine separates the non-profit sector into two distinct categories.

1. Government agencies funded by taxes

2. Private organisations (such as charities) funded by government grants and personal

contributions

This distinction is important in the context of the initiatives explored in this report. The
Victorian State Government Kids – ‘Go for your life’ campaign falls into the first category of
non-profit organisation (taxpayer funded) as defined by Fine (Bates 1999, pp. 109).

Social marketing and public health

Social marketing has received recent notoriety in the health care industry. According to Lilley
(2007, pp. 22), “The skills and talents learnt to push fast-moving consumer goods or financial
services can be used to address socially driven health problems such as AIDS/HIV, drink
driving, obesity...”.

Elements of social marketing

Kotler and Roberto provide a list of the central elements of a social marketing campaign.
These are cause, change agent, target adopters, channels, and change strategy. Target
adapters are the people whose behaviour a campaign aims to change, Kotler and Robert note
that for a social marketing campaign to be successful a practitioner must be able to predict
how target adapters will behave. Because social marketing is entrenched in behavioural
change it is important to collect enough data to predict how consumers will react to particular
stimuli. According to Lilley the entire concept of social marketing supersedes normal
methods of communication, “data is key...social marketing is nothing if it is not backed up
with accurate data” (Lilley 2007, pp. 22).

When undertaking any social marketing campaign target adapters must be communicated to
in a personal manner though every stage of the promotion and adaptation of the social
product (Bates 1991, pp. 109).

Social marketing in practice

Identification:

Andreasen (2002, pp. 7) suggests a number of benchmarks or criteria for identifying an

initiative that could legitimately be categorised as social marketing. They are as follows:

1. Behaviour-change is the benchmark used to design and evaluate interventions

2. Projects consistently use audience research to a) understand target audience at the

outset of interventions b) routinely pre-test intervention elements before they are
implemented and c) monitor interventions as they are rolled out
 3. There is careful segmentation of target audience to ensure maximum efficiency and
effectiveness in the sue of scarce resources

4. The central element of any influence strategy is creating attractive and motivational
exchanges with target audiences

5. The strategy attempts to use all four Ps of the traditional marketing mix. That is, it
creates attractive benefit packages (products) while minimizing costs (price)
whenever possible, making the exchange convenient and easy (place) and
communicating powerful messages through media relevant to target audiences
(promotion).

6. Careful attention is paid to the competition faced by the desired behaviour.

Andreasen also notes that, due to the relative infancy of the field, it is not imperative that all
six elements be present in order to be labelled a social marketing initiative. I intend to use this
criteria to analyse and class campaigns within the Victorian State Governments – Go for your
life campaign as social marketing initiatives.

Plan Development

In his book, Social Marketing: Promoting the Causes of Public and Nonprofit Agencies,
(1990, pp. 5), Fine suggests a broad ‘how-to’ frame work for preparing a social marketing
plan. The “7 Ps” model for social marketing is an extension of the traditional “4 Ps”
marketing model.

1. Who is the producer, the source of the promotional message?

2. Who makes up the market of potential purchasers we are to address, and what needs
and wants do these people have?
3. What products can we design specifically to help fill those needs?
4. What prices must our consumers sacrifice in order to purchase our product?
5. How can we promote (communicate with) our markets?
6. Which parties (institutions) will participate in the process of making the product
available at the best place and time (best for the purchaser)?
7. What probing will be necessary to evaluate our campaign and to obtain feedback from
our audiences?

Fine (1990, pp. 4) believed the “4 Ps” model of product, price, promotion and place to be
inadequate. In order to provide an optimum marketing mix he builds on this traditional model
to include producer, which refers to the marketer, purchasers, those to whom the initiative
must appeal, and finally probing or research.

Issues with Social Marketing

According to Andreasen, social marketing as a discipline is at risk of not meeting its full
potential due to issues of perception (Andreasen 2002, pp. 3). These issues relate to the role
of social marketing in relation to other approaches to social change (see distinctions).
In 1999 the Social Marketing Institute was established. One of the first undertakings of the
Institute was the identification of major problem areas that threaten to curdle the growth of
social marketing (Andreasen 2002, pp. 4). Andreasen has identified four major area:

1. A lack of appreciation of social marketing at top management levels. This lack of

appreciation can lead to promising campaigns or initiatives forgoing a social
marketing approach, or not receiving the funding or resources to adequately
implement a social marketing campaign (Andreasen 2002, pp. 4).

2. A lack of clarity around the concept leading to poor branding. “Social marketing as an
approach to social change lacks clarity and is perceived by key influential people as
having several undesirable traits”(Andreasen 2002, pp. 4). Andreasen (2002, pp. 4)
notes that there are too many definitions of the term, a lack of differentiation from
other marketing concepts and an image of being manipulative and non-community
based.

3. Lack of material evidence and publicity surrounding the successes of the practice.

4. A lack of academic legitimacy. As a standalone discipline it is rarely included in

academic curriculum.

Discuss pricing by Joyce and Morris after you get Fine book – Review notes under Bates

Journals

Kotler, P., Levy, S.J. (1969 ), "Broadening the concept of marketing", Journal of Marketing,
Vol. 33 No.January, pp.10-15.

Online Journal

Easthope, G 2004, 'Consuming health: the market for complementary and alternative
medicine', Australian Journal of Primary Health, vol. 10, no. 2, pp. 68-75, viewed 30 March 2005,
Australian Public Affairs Full Text.

Andreasen, AR 2002, ‘Marketing social marketing in the social change marketplace’, Journal
of Public Policy and Marketing, vol. 21, no. 1, pp. 2 – 13, viewed 10 August 2008.

Bates, D 1991, ‘Social Marketing: Strategies for Changing Public Behaviour/Social

Marketing: Promoting the causes of public and nonprofit agencies’. Journal of Marketing,
vol. 55, no. 1, viewed 8 August 2008, Business Source Premier (EBSCO)

Ref1Kotler, P & Lee, N 2004, ‘When it comes to gaining a market edge while supporting a
social cause, ‘corporate social marketing’ leads the pack’, Stanford Social Innovation Review,
Spring, viewed 4 August 2008, http://www.ssireview.org/site/printer/best_of_breed/

Lilley, R 2007, ‘What can social marketing offer public health?’, Primary Health Care, vol
17, no. 9, pp. 22, viewed 4 August 2008, ASAP (GALE) burying

Book
Book – single author
Jones, B 1995, Sleepers, wake!: technology and the future of work, 4th edn, Oxford University Press,
Melbourne.

Fine, SH 1990, Social Marketing: Promoting the Causes of Public and Nonprofit Agencies,
Allyn & Bacon, Sydney.

Kotler, P 1999, Kotler on marketing: How to create, win and dominate markets, The Free
Press, London.

Kotler, P 2004, Ten deadly marketing Sins: Signs and solutions, John Wiley & Sons inc, New
Jersey.

Kotler, P 2005, FAQ’s marketing, Marshall Cavendish Business, Singapore.

Kotler, P & Armstrong, G 2007, Marketing: An introduction, 8th edn, Pearson Prentice Hall,
New Jersey.

Kotler, P & Lee 2008, Social Marketing: Influencing Behaviors for Good, 3rd edn, Sage
Publications, Los Angeles.

I aim to use a social marketing framework to answer the question: Is the Victorian State
Government successfully addressing the issue of childhood health? I will use elements of the
Governments Kids – Go for your life campaign as a case study. I will also make suggestions
on how social marketing has been successful or can be further utilised to achieve more
effective outcomes in future.