Social Marketing

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Social Marketing Social Norms Changing Public
Behavior September 25, 2008
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Objectives for today

• Define social marketing
• Difference between social and commercial
  marketing
• Understand exchange theory
• Role of formative research in strategy
  development
• Appreciate the attraction of social norms

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Social Marketing

• "Social marketing is a process for influencing
  public behavior on a large scale, using marketing
  principles for the purpose of societal benefit
  rather than for commercial profit."
• William Smith, EdD

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Difference from commercial marketing

• Focus
• To addresses societal problems rather than to
  produce financial gain for the marketer

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Steps in a Social Marketing

• 1. Initial planning
• 2. Formative research
• 3. Strategy formation
• 4. Program development
• 5. Program implementation
• 6. Tracking and evaluation

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Key concepts

• Commercial marketing technologies and theory
• Influence, rather than coercive strategies
• Brings about voluntary behavior change
• Targets specific audiences
• Focuses on personal welfare and that of society

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Not just a commercial for health

• Social marketing is
• A system, not a slogan.
• A benefit were offering people, not a message.
• A full-time career, not a one-time campaign.
• About better services, better products, and
  better behaviors. 

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Traditional approach

• Top down planning
• Expert driven
• Education
• Persuasion

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Distinguishing features

• Social change strategy
• Moving from expert driven, organizational
  orientation
• Moving to audience driven, consumer orientation

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Hard to reach audiences

• What is wrong with them?

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Marketing mind-set

• What is wrong with our program?
• What do we need to offer them to offset their
  costs?
• What would make our product more attractive than
  the competition?

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Thinking like a marketer

• What am I offering? Whats my product?
• What is the price to the consumer?
• Whats the best place to make the offer?
• How do I promote my product?

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Willingness to change the offer

• Committed to designing products consumers want
• Committed to modifying services
• Committed to monitoring the wants and needs

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Applying social marketing to changing public
behavior

• Behavior accept, reject, modify, abandon
• Works best when there is a tangible product
• Finding different and similar motivators

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Is social marketing the right choice for your
program?

• Major options to influence behavior
• Education
• Social marketing
• Law or policy

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Barriers major
Barriers minor
Benefits not attractive
LAW
SOCIAL MARKETING
EDUCATION
Benefits very attractive
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Social marketing works in the middle of the
continuum

• Open to a good offer
• Encourage a behavior change
• - Increase the benefits
• - Decrease the barriers
• - Change opportunities

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Why dont people do whats better for them and
for society?

• They dont know how
• They know, but barriers prevent them from
  doing it easily
• They know, but the benefits of doing something
  else are more attractive

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Changing behavior

• We usually try to THINK people in to changing
  - Information doesnt equal behavior
  change
• - Social marketing isnt just advertising/brandin
  g
• We should try to ACT people in to changing
  - Get them to successfully practice the
  behavior and give positive reinforcement

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Behavioral Interventions

• Show, instruct, train
  - Model, rehearse
• Give positive support
  -Feedback, encouragement, social support
• Motivate
  - Rewards, contracts, prompts

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Articulate purpose and choose focus

• Purpose Reduce teen tobacco use
• Focus Prevent teens from starting
• Purpose Reduce the incidence of measles
• Focus Increase utilization of immunization
  services
• Purpose Decrease falls among elderly
• Focus Increase senior exercise classes

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Exchange

• Both parties must receive something they want if
  the interchange is to be successful.

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Exchange theory

• Exchange of time and effort for benefits
• Make an attractive offer
• - Demonstrate your products benefits
• - Help lower the price

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Applied to tobacco control

• Exchange for value
• Health
• More money in your pocket
• Beautiful smile
• Smell (hygiene)
• Reputation

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Immunization Example
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Tobacco Example
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Step 1 Initial Planning

• Use existing data
• Use planning model for preliminary decisions
• - Eliminate options
• - Guess best options
• Make list of data needs
• Research evidence-based approaches

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Criteria for selecting behavior (external)

• Which problems and/or audiences are clearly
  identified by the data?
• Which actions can bring about the desired change
  (have the most impact)?
• Which behaviors can be observed or measured?

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Criteria for selecting behavior (internal)

• Goals of the agency and partner agencies
• - What will fly politically?
• Are there resources to overcome the barriers and
  increase the benefits?
• - What fits with our budget?

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Easy. Fun. Popular.

• Three social science determinants
• - Perceived consequences (fun)
• - Self-efficacy (easy)
• - Social norms (popular)

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Easy, Fun, Popular Framework

• Helps focus on how to change behavior
• by giving people what they want,
• along with what we feel they need.

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Fun

• Provide your audience with some perceived
  benefits they care about and would like to take
  advantage of

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Easy

• Remove all of the possible barriers to action and
  make the behavior as simple and accessible as
  possible

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Popular

• Help the audience feel that this is something
  others are doing, particularly others who that
  audience believes are important to them

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Social norms Whats popular?

• Conscious desire to be unique and different
• Reality is that we are strongly influenced by
  norms

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Audience Segmentation

• Segmentation is one of the most powerful
  contributions that commercial sector marketing
  has to make to the solution of social problems.
• Alan Andreasen

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A target market

• A set of buyers that we decide to serve, who
  share common needs or characteristics.

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Segments

• Are smaller groups of the target market that
  require unique and/or similar strategies.

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Why is segmentation important?

• It helps us understand the audience
• It helps us plan the marketing mix
• It allows us to concentrate our efforts where
  they will be most successful
• Gives us a basis for using resources effectively

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Segmentation Strategies

• Undifferentiated the same strategy for all
  segments
• Differentiated different strategies and
  allocations of resources for segments
• Concentrated some segments eliminated, create
  strategies for one or a few segments

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Selecting potential segments

• Of those who have the problem
• Who will respond similarly to the intervention?
• Who is easier to reach or influence?
• Who is ready to change?
• Who can influence them?

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Typical consumer segments

• Geographic urban/rural, college campus
• Demographic age, race, gender, income
• Psychographic lifestyle, values
• Behavioral stage of change

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Refining audience segments

• Focus on the behavioral characteristics of the
  problem
• Research who has the problem and to what degree
• Enumerate differences and distinctions

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Rejecting segments

• Staying focused on our behavioral goal
• Who can we eliminate?
• What about hard to reach audiences and the
  dilemma of not serving some part(s) of the
  population?
• What are the limits of our funding?

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Segmentation Essential to Social Norms
Interventions

• Strategy relies on the subconscious desire to be
  part of the majority
• Norms can vary within segments, such as by age,
  social status, etc.
• Being accurate and convincing about the majority
  norms is crucial to success.

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Step 2 Formative Research

• Identify subgroups that differ
• - Benefits or barriers
• - Readiness to adopt product
• Understand consumers wants and needs
• Identify factors that influence behavior

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Research Considerations

• Start with what you know
• Identify free sources of information
• Identify partners
• Collaborate with others

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Formative Research

• Tests our assumptions
• Helps us craft our strategies
• Identifies behaviors that really matter
• Helps us figure out what else we need to know
• Allows us to segment our audience

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Types of formative research

• Literature searches, behavioral surveys
• Focus groups
• Surveys
• Intercept interviews
• Key informant interviews
• Web based response

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Social Norms Marketing

• Uses commercial advertising techniques to correct
  misperceptions
• Usually low cost strategies
• Relies on correcting misperception
• Underlying assumption that people follow the
  majority

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Considerations

• Norms vary by segment
• Local research is absolutely imperative
• Campaign claims must be believable

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Steps in a Social Norms Marketing Campaign

• Research
• Develop the normative message/campaign
• Use variety of community media (low cost)
• Reinforcing activities (e.g. awards)
• Evaluate and modify if needed

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Step 3 Strategy development

• Select target audiences
• Set behavioral objectives for each segment
• Design interventions for addressing behavioral
  determinants

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What is your product?

• What does the audience want and need?
• What benefit am I offering?
• How can I lower costs and barriers they mention?
• How can I get the them to try the behavior?

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Example Scoop the Poop

• Dogs per acre in urban Snohomish watershed
• Find the appeal, lower the cost
• - Clean homes?
• - Safety for kids (preventing disease)?
• - Confusion about proper disposal of pet waste?
• - Keeping up with the Joneses?

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Who is most ready?

• Parents?
• Men or women?
• Single family or multi-family?
• Owners or renters?
• Younger or older?

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Formative research

• Literature search of pet waste programs
• 20-minute phone survey focused only on pet waste
  practices
• Focus groups looked at wording of messages, use
  of humor, social responsibility

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Survey Ready/willing to do more

• Urban renters
• Parents
• Young women
• Those occasionally bagging their pet waste
• Impossible to single out dog owners

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Segmented by geography

• The major urban watershed
• Target neighborhood (500 households)

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Behavioral Support Veterinarians

• Box lunch presentations
• Use of their signboards
• Slogans and mailers in billing statements

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Low budget, neighborhood approach

• Not a mainstream media campaign
• Multiple mailings to 500 households
• Variety of images and lead-in lines for broad
  appeal
• Reply cards offered trinkets

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Social NormsKeeping up with the Joneses

• Garbage can stickerWe scoop
• Encouraged others in the neighborhood
• A warning to garbage collectors
• A way to evaluate the campaign

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Physical Activity Audience Segmentation

• Who is most ready?
• Sedentary?
• Intermittently active?
• Twenty-something women?
• Fifty-something woment?
• Does gender matter?

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Contemplators

• Exercise less than 4 times a week
• Believe physical activity is important
• Want to increase physical activity
• No perceived barriers

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Segmenting by attitude and behavior

• Not currently exercising regularly
• Not currently exercising vigorously
• Dont want to join health clubs or work out
• Believe exercising is beneficial
• Want the health and psychological benefits
• Like the idea of squeezing into everyday life

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Ages 50 70 Probably highest incidence
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The 4 Ps

• Product
• Price
• Place
• Promotion

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Product

• What we are offering people
• Idea
• Commodity (tangible good or service)
• Attitude
• Behavior

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Product must be

• Solution to a problem
• Real defined in terms of users beliefs,
  practices and values

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Most popular

• Trails
• Organized walking programs
• Also appealing
• - Workplace programs
• - Malls
• - Information on free and low cost things to do

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Place or Channels

• Where tangible products purchased
• Where people are in right fame of mind to attend
  to message
• Where service is provided
• Where people will act

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Placement considerations - adults

• High subscription rates to daily and community
  newspaper
• Tend to read cover to cover
• Radio an affordable option
• Medical community as partners

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Promotion

• Creation of messages that are memorable and
  persuasive
• Message design elements
• Type of appeal
• Tone
• Spokesperson

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• Take a Walk. Its Constitutional

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Feel better, look better, live longer
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Most motivating So many benefits, reasonable
cost

• Everyday activities
• Almost already there/might as well go for it
• 30 minutes/10 minute segments
• Dont have to join a club or be a jock
• Dont have to sweat

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Evaluation

• 40 increase in unaided awareness
• 230 increase in mention of yard work
• 55 increase in mention of feeling better
• 245 increase in mention of living longer
• 10 more likely to increase their activity in the
  next 6 months

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Summary

• Social marketing is more than advertising
• It uses a systematic model to plan effective
  interventions
• Based on understanding consumer wants and needs
• Behavior is the bottom line

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Systematic data driven decision making

• Know the audience What do they want and need?
• Specify the behavioral objective What do I want
  to help them do?
• Identify behavioral determinants What factors
  do I need to address?
• - Benefits, barriers, social norms,
  self-efficacy

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What is the Marketing Mix?

• What am I offering? Whats my product?
• What is the price to the consumer?
• Whats the best place to make the offer?
• How do I promote my product?

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Special thanks

• Nancy Lee, Social Marketing Services, Inc.
• Carol Bryant, University of South Florida
• William E. Smith, Academy for Educational
  Development

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• Don.martin_at_doh.wa.gov
• Heidi Keller, kellerconsulting_at_mac.com

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