The Government needs to take a strategic approach to social marketing, writes William Peakin
“Why can’t you sell brotherhood and rational thinking like you sell soap?” To students and practitioners of social marketing – the application of marketing principles to achieve behavioural change for the social good – the question posed by the psychologist G D Wiebe in 1952 is well known. His article, Merchandising Commodities and Citizenship on Television, for an American policy journal became the starting point for a succession of sociologists and marketing experts to develop the concept over the next half century.
Today, there is a magazine devoted to the subject, as well as several books and conferences – there is one organised by Holyrood magazine later this month – as well as centres of excellence around the world, including one in Scotland. Governments include the concept in various programmes, consultancies specialise in the subject and major advertising and public relations companies promote their social marketing capabilities. Social marketing has developed from its initial close identification with the marketing of products involved in social change, such as contraceptives, to a much broader idea of its potential areas of application. Probably the most significant is the move from promoting specific products and ideas to influencing behaviour.
Scotland is a leader in its application to improving social wellbeing, particularly in health. The ‘see me’ campaign was launched in October 2002 to challenge stigma and discrimination about mental ill-health in Scotland. Run by an alliance of five Scottish mental health organisations, it combines an award-winning national publicity programme with local and national anti-stigma action developed in partnership with like-minded groups and individuals across all sectors of Scottish life. Individuals who have experienced stigma are involved in many aspects of the campaign, including those prepared to talk to the media about the impact stigma has had on their lives.
“The key thing was to involve the people who were actually living with the issue,” said former campaign director Linda Dunion. “And the point of ‘see me’ is to bring about a change in behaviour not just attitudes; someone’s attitude is just a point along the road to a change in their behaviour.” Dunion, who now runs her own social change consultancy, See Change, believes that the concept can be more widely embraced by the voluntary sector, campaign groups and across civic Scotland: “It can be applied to any area where behaviour is an issue – yes, health, but also the environment, participatory democracy and so on.”
According to the Institute for Social Marketing at Stirling, social marketers “seek to understand why we live our lives as we do, sometimes healthily as when we eat a good diet or take regular exercise, and at other times unhealthily as when we smoke or binge drink. Given that more than fifty per cent of premature deaths are attributable to such individual lifestyle decisions, there is enormous potential for any discipline that can progress thinking in this area. Social marketing brings a unique perspective to the issue.”
The marketing is typically concerned with behaviour in the limited area of consumption and the market place. However, from the discipline’s beginnings, marketers have argued that their behaviour change thinking can also be applied to other contexts: “So, just as ‘Big Tobacco’ can use marketing to encourage smoking, so social marketing can do the reverse. The same principles - of understanding the consumer, strategic thinking and building satisfying relationships based on emotional as well as rational benefits - can be brought to bear.
“Social marketing also recognises that, although commerce brings many benefits, it can also cause harm to both the individual and society
Social marketing also recognises that, although commerce brings many benefits, it can also cause harm to both the individual and society 
. Tobacco, which kills half its long-term users, provides an extreme example of this, but other industries like alcohol and food are also coming under scrutiny. Social marketing’s understanding of both the commercial and social sectors puts it in a unique position to provide realistic critiques, and identify intelligent solutions. This forms an important part of the growing field of critical marketing.”
Although the idea began in America, its development has been particularly strong in Canada, New Zealand and Scotland. But advocates in this country believe that it needs to be embraced at government level through one or more organisations that have the ear of the government but the respect of the public.
“Scotland has begun to wake up to the potential of the tools of social marketing; it’s looking at them and will start to apply them,” said Professor Gerard Hastings, director of the institute at Stirling, “but the question is whether it does that in an ad hoc or strategic way. Ad hoc is useful, it gives people the chance to use the ideas, but at the same time if you look at an issue like public health in Scotland, the challenges are enormous. We have life expectancy in parts of Glasgow that has now dipped below 54, way below countries like Iraq and the Gaza strip. You are not going to address that challenge with ad-hoc intervention here and there; it needs to be brought together in a strategic way.”
Social marketing in the Scottish context is no longer a revolutionary idea, he said: “In 1980 it was; the dominant model then was ‘Doctor knows best.’ But that’s changed and one of the reasons social marketing is taking off is that it’s not a shock to people, it has a degree of resonance with them.” But he said that while social marketing’s strength in recognising the consumer’s point of view remains vital, there is a requirement for environmental change also: “Take obesity – the old model was for the government to say that people were eating too much. That does not recognise the very powerful notion that people inhabit obesogenic environments - in which it’s very difficult to take exercise because there’s too many cars, it’s not safe to go on the streets, it’s an environment in which the kind of food exists that at the slightest hunger pang, people reach for a snack that would keep you going for a fortnight. Should there, for example, be the same kind of regulation governing fast-food outlets that governs the number of pubs in any one place. Should a food be allowed that gives you enough salt in one helping to last two days?”
It was time, said Hastings, to co-ordinate social marketing strategies with the broad aims of the Scottish Government. “I think you need champions in various areas – health, the environment and crime and social behaviour
I think you need champions in various areas – health, the environment and crime and social behaviour
. But in each area, if this was played well, you would end up with respected organisations that the public and policy makers, but especially the public, would say: ‘Ok, we understand what you are saying, we believe it.’ They would not necessarily all follow the advice, but that initial credibility is crucial.”
Hastings cited the MMR controversy as an example of where an issue became politicised, as the government pushed for so-called ‘herd immunity’ to childhood diseases but was unable to counter parents’ fear that the vaccine would cause autism. “There was no public health body that could come out and say, ‘listen, this is fine, we recommend this vaccine’ that people would believe, and say they have the public’s interests at heart. Not that people would simply do as they were told, but that they had a ‘brand’ which they could cleave to in this particular area of their lives.”
Hastings said that during his time in Scotland since 1980, there had been models for such an organisation; in health there had been four: “That’s four different identities in about a quarter of the longevity of Coke. In a sense, we’ve done it; we’ve been close, certainly with both the Scottish health Education Group in the 1980s and the health Education Board in the 1990s, we were getting to a point where the public recognised these entities and that they had their interests at heart. I’m not saying either was perfect, they got a lot of things wrong, but they were beginning to move in the right direction.”
He said that in New Zealand, the health Sponsorship Council was doing a good job in building an identity and a relationship with the country’s population: “Crucially, what they are doing right, and we didn’t always get this right in Scotland - it’s with key stakeholders as well; the voluntary and statutory sectors at both a local and national level. In the past in Scotland, the tendency has been to have a national body doing one thing and a local body doing another. You need somehow to knit that together. In New Zealand, the health Sponsorship Council will create campaigns and ideas and local bodies can buy into that, become part of it, get the expertise and the marketing help, and what the national agency gets is reach to a grassroots level.
“I’d like to see some attempt to pull all the stakeholders together, not to control them at all, but bring together people that have the same good intentions and meld them into a co-ordinated effort. It would need to have the Government’s ear but be independent and have enough distance to be able to say things that Government is not always going to like. In health, the nearest we have is NHS Scotland but it’s very close to government and I don’t think it’s able to rock the boat enough.
“The tendency of having a campaign here and a campaign there is something we need to be cautious about. The basic principles of the tactical approaches are all very well but unless we do this in a systemic big picture sort of way, we’ll just continue to scratch the surface of the problem rather than tackle it head on.”
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