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In a citizen-centric policy environment where customer insight is seen as key to public service delivery, what does social marketing have to offer, ask Jeff French and Aiden Truss of the National Social Marketing Centre

The National Social Marketing Centre was born out of the first independent national review of health-related campaigns in 2006. This review was commissioned by the Department of Health as part of its 'Choosing Health' White Paper commitment and highlighted the use of social marketing to improve the impact and effectiveness of health promotion in England at national and local levels. As a strategic partnership between the Department of Health and the National Consumer Council, the main thrust of our work is to build capacity and skills in social marketing. To this end, we have developed a set of national benchmark criteria to try to ensure a consistency of approach in developing social marketing interventions. And, it’s important to keep defining the parameters of social marketing when there are so many organisations offering variations on a theme.

Our 2 nd National Social Marketing Conference, held recently in Oxford, underlined the intense buzz around this field of work but also highlighted the need for crystallisation and clarity of what social marketing actually is and what it can achieve. The level of interest in, and commitment to, social marketing runs from policy makers to those working at the sharp end of healthcare in our communities.

However, there are still significant numbers of people who find the concept to be a problematic dichotomy. For some people in the field of health promotion the ‘marketing’ facet of social marketing sits uncomfortably alongside the ‘social’ aspect of our work; after all, aren’t the two concepts diametrically opposed?

So what is social marketing?

Social marketing is something very distinct from just health-related marketing, social advertising, or even ‘social networking’, which is increasingly being confused or conflated with social marketing. In essence it involves using marketing techniques, alongside other approaches, for the benefit of people and communities, and not for commercial gain. It takes the sophisticated methodologies of audience segmentation, customer insight, and exchange and competition theory, and uses them to prompt beneficial, measurable and sustained behavioural change within key target groups.

Why do we need it?

The bottom line is that in the UK, the annual cost to society of preventable ill-health is estimated at £187bn. This is a huge drain on our economy that is not being addressed by mainstream health messaging and traditional issue ‘awareness raising’. After all, everyone knows that eating too much junk food is bad and that taking regular exercise is good. Hitting the public with yet another ‘5-a-day’ awareness raising campaign is, for the most part, money wasted – people already have the information, it’s how they apply it within the context of their own lives that provides the key to positive or negative change.

We are never going to be able to match the financial resources of the private sector where they are able to orchestrate a huge variety of marketing tools to saturate our everyday landscape with millions of messages. To compare, current UK government spending on health promotion runs at about £68m per year. Advertising spend on promoting unhealthy foods – carbonated drinks, crisps and savoury snacks, fast food restaurants, pre prepared convenience foods and pre sugared cereals is about £600 million, alcohol advertising £200 million, plus promotion expenditure estimated at £800 million. Against such a relentless tide of marketing messages, it is clear to see why traditional health programmes are not having much impact. With such resources seemingly arrayed against us, we need to tap into what the private sector does so well and use it to help influence and benefit people. By gaining insight into where people are and where they are trying to get to, and by designing interventions that minimise barriers and increase incentives to healthy behaviour, social marketing offers a valuable opportunity to save money as well as lives.

Of course, the relationship between commercial marketing and health promotion is not as polarised as many would believe, and there is good and bad practice to be found on both sides of the perceived ethical divide. Taking the best elements of both of these worlds gives us a set of powerful tools for change. Perhaps what is called for is to be less dogmatic and more willing to adopt some of the tools used within the private sector in order to be more effective. As Alan Andreasen, points out:

‘Commercial marketers know how to test and develop promotional programs. They know how to carry out cost-effective and timely marketing research. They know how to translate customer research into effective strategies. Thus, they have significant potential to help.’ ‘Alliances and Ethics in Social Marketing’ in Ethics in Social Marketing

So where is the evidence?

While we have plenty of evidence from abroad of the effectiveness of social marketing, examples from the UK are thinner on the ground. Some interventions may take years to come to fruition but the social marketing planning process should ensure that this is time and money well spent. To build a body of evidence we have recently launched an online case studies database which we are populating with examples of social marketing interventions both from the UK and from the rest of the world. The database uses our national benchmark criteria to measure both the success of an intervention and to reinforce the definition of what social marketing actually is.

Social marketing doesn’t promise a quick fix. But, through consistently applying and sharing social marketing best practice, we can build a robust and convincing shared evidence base, which will provide a solid foundation for a sustainable future.

www.nsmcentre.org.uk

“For some people in the field of health promotion the ‘marketing’ facet of social marketing sits uncomfortably alongside the ‘social’ aspect of our work”

“Some interventions may take years to come to fruition but the social marketing planning process should ensure that this is time and money well spent”

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