Social Marketing Panorama

There and Back Again...Travels & Reflections on Things Social

First, apologies to J.R.R. Tolkien and Bilbo Baggins for borrowing for the title of this post and the following wisdom: "It's a dangerous business, Frodo, going out your door. You step onto the road, and if you don't keep your feet, there's no knowing where you might be swept off to."

I haven't blogged in a long time, in part because it is hard for me to make the time to write a coherent blog, and in part because my work over the last year has taken me away from social marketing and more into social media. But my road is now turning my back towards social marketing! (Social media is important, and it has a huge role to play in "making a dent in the universe" for good. However, social marketing is still the mother science for me.)

My travels have provided me with many observations and opportunities to reflect on both social media and social marketing.

Social Media
    We spend too much time shooting informational spitballs at people and hoping they will stick.

    We're not pursuing the engagement that is both the promise and the provenance of social media.

    We think data and statistics are "King" when it comes to the content of our social media posts.

    Everything we post is just so exciting! Every line contains at least one exclamation point!!!!

    We jump to social media as a tactic. We seem genetically incapable of thinking strategically first. Just do something. We will figure out the audiences and the goals later.

Social Marketing
    Discussion of social marketing as a topic on listservs, Twitter, blogs and other channels seems dead. Even those channels and authors who were dedicated to social marketing are moribund. They seem to have turned more to discussions of digital technology.

    In academia, there is GREAT interest among students for courses about social marketing, and the demand is growing. I consistently have requests to take my course from more students than I can accommodate

    In the classes I teach, there are some excellent nascent social marketers! And their numbers seem to be growing. (The world will be in good hands!)

    On the  dark side academically, my students come in seemingly having been taught the same old, tired theories about behavior change that have been around since I was in graduate school. Students seem to have no knowledge of emerging areas of scholarship that affect the way we view behavior change, such as neuromarketing.

    They all seem to come in having drank the public-health Kool-Aid (how I hate that phrase, but it's apprpriate  here) of communication–only approaches. If we only give people enough information, if we keep throwing it at them more loudly, they will become AWARE--Aha!--and make decisions to do the healthy thing. Ah yes, humans as rational actors! And no, I have no strong feelings about that.

So wither social marketing?
Well, we shall see. I still believe in it. I still believe it is the most effective framework to create the conditions to make individual and society level changes and make this world a better  place. And the USF 23rd Social Marketing Conference starts today! It will be instructive to see what it holds. (Plus, a great opportunity to feed my head, and to feed my soul by being with my tribe!) And wait! There's a session on the future of social marketing! Well, we've been gazing at that navel for as long as I've been in social marketing. So downstairs and to breakfast...and here we go!

 

Never, Ever Forget the "Social" in Social Marketing--Remembering Sue Peattie

Earlier this month, I learned that a dear friend and colleague of mine, Sue Peattie, had died. I first met Sue on the Georgetown social marketing listserv. It quickly became clear that she was a delightful, helpful person – always ready to respond to queries and to share information she had, and her responses radiated warmth. I finally got to meet her in person at the Innovations in Social Marketing conference in 2003. A person I thought was she was turning a corner and I called out "are you Sue Peattie"? She turned around with a wonderful smile and replied, "Why yes, I am!" We were soon in a chat up that lasted many years.

It has been in thinking about Sue these last few weeks that the thought began forming: "We must never, ever forget the 'social' in social marketing." Everything that we do in social marketing is to improve the lives and well-being of individuals and communities. We often never meet the people whom we affect by our programs and interventions. But they are someone's daughter, or father, or cousin, or friend. No matter how applicable our theory, no matter how brilliant our program, no matter how well developed our ego, what we do affects the lives of real human beings. A fellow social marketer recently asked what would happen if we used the term "our people" instead of "the target audience"? In a very real sense, we are always working on behalf of "our people."

I am going to mourn Sue by celebrating how "social" she was. How she worked for the social good. How she was so socially warm and fun. How she kept cognizant that whatever she was working on affected real people. I invite you, too, to always, always keep the social in your social marketing.

Where Has all the Marketing Gone? (Ranting at the National Health Communication Marketing and Media Conference) -with formatting!

(With apologies to Pete Seeger)

 

Where has all the marketing gone?

Long time passing

Where has all the marketing gone?

Long time ago

 

Where has all the marketing gone?

Gone to health comm and social media

Oh, when will they ever learn?

Oh, when will they ever learn?

 

What better time to recommence blogging than at the National Health Communication Marketing and Media conference?! What better time to write a therapeutic rant than at this conference?!

 

Events at the last two days of the conference put me in mind of folk singer Pete Seeger's wonderful ballad--with a few changes of my own! Out of over 100 workshops, plenaries and poster sessions, I have only found social marketing mentioned three times. Most of the conference content has been about social media, and a bit about communication. Now, I have not experienced every offering here. I do not know the content of the abstracts sent to reviewers. And this conference is one of my anchors. But where is the third leg of the stool promised in the title???

 

Social media is magical! We all need these channels available in our communication portfolio, with a strategy and goals. Communication is often a necessary factor in social change, but rarely is it sufficient, by itself. We need a marketing mindset!

 

Marketing is about making it possible for people--and communities--to receive real Benefits they want in Exchange for doing (or not doing) something.  Marketing is about Lowering Barriers to actions and Increasing Facilitators. It is about Enabling people to Use all that good knowledge and awareness communication engenders. It provides a Strategic Framework and logic model to bring together all of our services, advocacy, communication, outreach and policy change.

 

Most of all, MARKETING IS A BASIC HUMAN FUNCTION. We have been doing marketing ever since our early human ancestors came out of the swamp; and the tribe by the river had plenty of tasty fish, but no way to cook them; and the tribe on the hill had trees for fire, but no fish--and then, they got together on the plain and traded three logs for five fish!

 

Let's bring tastiness and warmth back to this conference--and into our practice! Let’s have more marketing!!

 

Maintaining Behavior...I Mean Blogging...I Mean...

Hi, remember me? Trying (once again) to recommence blogging! There is a lot I like about blogging. I get a lot of goodies from it—i.e. benefits. But it is very hard in some ways too, and I give it up from time to time…hmmm, sounds a lot like maintaining other behaviors! So, let's take a look at my blogging behavior from a behavior change point of view.

One of my favorite ways for understanding behavior change is to use the questions that are laid out in the "Simplified Elicitation Methodology" (a formative research approach to gain insight into the barriers and facilitators an audience associates with a health behavior—Middlestadt, Bhattacharyya, Rosenbaum, Fishbein, and Shepherd, 1996). Over time, I have found this to be extremely helpful in understanding why people do—or don't do—a particular behavior. So what does this in entail?

This method, which I refer to as “Six Easy Questions,” consists of three pairs of questions. They are: 1) what are the good things that would come from doing behavior X, and what are the bad things that would come out of doing that behavior? 2) What would make it easier to do behavior X, and what would make it harder? And finally, 3) who would approve of my doing behavior X, and who would disapprove? What are the answers to these questions for my blogging behavior? (This feels somewhat like having a focus group with my navel!) 1) The good things that come out of blogging for me are that it gives me an opportunity to think out ideas in my head and try them out. I like the idea of being a though leader, of being able to teach and mentor from my experiences, and to learn from others. I like engaging the community of social marketers that is involved in behavior change. What are the bad things that come out of blogging for me? Nothing really! No downsides at all.

2) Okay, what makes blogging easier for me? Well, there is certainly no dearth of issues to write about! I have numerous experiences and interactions with others in the social marketing and behavior change community to call on. Having enough time to reflect and compose helps, also. Now, what makes it harder? This is a very rich vein to mine for me! First, for me, writing is like giving birth—painful! (A female friend of mine doubts I could know anything about this, but I know what I know.) I write well; the finished product is almost always good. But, just getting from the primary processes in my brain down to the coherent secondary process of the finished product is hard! Another thing, it's hard for me to find time to blog. My “day job” and my private consulting keep me busy. And then I do want to spend time with my family! So, it feels like it's hard for me to find time, or when I do find time, it’s at 2:30 or 3 o'clock in the morning when I am a “bear of very little brain” (as Winnie the Pooh says). Also, I don't have very good keyboard skills. Thus, there is a lot of editing to do, despite the help of spell check or spell correction on whatever device I'm using.

3) Finally, who would approve? Well, so far it seems everybody who reads the blog approves. Even people who aren’t readers think it is great I am blogging. No one disapproves (except my family doesn't like it when I take time away from them to blog!).

Alright, there is a map of the barriers, benefits and facilitators that I encounter when blogging. (Now you know more about me then you may have ever wanted to—or that I ever wanted you to!) Hopefully, this also provides you with an example of how to use the Six Easy Questions. Given that these are the barriers and benefits for me, what might be some interventions that I could put into place to move me along towards maintaining my blogging behavior? I thought of these:

Number One. Develop a publication schedule or calendar of various topics on which I can write. I have had one of these in the past, and it helped tremendously. I think it would help to do this again so that I'm never at a loss of content to write or that is fresh in my mind. Of course, I want it to be flexible enough that I can write about “breaking news,” too.

Number Two. I can easily talk about social marketing. I think it would be easier for me to compose a blog post just by talking about the subject and recording it. At least I can get my initial thoughts down. These usually come out pretty coherently. Then if I needed to make edits, I could do that. So, I will begin using a dictation program like Dragon Dictation, which I've used to compose other documents. (As a matter of fact, I'm composing this post now on my smart phone, using the dictation app that came with it!)

Number Three. I plan to talk to other successful bloggers—folks who are my social media angels, and ask for tips on how they're able to blog on a regular basis.

Number Four. I'm going to ask for expressions of support from friends and colleagues, for those times that I do blog. (Gifts of well brewed coffee and high-quality dark chocolate will also help! Hint, hint.)

Alright dear readers, what suggestions or "interventions" do you have to help me maintain my blogging behavior?! What about you? What are behaviors, either personal or professional, that you're trying to maintain? What have you found as barriers and facilitators? What's made it “fun, easy and popular” for you to maintain your chosen behaviors? I really want to hear back from you, so make sure to comment. And I encourage you to give the simplified elicitation methodology a try, if your behavior change program is not working the way you think it should. Then, make midcourse corrections. (Preferably, however, include it in your initial audience research before you even develop your interventions!)

I thank you deeply and sincerely for being a part of my blogging community and for engaging me here! And if you need an address to send that chocolate and coffee to, just let me know! See you here in a couple weeks, I promise! Sent from my iPhone

Way Cool Resource: USF Social Marketing Conference (aka Social Marketing Nirvana)

What better way to get back into blogging than with a "Way Cool Resource," a quarterly feature? And what better Way Cool Resource to highlight than the University of South Florida Social Marketing Conference?! For me this conference is the center of my professional universe, god's navel event! I have attended since 1997, and the conference has consistently engaged and rejuvenated me with its content. Logistically, it is one of the best planned conferences I attend. And relationship-wise, I get to see and hug the many friends and colleagues that social marketing has brought me over the years. 

This year, the conference will use a "collaboratory" format on the first day. These will be facilitated discussions to allow participants to delve deeply into social marketing practice in the domains of academia, the public sector, NGOs, training and consulting, and environmental sustainability. The second day will host presentations about specific program endeavors. I think this new format will provide variety and will be very engaging!

The "old stuff" that I love will be there, too: participants from across the US and around the world; novices to the folks who wrote the books; friendly people with a passion for making the world a better place!! There is still time to register! And if you can't be there in person, follow us on Twitter: #SMC2012.

Putting the Blogging Back in Social Marketing!

Greetings, All!

Just when you thought it was safe to travel to blogosphere, I am coming back!  I am emerging from two semesters of teaching graduate social marketing classes--something I love, but that takes an enormous amount of time. 

Coming very soon, blog posts on:

• The importance of "social" in social marketing
  
  
• A parable of behavior change
  
  
• The more things change, the more they stay
  the same
  
  
• Way Cool social marketing resources (a quarterly feature)
  
  
• ...maybe even reflections on teaching new social marketers

So, bookmark the site, update your RSS feeds, and I will chat with you soon!

Joy is Attending the CDC's Health Communication, Marketing and Media Conference!

Last week I attend the 5th occurrence of this conference.  It was one of the best conferences I have attended in a long time!  1,110 participants from 25 countries. Excellent content and relationship building.  To use professional jargon, I was as happy as a pig in mud!  It is difficult to identify all of the nuggets I gleaned from the conference, but here are a few.

1. J. Walker Smith of The Futures Company (formally Yankelovich) distilled 3 points from consumer research in the US:  Caution--consumers are cautious in how they approach decisions about financial markets and other matters.  This leads to Curation--people want to hear from citizens, not "authorities."  So they find networks that can collect and curate information they want.  All of this is in the service of Contentment--People want their decisions to led to actions and purchases that bring contentment.  Health communicators and marketers need to consider their work in the context of these themes.

2. Photovoice is a tool for formative research in which people take pictures of their everyday lives, review the pictures through a group methodology in which they identify themes and areas of concern, then use these findings to inform intervention strategies.

3. Tools to track social media:  Sproutsocial can track the purposefulness of engagement; Tweetercounter.com provides stats related to Tweeter posts; Topsy.com counts hashtag mentions; Klout.com--assesses your social media influence and engagement.

4. Ed Keller, of the Keller Fay Group, had these observations about social media:  a) Social media is made up of two words. 90% of the value is on the social side.  It is not technology that made us social; b) Social media is an enabler, not a driver, of stories.  What is our story?  Who can best tell it?  Then ask, what is the best channel? c) If we want to be "social," then we have to act "sociably"--listen before we speak, offer something on-topic about what people are interested in. d) The ethics of social media is about honesty, transparency, relationships.

5. To generate engagement in social media [and I think this is true for all relationships-sm1guru]:  a) give people something of interest to talk about--something that excites them [guess we have to listen and get to know them first-sm1guru]; b) give positive messages; give periodic updates on a topic; c) provide opportunities to interact and act--e.g., videos, games, questions.

6. Craig Lefebvre--long time social marketer and social change agent reminded us to listen; to get away from science and take a look at the popular culture most people experience; we need eureka moments of insight, not confirmation of our scientific thinking.

7. Many of our communication interventions has been based on the assumption that the paradigm for change is "Think, Act, Feel."  More and more research shows it is "Feel, Act, Think."  Emotion is the elephant in the behavior change room--focus there.  [This reminds me of a saying from my social work days, "Insight doesn't lead to behavior change, but behavior change might lead to insight."--sm1guru].

8. From Bev Schwartz, at Ashoka, in a panel on social entrepreneurship:  "Change makers live at the intersection of passion and drive."

9.  Big Concern--I did not attend every session that talked about social marketing, but every session I attended on it focused primarily on the Promotion P, or the speaker did not seem to understand social marketing process and the 4 Ps well.  And this from some people who should know better!  That should not being happening at this conference!

10. Big Announcement--CDC is developing a new decision support tool to help us create and analyze messages--including those for social media platforms--based on 10 evidence-based variables that are significant predictors for stated intentions and behavior.  The tool is like CDCynergy meets TurboTax.  For more information, send your contact information to:  messageworks@orau.com.

Happy 40th Anniversary Social Marketing!!!!

“Yes, my dear love, you have changed my life so!!!!  I pledge my heart, my soul…”  OH, hello!!  Just starting my celebration of a very significant anniversary!  The 40^th Anniversary of Kotler and Zaltman’s 1971 article in which they coined the phrase social marketing!  Social marketing’s ruby anniversary!  Come celebrate with me!

My own love affair with social marketing only goes back 14 years, and I was a reticent lover at first.  It took four exposures before my feet were swept out from under me.  (The usual excuses:  “Social what?  Didn’t the Berlin Wall just fall?”  “Well, that is interesting, I suppose, but it sure seems like a lot of work!”  “Could you make this subject ANY dryer?!”) 

BUT BOY, when I fell, I fell hard!  It was like the skies opened up and a silver  platter came floating down with all these  wonderful ways to make the lives of people better and make the world a better place!  AND I HAVE NEVER LOOKED BACK!

 

And I am not the only one who has had this crush!  Look at these “love letters” (I know I will miss counting something here!):

• A newly formed international social marketing association
• 2 international list serves (one at least 15 years old, with 3,000+ members)
• At least 6 conferences in 5 countries (including one in its 21^st year)
• 2 dedicated journals
• 10+ textbooks
• Curricula in multiple colleges (20 and counting…)
• 6+ major firms and non-profits
• Social marketing centers in Scotland, Canada, Poland & Australia
• Use by national governmental agencies in the US & the UK

 

So, why have I remained so smitten?  Just some of the reasons I am willing to divulge…

Marketing expresses a basic quality of what it is to be human, dating back to our ancestors, when the tribe by the river had plenty of fish but no way to cook them, while the tribe on the hillside had plenty of wood for cooking fires, but no tasty fish…then they got together and exchanged wood and fish.

It gives us a 360 degree view of the causes of an issue and potential solutions.  

It gets us out of our interventional silos and provides a logic model to tie together all of our interventions (services, outreach, education, advocacy, products, technology, policy and environmental change).

It is based in commercial marketing which never has problems reaching the "hard to reach!"  And commercial marketing is always evolving, so there is always more to learn and grow into.

You get to meet some way cool people, who are all pulling on the same oar to make the world a better place!

I found my heart's desire, my vocation (as in the Latin, voco, vocare, “to call").

“…Yes, my dear love, you have changed the world so!  And so, my darling, I re-pledge thee my troth for the next 40 years…!  And you who witness this, will you be there, too?!

 
 (Cartoon by Hugh, gaping void.com)

 

Stop Looking for a Silver Bullet! We need Wooden Stakes and Garlic, too!

As you may have noticed, it has been awhile since I last blogged. My time has been taken teaching a wonderful course on Marketing Public Health at the UNC-CH Gillings School of Global Public Health. During this time I have also had the opportunity to conduct a number of trainings and to consult with a range of erstwhile social marketing endeavors. One thing that has stuck out to me in all of these situations is how often people tend to focus on one intervention strategy as the panacea for the social ill they are trying to make better. "We need to raise awareness." "If we just change the policy." "We have GOT to develop our brand [i.e., usually a logo]." "Let's have a community health fair." "We need to organize the community." People are seeking that one silver bullet that will that will slay the beast of the problem they are attacking. Well, my fellow change agents, we need more!

Bill Novelli, a very early adopter of social marketing and one of the founding principals of Porter-Novelli, one of the first social marketing firms in the US, is fond of quoting this line attributed to Danish inventor and poet Piet Hein: "Problems worthy of attack, prove their worth by hitting back." Most of the problems we seek to ameliorate are huge. They have existed for some time. And they have multiple determinants. My friends, we are fighting monsters and they can bite back! Like the monster hunters of old, we need not only a silver bullet, we need wooden stakes and garlic, too! (And yes, fire and swords and pitchforks!) We need a Mix of interventions!

The social marketing process, when followed correctly in best practice fashion, provides a wonderful antidote to the tendency toward single interventions. Formative research that includes an environmental scan, a review of successful and promising practices, and that seeks insight into our audiences can provide a 360 degree view of the both the determinants of a problem and potential solutions. The focus on reducing barriers to behavior and increasing benefits or facilitators for that behavior is almost disappointingly simple, but opens one up to a variety of interventions. The idea of the marketing mix (of the traditional marketing strategies of product, price, place and promotion) provides a discipline for planning that emphasizes the synergistic power of coming at a problem from several angles. (Ever hear of the principle from general systems theory that the whole is greater than the sum of its parts?) Social marketing can lead us to the mix of solutions most likely to make a positive difference for our problem.

When you are fixing a salad to solve the "problem" of personal hunger sure, you may just go for the wedge of lettuce. But more than likely, you are going to add carrots and broccoli and tomatoes for taste and color and vitamins, you are going to throw on cumbled blue cheese and chicken or ham for flavor and for the protein to keep you satisfied for several hours. And you are going to top it off with a dressing (low-fat, of course) to help it go down so smooth, croutons for a satisfying crunch, and some fruit on the side for a sweet finish.

Do the same when you are planning your interventions. Go for the whole salad bar, not the just the lettuce. Quit looking for the one silver bullet, get the stakes and garlic out too, and light a bonfire. We are fighting monsters--and for the sake of our audiences and our communities, we need to use the right tools. You do want to win, right?!

What Social Marketing Is and Isn't: A Declaration of Distinctions

Last week, three leaders in the field, Nancy Lee,¹ Michael Rothschild² and William Smith³, published a declaration of what social marketing is and isn't on the Georgetown Social Marketing List serve. As they state in their transmission message, this comes from their frustation with "the breadth of interpretations of social marketing and the lack of distinction between what social marketing and other behavior change paradigms purport to do." (Amen sister and brothers!) They approach this by stating: 1) what principles social marketing shares with other disciplines; 2) what principles are unique to social marketing; 3) distinctions between social marketing and other approaches to behavior change (commercial marketing, communications, regulation, social media and non-profit marketing). They also provide a definition of social marketing and state its unique value proposition.

As a sneak preview, they identify these four principles unique to social marketing:

• Value exchange
• Recognition of competition
• The 4Ps of marketing
• Sustainability

Whether these strike a familiar chord or not, you can read the whole declaration here:  Social Marketing Declaration of Distinctions Final.

The authors note that they are responsible for the declaration, "with insights provided by a number of other colleagues [including yours truly]."  They go on to say, "We do not mean to imply that this represents the field or should immediately be accepted as an official stand for the field.  We do, though, hope that this is the beginning of a discussion that does lead to some agreement as to what social marketing is and stands for."

I say we should print this out, post it above our desks, and carry a copy in our pocket to share with all our colleagues!

¹Nancy Lee is a co-author with Philip (father of social marketing) Kotler of seven books on social marketing and marketing, an an independent consultant. ²Mike Rothschild is Emeritus Professor or Marketing at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. ³Bill Smith is former Executive Vice President of the Academy of Educational Development.