History, Presence & Future of
Social Marketing
MKT4025
Week 2

History
1950s 1960s 1980s
Social IMC?
Communi- Social Personalised
Advertising Relevant
cation Marketing Information?
Promotion
Information Commercial
driven:
Driven: methods
media, pr and
mass-media “4 Ps”
selling

Around the 1970s
• 1969: Controversy over whether or not
Marketing should be used for other than
commercial causes (Luck)
• 1971: Marketing for “Social Change”
(Kotler & Zaltman)
• Throughout the 1970s:
Controversy continues

Contoversy
• Skepticism towards commercial
marketing
• Manipulative?
• Strange arguments:
Marketing can affect undesirable
change - but should not be used to
affect desirable change?

1980s - the decade of AIDS
• Mass panic/uncertainty
• A totally preventable infection = certain death at the time
• Fairly fast/clear cause & effect
• Well defined target group(s)
• Desperation (Acceptance/Access/Prevention)
• Over-proportionally affected a very active/activist community
• Information was no longer enough!
Marketing of a disease Marketing of a prevention

Current Popularity
• Social marketers have moved “from
snake oil salesmen to trusted policy
advisors” (French & Blair-Stevens, 2006: 29)
• White paper Choosing Health
(Department of Health, 2004)
acknowledged existing communication
strategies were not effective

Tool to help improve health
and overall quality of life
• “The total annual cost to the country of
preventable illness amounts to a minimum of
£187 billion ... 19% of total GDP (gross
domestic product) for England\" (National Social
Marketing Centre, 2006: 5)
• USA: approximately 1 million deaths per
annum are attributable to lifestyle and
environmental factors (Rothschild, 1999)

Issue Magnitude
Alcohol use during pregnancy Estimated 5,000 infants born with fetal alcohol syndrome each
year
Sexually transmitted diseases 40% of sexually active high school students report not using a
condom
Diabetes About 1/3 of the nearly 16 million people with diabetes are not
aware they have the disease
Skin cancer Approximately 70% of American adults do not protect themselves
from the sun’s dangerous rays
Breast cancer More than 20% of females aged 50 and over have not had
mammograms in the last two years
Prostrate cancer Only about half of all prostrate cancers are found early
Colon cancer Only about 1/3 of all colon cancers are found early
Seat belts An estimated 30% of drivers and adult passengers do not always
wear their seat belts
Fires Almost 50% of fires and 60% of fire deaths occur in the estimated
8% of homes with no smoke alarms
(Source: Kotler, 2002)

Responsible Regulation or
‘Nanny State’?
• What about individual choice and
responsibility?
• When and why should the State
intervene and in what ways?
• Many interventions are either ineffective
or have the reverse effect to what was
anticipated (reactance / boomerang
effects).

Personal choices lead to
societal costs
• Personal choices regarding diet,
exercise and other lifestyle factors are
personal choices, but medical care
costs and indirect costs such as lost
productivity are borne by the wider
society (Gostin, 2007)

Limited options
• Legislation (how effective?)
• Education (often ineffective due to
complacency, indifference etc)
• Persuasion (social marketing: also uses
elements of education) - some see it as
unethical compared to education and law
as tools for changing or maintaining
behaviour (Rothschild, 2000)

The Potential of Social
Marketing
• The power of marketing has been
proven to be able to be harnessed to
help enhance social as well as
economic
• Considerable body of research provides
evidence of success in areas such as
anti-smoking, safer sex, diet and
nutrition

The Potential of Social Marketing
• Increasing recognition by health researchers (e.g.
Fishbein et al.) that, while health behaviour models can
be powerful tools in analysing factors underlying
health-related behaviours, communication
theory and specialist communication
researchers are needed to work with them in
developing effective ways of communicating
with diverse populations

Dangers in over-hyping
• Many simplistic ‘cookbook’ approaches
advocated
• Poorly designed or misdirected
interventions may result in social
marketing being dismissed as yet
another management fad before its
potential contribution to health and
quality of life has been fully recognised.

Marketing is not an exact science
– and never will be
• No single set of principles will be
applicable in every situation
• The key is understanding the attitudes
and beliefs underlying current and likely
future behaviour of of your target
groups
• Theory can help to develop models and
guide campaign design

Theories in Social Marketing

Some considerations: (1) Message
Relevance
• Messages must have personal relevance to
the message target
• Messages tailored to the specific needs and
beliefs of population segments can result in
greater involvement with the messages and
potentially more active health-related
behaviours (Aldoory, 2001) (Bulger & Smith, 1999;
Dijkstra & De Vries, 1999)

Some considerations: (2) Credibility
• “Only 6% of the population trust and act on
all government advice regarding diet. 37%
said they did not trust any government
advice and 20% said they completely
ignored it” (National Social Marketing Centre, 2006:
18).
• Advice provided by pharmaceutical
companies is also distrusted (M. Arnold,
2005),

Some considerations: (3)
Information Sources
• “News values can conflict with science,
media and public health agendas” (Kline,
2006: 50)
• People draw on a wide range of
information sources, including mass
media (e.g. TV programmes) and
Internet

Some considerations: (4)
Information Sources
• Quality, objectivity and accuracy of
information on many Internet sites is
questionable (Charatan, 2002; Watson, 2002)
• There are reports of inaccurate Internet-
originated material having contributed to
actual patient harm (Risk & Petersen, 2002).
However, it should be noted that these
authors also found inaccuracies in some 20%
of printed health-related pamphlets as well.

Some considerations: (4)
Capacity to Understand
• 1996 International Adult Literacy
Survey:
• 20% of the population are functionally
illiterate
• A further 20 - 25% can read to only very
basic levels

Some considerations: (5) Sources of
Information / Accuracy
• Media coverage of new medications and
medical research has been severely
criticised for its promotional nature, its
sensationalism and the lack of critical,
balanced journalism (Cassels et al., 2003;
Caulfield, 2004; Moynihan et al., 2000; Moynihan & Sweet,
2000)

Role of Theory (1)
• At their simplest, theories can simply
describe processes such as
communication theory
Sender Message Receiver

Role of Theory (2)
• Theories can be used to analyse what
may have occurred, for example a
campaign to change people’s behaviour
which not only fails to achieve the
desired behavioural change, but which
seems to have strengthened existing
behaviours may be explained by
reactance theory (Brehm & Brehm, 1981;
Ringold, 2002).

Role of Theory (3)
• At its most powerful, theories can be used to
identify the, at times complex, combination of
factors that underlie specific behaviours and
which need to be considered in planning an
intervention. These theories can guide both
the development and implementation of an
intervention through identification of the key
beliefs on which to focus.

Rationale: Integrative Model of Behavioural
Prediction and Change
• “any given behaviour is most likely to
occur if one has a strong intention to
perform the behaviour, has the
necessary skills and abilities required to
perform the behaviour, and there are no
environmental or other constraints
preventing behavioural performance”
(Fishbein & Cappella, 2006:52).

The Integrated Model of Behaviour Change:
Fishbein et al., 2003)
Distal
variables
Past behaviour
Demographics
and culture A. Behavioural beliefs
Environmental
Attitudes towards and outcome D. Attitudes
constraints
targets evaluations
(stereotypes
and stigma)
B. Normative beliefs
Personality, moods
and motivation E. Norms G. Intention H. Behaviour
and emotions
to comply
Other individual
difference variables
(perceived risk)
F. Self Skills
C. Control beliefs
efficacy and abilities
Intervention
exposure/
media exposure

Reactance Theory
• “Who on earth do these people think
they are? What do they imagine gives
them the right to even suggest that they
should have the power to dictate to the
rest of us what we stock in our tuck
shops… let alone what we or our
children eat? (George, 2003, p.2)

• Comments?
• Questions?