A peep into social marketing

To begin with, I cannot claim to be very familiar with social marketing in its broadest sense. But a presentation by Shaun Kidney about a fortnight ago on “Winning Cause Campaigns” gave me even a clearer and more precise idea.

For those who believe in starting from the basics, social marketing was "born" as a discipline in the 1970s, when Philip Kotler and Gerald Zaltman realized that the same marketing principles that were being used to sell products to consumers could be used to "sell" ideas, attitudes and behaviors. The duo defines social marketing as "differing from other areas of marketing only with respect to the objectives of the marketer and his or her organization.

So social marketing can be said to be the systematic application of marketing along with other concepts and techniques, to achieve specific behavioral goals for a social good and hence seeks to influence social behaviors not to benefit the marketer, but to benefit the target audience and the general society."

This technique, according to Kotler and Zaltman, has been used extensively in international health programs, especially for contraceptives and oral rehydration therapy (ORT), and is being used with more frequency in the United States for such diverse topics as drug abuse, heart disease and organ donation.

This means that marketing itself can influence above and beyond the marketing department, into people’s lives. For example to bolster its social marketing activity, Drinkaware sought the services of a PR/advertising agency to “help provide strategic counsel in addition to creative implementation” to help it move from general awareness campaigns to driving behavioural change among binge-drinkers. As a result, alcohol consumption was recorded to continue to fall, with 2009 the sharpest year-on-year decline since 1948, according to figures from the British Beer & Pub Association.

This is in tandem with the fact that social marketing calls for behaviour change, and not just attitude change. Consequently, persuasion approach is promoted and this props up change by creating opportunities for self-persuasion; and makes the audience feel good about change.

So just like PR practitioners, marketers have the opportunity to use their skills to influence throughout and beyond business. This can help them be seen as more than the department that spends money and it can encourage CEOs to use their skills more broadly. Additionally, marketers can be working for the benefit of society and not solely towards commercial gain.

Justin Basini: Make a fair return on your activities

For Justin Basini, who has held senior marketing roles at Capital One and Deutsche Bank, [social] marketing should focus on how business behaves in society, which he claims is a broader and more influential role than it currently is.

“Businesses need to make a fair return on their activities, but they also have a responsibility to drive positive social outcomes as a byproduct of their activities. Through this they can act for the common good,” said Basini in the Marketing Week of 10 September, 2010.

Examples to substantiate this are numerous. Marketing expertise helped oil company Shell reduce the accident rate of its drivers in Pakistan by using internal insight to create interventions to get its truck drivers to be more careful on the road; the NHS to reduce the number of women smoking when pregnant by focusing on their well-being and not just of the unborn baby, and Sainsbury’s to more than halve the number of plastic bags given out in its supermarkets. Significantly, none of these projects used paid-for media, rather the skills of marketers were enlisted to change behaviour.

So just like commercial marketing, the primary focus in social marketing is on the consumer--on learning what people want and need rather than trying to persuade them to buy what we happen to be producing. Marketing talks to the consumer, not about the product. The planning process takes this consumer focus into account by addressing the elements of the "marketing mix." This refers to decisions about 1) the conception of a Product, 2) Price, 3) distribution (Place), and 4) Promotion. These are often called the "Four Ps" of marketing. Social marketing also adds a few more "P's" in the name of publics, partnership, policy and purse strings.

Talking of publics, we should always remember that there are many publics including Latent publics- low in problem recognition and involvement; Aware publics- high in problem recognition, varying involvement and constraint and Active publics- high in problem recognition and low in constraint, hence planning, understanding and then segmenting the audience will always remain of paramount importance.

With partnerships, we should always be aware that coalitions trump solo acts hence partnerships are inevitable if cause campaigns are to be won using social marketing.

The model below may also help understand social marketing.

Additional reading:

http://www.social-marketing.com/Whatis.html

http://www.marketingweek.co.uk/

Stress-testing Stakeholders Models in terms of Social Media

Virtually all businesses and organisations operate within a complex system of interests and influences. It is therefore paramount for management to assess and evaluate these external forces in order to adjust them with corporate objectives. Individuals and groups who depend on the organization to fulfill their own goals and on whom, in turn, the organization depends, are called stakeholders, or publics, as others may like to call them.

But much as the words are used interchangeably, they are, to an extent, different.  Authors Grunig and Repper (1992) describe the difference by saying ‘People are stakeholders because they are in a category affected by decisions of an organisation or if their decision affects the organisation. Many people in a category of stakeholders – such as employees or residents of a community – are passive. The stakeholders who are or become more aware and active can be described as publics.’

The PR gurus go on to say that ‘Publics form when stakeholders recognise one or more of the consequences (of the behaviour of the organisation) as a problem and organise to do something about it or them’.  Davis (2004) points out that ‘publics sound more important than stakeholders’.

He goes on to say that some groups, for example pressure and cause-related groups, do not form out of a stakeholder mass: they exist as publics immediately because, by definition, they are active.

In other words, he is saying publics have an importance attached to them because of their specific interest and power, current and potential, while for stakeholders the levels of interest and influence are relatively lower and more generalised.

However, in as far as making corporate decisions is concerned, it is necessary to know about the an influence. The advent of social media means that when identifying stakeholders it is necessary to have a look at informal and indirect relationships too, and not just to focus on the formal structure of the organization.

A useful model for this purpose is to visualize the stakeholder environment as a set of inner and outer circles below. The inner circles stand for the most important stakeholders who have the highest influence.

The stakeholder environment

On top of analyzing stakeholder power in terms of their ability to influence people and developments, it is also necessary to evaluate the extent to which stakeholders exert their power. The power/interest matrix therefore, is a useful tool for evaluation the expectations and the impact of particular stakeholders.

The matrix generally measures  the interests stakeholder groups have to impress and if they have the means and power to do so.

Stakeholders in sector A neither do not have a high own interest in corporate plans nor do they have to power to exert much impact. Organizations should keep these groups informed to a lesser extent, but should not invest too much effort into them.

Stakeholders in Sector B do have a high interest in the corporation and its actions. However, they have limited means to influence things. Despite their low power, such stakeholders could be valuable and it is advisable to keep them informed about the issues they are interested in.

The relationship with stakeholders in Sector C could be difficult. Institutional investors or legislative bodies are normally in this sector. They behave passively most of the time and show a low interest in corporate affairs. Despite that, they can exert an enormous impact on the organization, and it is necessary to involve them according to their interests.

The most important stakeholders are those with high interests and high power, to be found in sector D. They have to be involved in all relevant developments.

However, the coming in of social media brings levels the playing field and hence gives an opportunity to for everyone to follow what is happening and hence to access similar information. Eventually, the less interested become more interested and hence acquire some power. Thus, such a strategy allows to form new alliances and to shift power

This on the other hand could be a threat because apart from easily opening up to opponents, some stakeholders still hold the power and ought to be treated as such. They need to have access to some not-for-public-consumption information.  

Nevertheless, all organisations need is to be proactive; engage with key players through an open dialogue (through social media) and keep them satisfied by providing them relevant information and taking into account their feedback on various issues.  

Moreover, this type of analysis can provides opportunity to sub-divide larger stakeholder groups into smaller groups. These sub-groups could be treated differently in order to meet their individual needs and to get their support.

References:

The manager.org

Tench, R. & Yeomans, L. (2006). Exploring Public Relations. England: Pearson Education Limited