A Social Marketing FAQ

Professor Jeff French

PhD, MBA, MSc, Dip HE, BA, Cert.Ed
Strategic Social Marketing Ltd
www.strategic-social-marketing.org
jeff.French@strategic-social-marketing.org
.

How did you first get involved in Social Marketing?

About 17 years ago I was working in Public Health in the NHS and I was selected to
attend a MBA at Durham. While I was doing the course we obviously covered
marketing and I had a eureka moment. This is what had been missing from my
understanding of how to help people change their behaviour. A systematic planning
process driven by user insights. While I was doing the course I did a module on
marketing discovered social marketing had been out there since the 1970s. From
then on social marketing is something I have researched, used and advocated
across public service.

How would you describe Social Marketing to someone coming to it for the first
time?
While social marketing can be described in different ways, one of the simplest is to
think of it as “using marketing to improve people’s lives”. A definition that Clive
Blair–Stevens and I coined in 2006 and is now widely quoted is: “Social marketing
is the systematic application of marketing alongside other concepts and
techniques to achieve specific behavioural goals for social good”

How does Social Marketing relate to behaviour change?

Behaviour change is the bottom line of social marketing. Social marketing is focused
on establishing the conditions and engorging people to change behaviour for social
good. Social marketing often still gets confused with social advertising, which is a
helpful approach that is concerned with raising awareness, improving knowledge
and is on tool of social marketing. Many social marketing interventions however use
little or no social advertising, rather, based on target group insight they may
conclude that a systems change is needed, or a service or policy change. Social
marketing also draws on the science of behaviour change form disciplines such as
psychology, sociology, biology, economics etc just as good commercial sector
marketing does.
What is your favourite example of Social Marketing?
There are lost now, but one I really like is the Birmingham City Council and PCT ‘Be
active programme’

Why that one?

Because it’s a UK example and many of the more often quoted examples are form
the USA. But more importantly because it demonstrates all the key social marketing
principles. It was driven by a clear behavioural goal, to get more people form poorer
backgrounds taking physical exercise. It is underpinned by robust market research
and clear insights about what will help people take up exercise and what will not. It
has clear segmentation and target groups, it uses a mix of interventions, it is being
sustained and it has clear ongoing evaluation. Most of all I like it because it works , it
has so far helped over 38,000 more people start taking more physical exercise.

How can Social Marketing go wrong?

If it is not done systematically. If it is not underpinned by research and insight. If it is
confused with just information giving, if it is not managed properly and not evaluated.
Often programmes go wrong because they are not funded to a level that they can
have a measurable effect and or they are not sustained over a long enough time
frame. Another big problem is if there is not senior management understanding and
buy in for the approach. Sometimes senior managers get impatient for quick results
and just want to see things happening even if they are not based on what is known
about what works.

How do we know that it works?

If the programme is set up correctly it with have SMART objectives and clear
behavioural goals. If these are clear then evaluating them is simple. Measuring the
actual behaviour change and some indicators of progress such as attitudinal shift
and intention act as markers of success. There is also a growing body of evidence
about the power of social marketing and lots of great case studies, many of these
are written up in social marketing books but also there is a good selection on the
National Social Marketing centres website.

Social Marketing has been used widely in health. To what extent has it been
used in other policy areas?
Social marketing is being used and has been used for many years in areas other
than health. It’s a shame that some people think that it is a health focused approach
which it is not. There are some big national and regional programmes like the Perth
Travel Smart programme promoting active travel and lots of examples focused on
environmental issues focused on issues as diverse as fishing conservation
behaviour of fishermen and promoting more efficient home energy use, there are
lots of good examples at: http://www.cbsm.com/public/world.lasso

In what other areas do you think there is the greatest scope for its usage?

As well as health and environmental behavioural issues I think social marketing has
a lot to offer the field of crime and crime prevention. Some police authorities are
starting to take an interest in social marketing and apply its principles to planning
interventions. I also think that the behavioural challenges associated with issues
such as saving and better use of public services are ripe for social marketing.
I am interested in his recent ideas about local authorities taking a social marketing
approach to encourage people to complete the next census. In what other key areas
could you see local authorities developing a social marketing approach that they are
not already?
I am speaking at the Local Government Communication conference in Leeds this
year and have recently helped judge the Local Authority Communications awards. I
was encouraged by the way that many local authorities are applying social
marketing principles in areas such as recycling, benefits up take and active travel.

What is the role of research companies in Social Marketing?

Understanding audience’s knowledge attitudes and behaviour is the bedrock of
social marketing. Customer insight and clear segmentation are essential for the
development of effective social marketing interventions. Evaluation is also a key
social marketing principle. Research companies have a big role to play in assisting
organisations in all these areas as many organisations do not have the specialist
knowledge or the capacity to develop and carry out this work themselves. Research
companies can also help by working with organisations to go beyond insight into the
field of implementation in two ways. First to help organisations take data that has
been generated and come to some conclusions about what will be the most effective
forms of intervention, Companies can also help with process evaluation and tracking
to provide feedback during implementation to assist organisations refine their
interventions as they develop.

Is Insight research different from other forms of research? How can we define
good insight research?
Insight research principles are the same as generic good social research. I would
define good insight research as a process of appropriate data collection and analysis
that develops for the client a clear actionable understanding about what will assist
target audiences to change. This data collection and analysis process should be
capable of standing up to independent review.

How well do you think evaluation is being done at the moment?

It’s patchy, but as a generality I would say that evaluation is not a well developed
process in many social change programmes. It is a process that is often tacked on to
programmes and is frequently poorly commissioned and underfunded.

We have a new government. What do you think are the implications for Social
Marketing of this?
I think the wind is set fair for social marketing given the new coalitions interest in
cost effective interventions and the science of behaviour change. The evidence, the
descriptive data, the field experience and knowledge about how to plan deliver and
evaluate social interventions is well known. These gives do not change overnight.
What we know and what social marketing represents is a distillation of what is
known about how to develop, implement and evaluate social change programmes. I
think the new administration will be looking to just this kind of evidence when
seeking to use every pound wisely and potentially saving quite a lot by not spending
on forms of intervention that we know are very unlikely to have any measurable
effect.
In terms of behavioural change models, which one do you envisage holding
most credence with the new Government?
I think the evidence is clear that there is no one ‘model’ of behaviour change that
you can apply in every situation. This is to misunderstand the purpose of behaviour
change models and theory. Behaviour change is a transtheoretical, cross sector
endeavour. What is required is a broad understanding of what influences behaviour
in any given situation and what forms of intervention will help resolve the problem or
promote a positive behaviour. I think behavioural economics which is very much in
vogue at the moment will get a lot of attention. Behavioural economics however is
only one frame of reference. Nudges can help with many social issues but
sometimes the evidence and research tell us that people might need other forms of
intervention. These can be systems changes, design changes, incentive schemes,
disincentive schemes, critical consciousness raising, social engagement,
environmental change etc. All of these forms of interventions can help the trick is to
use the research and evidence about which ones and in which combinations to
tackle specific problems.

What do you think the future holds for Social Marketing?

The futures bright, the futures social marketing.