Marketing 4 Life

- Commercial social marketing or just plain commercial ads with a social message?

Traditionally, social marketing is portrayed as the adoption and adaptation of commercial marketing tools in order to obtain behavioral – in contrast to commercial – goals. Like this social marketing emerges from – and draws on – commercial marketing. The commercial big brother inspires the social little sister. However, in recent years the direction of inspiration seems to have swoped around: commercial marketing is currently pretty much inspired by social marketing.

Commercial marketing is increasingly social
According to Baroness Peta Buscombe, CEO of the Advertising Association, UK, there is a great social role to be played by commercial marketing. In a TV interview on BrandRepublic.com (www.brandrepublic.com), Buscombe characterizes the evolving interconnections between commercial and social marketing like this:

“(…) What we do do [at the Advertising Association], is encourage the industry to act responsibly, absolutely critical, because we have such a powerful role to play, which is positive … we are having a very positive role in terms of shifting behavior, encouraging behavioral change in a positive way (http://www.brandrepublic.com/News/844529/Advertising-Association-chief-industry-government-latest-BRTV/?DCMP=ILC-SEARCH).”

Underscored by the fact that the Advertising Association spearheads the initiative Business4Life, the call on commercial social marketing is more than empty words (http://www.business4life.co.uk/home/). Business4Life is a broad coalition of major industry players (PepsiCo, Coca-Cola, Kraft, Unilever, Tesco just to mention a few), who join forces in the attempt to encourage healthy lifestyle through branded marketing communications. In the run up to the Olympic Games in London 2012 the coalition has pledged to make a 200 million (GBP) contribution to the integration of health messages in their commercial marketing communication.

But a crucial question remains: is commercial marketing merely flirting with social marketing or are we about to see a real marriage?

Social marketing benchmarks
One way of addressing this question is to check the current initiative against definitions of social marketing. In 1995 Andreasen launched one of the most influential definitions of social marketing. In his view, ‘social marketing is the application of commercial marketing technologies to the analysis, planning, execution and evaluation of programs designed to influence the voluntary behaviour of target audiences in order to improve their personal welfare and that of society (Andreasen, 1995, p. 7)’.

On such a broad generic definition of social marketing, Business4Life seems to be an instance of full-blown social marketing. It applies commercial marketing techniques to influence the behavior of their target audience in order to improve public health. However, unfolding the essence of social marketing, Andreasen points to the fact that social marketing is a strategy that ‘attempts to use all four Ps of the traditional marketing mix; for example, it is not just advertising or communications (2002, p. 6).’

Social marketing indeed do make use of advertising, branding and other kinds of marketing communications, but it is much more than that. A full-blown social marketing campaign or intervention combines the four Ps of the marketing mix:

PRODUCT: Social marketing conducts consumer research in order to inform the process of developing a product that is intended to solve a social problem.

PLACE: Social marketing interventions take place where the consumers are (in schools, streets, football pitches…)

PRICE: Social marketing accounts for the social and emotional costs of buying into the social product.

PROMOTION: Social marketing communicates through advertising, branding, PR, word of mouth, product placements, information campaigns…

The missing P
Well, it is too early to tell whether Business4Life evolves into genuine commercial social marketing campaigns or ends up as standard commercial campaigns with a social attitude. While there is little doubt that Business4Life, viewed as a commercial social marketing campaign, will fulfill the requirements of two of the Ps (place and promotion), it is also beyond doubt that a group of social marketers will be rather reluctant with regard to the initiative’s fulfillment of the remaining two Ps (product and price). My guess is that we first and foremost will see objections centered on the product P.

It is likely that Business4Life – viewed as a commercial social marketing campaign – will be under suspicion of not having a product. Or, rather, will be accused of having a commercial product, but not a social one. Thus, I think watchdogs will voice the view that what we have here are commercial products promoted through marketing communications with a social message. The watchdogs’ would love to have as their paradigm case a diet fizzy drink fortified with vitamins and minerals, which is promoted through marketing communications with a social message. (Don’t give them that case, please). They will argue that initiatives like Business4Life are not social marketing because the most fundamental of all the Ps is missing: there is no social product.

Re-branding a bad business
And so what if the watchdogs are right? I mean, is it intrinsically bad to promote decent commercial products through social advertising? While I share with the watchdogs the opinion that social marketing is certainly most effective when drawing on the full range of the marketing mix, I must admit that I cannot see why it should be wrong for a commercial marketer to be inspired from social marketing even though the inspiration does not lead to more than a flirt with the promotional P of social marketing.

However, we have to anticipate that commercial marketing may wish to be identified or associated with social marketing in order to provide a new justification for an enterprise that many consumers over the years have come to view as basically dishonest (see the Chartered Institute of Marketing’s 2009 Agenda Paper ‘Less Fire, More Smoke’ www.cim.co.uk). Thus, watchdogs might accuse the Advertising Association and its Business4Life for trying to establish a link between social marketing and commercial marketing in order to give the advertising industry an image make-over.

P for pragmatism
From a pragmatic point of view the motives of the advertising industry to seek identification with social marketing do not really bother me. I think that coalitions like Business4Life are hugely welcomed and so much needed, because the current health crisis with epidemically rising obesity really cannot be tackled unless all actors with strong powers to influence the way consumers think and act join forces. Of course I do hope that Business4Life will provide a showcase of brilliant commercial social marketing campaigns that draws on all of the four Ps (in the social marketing sense). But even if we are not about to see more than that kind of commercial marketing with a social message, which has been around since the 1970s, I am still quite pleased.

Why? Advertising and branding – commercial promotional marketing as such – do have a power of its own to influence social norms and peer values. Social norms and peer values seriously influence our health behavior and health beliefs. Accordingly, well-performed commercial social advertising is definitely preferable to plain commercial advertising without a social message. We’ve got nothing to lose and a lot to win.


References
Andreasen, A. (1995). Marketing Social Change: Changing Behavior to Promote Health, Social Development and the Environment. San Francisco: Jossey Bass.

Andreasen, A. (2002). ‘Marketing Social Change in the Social Change Marketplace’, Journal of Public Policy & Marketing, 21:1, pp. 3-13.