Social mobilization involves motivating communities to actively participate in social change through diverse strategies to meet shared goals. It requires engaging all segments of society, from policymakers to community members. McKee wrote a book to enhance understanding of social mobilization and its relationship to social marketing and community participation. Effective social mobilization employs approaches like political and community mobilization. It utilizes strategies such as advocacy, information/education, community organizing, training, and networking to achieve its aims.

1. Social Marketing and Social Mobilization
What is the assumed beginning of social mobilization?
For many years communities were inextricably linked with social marketing.
Flora and Lefebvre (1988) laid out the defining features of the social
marketing approach based on experiences they shared directing
community interventions for cardiovascular disease reduction. Yet, even by
the early 1990s, we can recall where social marketing and community
development components of Health Canada could not find common
ground for collaboration. As more practitioners appropriated social
marketing as the basis for the development of ‘new’ health communication
campaigns, the term became associated (and in some quarters still is) with
mass media campaigns that segmented their audience, pretested materials
and considered the 4Ps only in the context of communication planning, not
marketing.
The differences in the social marketing approach became even more
pronounced in the international community where social marketing became
synonymous with the marketing of products for family planning, HIV
prevention and malaria control while various other groups organized
themselves around concepts such as behavior change communication,
health communication, development communication and community
mobilization to name a few.
Social Mobilization
McKee wrote a book that he hoped would enhance the understanding of
social mobilization, social marketing and community participation amongst
communicators
Community-Based Social Marketing or CBSM (McKenzie-Mohr, 2000): McKenzie-
Mohr & Smith (1999) described CBSM as a process of identifying the barriers and
benefits to engaging in behaviors and then organizing the public into groups
with shared characteristic in order to more efficiently deliver programs.
The community-based approach as a context for implementing social
marketing programs has much to commend it (McKee (1992).
 Gaining community insight into problems and their support for proposed
solution.
 Ensuring the use of indigenous knowledge and expertise.

2.  Mobilizing and employing local communication channels including local mass
media and local social and interpersonal communication networks.
 Localizing distribution of products and services and improving access and
opportunities to engage in new behaviors.
 Helping build sustainable solutions.
Engaging the community is not without its drawbacks too. McKee (1992) notes
that community participation can also mean cursory consultation with the
community rather than full engagement in a dialogue about problems AND
solutions.
 Participation from the community may develop into a ‘participating elite’
who may, or may not, represent broader community viewpoints.
 Program planners can fail to recognize the opportunity costs for people who
are approached to participate in the development and oversight of the
program.
 Open participation also can lead to manipulation and conflict by and
among different parties or stakeholders. And local agendas may not match
those of the donor or lead agency.
 Finally, he also notes that to truly move from a social marketing ‘shell’ of a
program to a community-driven one, there is a need for partnership
development and to gain strong public advocacy and political commitment
to create a culture in which to embed and support social goals.
Definition
Mobilization
- is a military terminology; to mobilize means to prepare forces for action
- is a process of motivating communities to organize in a cohesive group for
an active participation towards their own development
- is an integrative process where stakeholders are stimulated to become
active participants in social change, using diverse strategies to meet shared
goals
- gives exclusive attention to ‘building national consensus and carrying out a
broad educational process through all possible channels…’ (McKee, 1992)

3. - involves all relevant segments of society, from policy and decision makers to
religious associations, professional groups, opinion leaders, communities and
individuals
- is a decentralized process that seeks to facilitate developmental change
through a wide range of players engaged in interrelated and
complementary efforts (Ling and Wilstein, 1997).
- calls for a coalition among various partners in order to effectively transform
development goals into societal action.
Stakeholders in Social Mobilization
1. National Policy Makers: those who can make policy and program decisions,
as well as allocate needed resources for services
2. Media: those which can help create and sustain public support for a social
product and can also encourage public vigilance
3. Religious Leaders: those who can set up information exchange systems within
the community and can also play important roles in ensuring cooperation
among members of the community.
4. Local Leader: those who can push the concerns of social development
through allocation of local funding in support of the programs and can also
come up with policy and program decisions in favor of social mobilization
objective.
5. Service Providers: those who have direct access to the intended beneficiaries
and are often credible sources of information on the programs.
6. Program Administrators: those who can chart the course of action of the
program and can put in more resources such as additional funding and
increased manpower.
7. Program Planners: those who can influence program directions and can
integrate various services in existing programs, which explains their being key
actors in the process.

4. 8. Parents/Family Members: the critical participants in the program since they
are the ultimate users/buyers of the social product.
Main Approaches of Social Mobilization (McKee, 1992)
1. Political Mobilization: an approach which aims at winning political and policy
commitment for major goal and the necessary resource allocations to realize
that goal
2. Government Mobilization: aims at eliciting the cooperation of service
providers and other government organizations which can provide direct or
indirect support to the program.
3. Community Mobilization: aims at gaining the commitment of local political,
religious, social, and traditional leaders, as well as local government agencies,
non-governmental organizations (NGOs), women’s groups and cooperatives.
4. Corporate Mobilization: aims at securing the support of national or
international companies in promoting development goals, either by
contributing needed resources or carrying out the advertising function.
5. Beneficiary Mobilization: involves informing and motivating the program
beneficiaries through trainings, establishment of community groups, and
communication through traditional and mass media.
Component Strategies in Social Mobilization
1. Advocacy: is an important component of social mobilization which involves
“convincing, persuading, and motivating individuals and entities” that there is a
problem and that there are appropriate policies and strategies which could be
adopted for solving such a problem (Valdecanas, Tuazon and Barcelona, 1996).
2. Information, Education and Communication (IEC): The main purpose is the
generation of information or release of ready-made information and distribution
through all available communication methods.
IEC should not be regarded as a mere information campaign or communication
project but a long-term program built into the sectoral programs of a
community (Achterberg and Stuart, 1995).

5. Enter-Educate Approach (Piotrow, 1994): involves activities that entertain and
educate simultaneously.
The 9 Ps of Enter-Educate
1. Pervasive: Entertainment is everywhere, from village fairs to cable
television, from songs and dances to drama and talk radio.
2. Popular: People voluntarily seek entertainment. They like it and eagerly pay
attention to it.
3. Personal: Entertainment can bring the audience right into a character’s
thoughts and actions. Audiences identify with characters as if they were
real.
4. Participatory: People participate in entertainment themselves through
songs, dances, and sports and also by following the lives of characters,
writing fan mail and discussing messages from entertainment with friends
and family.
5. Passionate: Entertainment stirs emotions. When emotions are aroused,
people remember, talk to others and sometimes change their behavior.
6. Persuasive: In entertainment, people can see the consequences of wise
and foolish behavior. They identify with role models and may imitate them.
7. Practical: Entertainment infrastructures and performers already exist and
are looking for dramatic themes such as health, love and reproduction.
8. Profitable: Entertainment can pay its own way, generating sponsorship,
support for collateral materials and financial returns to producers and
performers.
9. Proven Effective: People acquire knowledge, change attitudes and act
differently as a result of messages in entertainment.
3. Community Organizing (CO): aims to empower local leaders, parents,
families, groups, and the whole community (Achterberg and Stuart, 1995)
Community Organizing (CO) is basic element in mobilization at the grassroots
level and essential to encourage community participation. The bottom line in

6. social mobilization is that individuals and community groups are able to get a
sense of what they can do themselves to improve their situation (Valdecanas,
Tuazon and Barcelona, 1996). Achterberg and Stuart (1995) claim that CO helps
develop people’s capability for problem-solving, decision making and
collective action, developing and strengthening their networks.
4. Training/Capability Building: can be directed both towards the program
implementers themselves and towards the beneficiaries/intended audience.
Achterberg and Stuart (1995) say that training and capability building enhance
people’s knowledge, appreciation of, and skills in advocacy, mobilization, and
community organizing of people empowerment.
5. Networking and Alliance Building: the “common thread” that runs through all
the other social mobilization elements (Valdecanas, Tuazon and Barcelona,
1996). Achterberg and Stuart (1995) state that this adds to the success of any
mobilization activity by identifying those who can actually and potentially act
on the problem and establishing close collaboration with them (Stuart 1995).
Networking and alliance building have the first hand understanding of the local
issues thus, can respond quickly to educate, motivate, and mobilize for action at
the community level. They might be also helpful in securing the support and
commitment of government officials, be it at the local or national level.
6. Monitoring and Evaluation: It is a social mobilization component strategy
which measures the efficiency of program implementation and the
effectiveness of the strategies taken in achieving defined goals (Stuart 1995).
Monitoring: as indicators in determining whether or not there is discrepancy
Level: looks at the stage of the project where you are against where you
should already be
Timing: says how long you have already been working on this activity vis-à-vis
the allotted time
Effectiveness: looks into what has been accomplished so far
Evaluation: a process which determines whether the program objectives were
met – whether the intended audience changed their knowledge, attitudes, or
behavior (Piotrow, 1994).

7. It involves activities such as information gathering and analysis and discussion
with program staff, sponsors, and decision-makers which as a process can be
done before, during, and after the program implementation.
Types of Evaluation
Formative Evaluation: is the gathering of information relevant to decision-
making during the planning or implementation stages of a program. It is
sometimes known as context evaluation, needs assessment, situational
analysis, or diagnostic research.
On-going Evaluation: is done during the project implementation phase. It
involves analysis of the program in terms of continuing relevance, outputs,
effectiveness, and impact.
Summative Evaluation: is apparently carried out at the latter part of a
program or after its completion. It aims to sum up the accomplishments,
impacts, and lessons learned.
Social Marketing in Social Mobilization
Social marketing efforts need to work from asset-based models of community
development rather than ones solely based on mapping and addressing deficits
or needs.
Kretzmann & McKnight (1993) list several arguments against relying on needs
assessments and mapping in community projects including:
• It provides a nearly endless list of problems and needs that leads to a
fragmentation of efforts to provide solutions.
• Targeting resources based on a needs assessment directs funding not to
residents but to service providers, a consequence not always either planned for
or effective.
• Making resources available on the basis of the needs map can have negative
effects on the nature of local community leadership by forcing them to highlight
their problems and deficiencies, and ignoring their capacities and strengths.
• Providing resources on the basis of the needs map underlines the perception
that only outside experts can provide real help.
These authors argue that a needs based strategy will inevitably focus on
community survival rather than shift to serious change or community
development. As an alternative approach, they propose an ‘asset-based

8. community development’ approach that involves three interrelated
characteristics:
• The strategy starts with what is present in the community, the capacities of its
residents and workers, the associational and institutional base of the area - not
with what is absent, or with what is problematic, or with what the community
needs.
• The development strategy concentrates on the agenda building and
problem-solving capacities of local residents, local associations and local
institutions to stress the primacy of local definition, investment, creativity, hope
and control.
• Implementation of the resulting strategy will be relationship driven. Thus, one of
the central challenges for asset-based community developers is to constantly
build and rebuild the relationships between and among local residents, local
associations and local institutions.
Social Marketers: the need to view their work in communities as needing to
expand to working with communities.
An asset-based approach also reinforces two core values of the social
marketing approach: the audience orientation and the engagement of people
in the process rather than only treating them as passive consumers of messages
and programs.
Social marketers who venture into the real-life world of community-building
should also be attentive to what is being learned by people involved with online
community-building (and vice versa). How to encourage and guide people into
moving from spectators to actors to leaders (Preece and Shneiderman,
2009), and increasing their level of engagement with problems and solutions, is
common ground on which to build conversations with our social media
marketing colleagues.

9. References:
Achterberg, C. & Stuart, T. (1995). Education and communication strategies for
different groups and settings. Manila: UNICEF.
Kretzmann, J. & McKnight, J. (1993). Building communities from the inside out: A
path toward finding and mobilizing a community's assets. Evanston, IL: Institute
for Policy Research.
Lefebvre, R. & Flora, J. (1988). Social marketing and public health intervention.
Health Education Quarterly, 15(2), 299-315.
Ling, J. & Reader-Wilstein, C. (1997). Ending iodine deficiency, now and forever:
A communication guide. Retrieved February 11, 2017 from http://www.cf-
hst.net/unicef-temp/Doc-Repository/doc/doc476431.PDF
McKee, N. (1992). Social mobilization & social marketing in developing
communities: Lessons for communicators. Penang: Southbound.
McKenzie-Mohr, D. (2000). Fostering sustainable behavior through community-
based social marketing. American Psychologist, 55, 531-537.
McKenzie-Mohr, D. and Smith, W. (1999). Fostering Sustainable Behavior: An
Introduction to Community-Based Social Marketing. Washington, DC: Academy
for Educational Development & Gabriola Island, BC, Canada: New Society
Publishers.
Piotrow, P. (1994). Entertainment-education: An idea whose time has come.
Popul Today, 22(2), 4-5.
Preece J. and Shneiderman B. (2009). The reader-to-leader framework:
Motivating technology-mediated social participation. AIS Transactions on
Human-Computer Interaction, 1, 13-32.
Valdecanas, O., Tuazon, R. & Barcelona, D. (). How social mobilization works: The
Philippine experience. Manila: UNICEF and College of Mass Communication,
University of the Philippines.
Credits: 1) Social Mobilization Strategies (Mark Joenel Castillo, Slideshare)
2) Social Mobilization (Jeriel Reyes De Silos, Slideshare)