The Global Social Marketing Challenge

It is time for a global social marketing organization. At the World Social Marketing Conference in Brighton yesterday, I spoke about the often separate realities of domestic and international social marketing programs. Despite their often divergent paths and areas of focus over the past 40 years or so (depending on when you date the beginning of social marketing – domestic or international), the past few years have seen a convergence of viewpoints, especially around the centrality of population-based behavior change as the core objective for social marketing programs regardless of whether they use products, services, or communications  (or preferably all three) to achieve them. The social marketing model I presented here served as my template for where the field seems to be settling.  I also noted a set of challenges that are now common to both world views and where mutual interests may be a common ground for aligning them more completely:

• Working towards equity and reducing health disparities

• Shifting from individuals to networks and communities

• Creating comprehensive approaches focused on the 4Ps and multi-sectoral collaborations or the total market approach

• Developing scalable solutions

• Achieving sustainability

But I also noted that many other problems faced by social marketers around the world stem from the lack of systematic engagement by social marketers with the outside world – diffusion has been nobody’s job. In particular, I believe that the lack of a well-developed or documented research base, and not working with the research community to make that happen, has thwarted many efforts to become active players at the policy table where decision-makers ask for evidence-based solutions and not rhetoric. Policy-makers as an audience for understanding and applying social marketing ideas is also a neglected and of concern for me. They are not simply ‘channels’ to work upstream for policy change, they are, in the ultimate sense, the co-creators of these interventions. Economists and social scientists are two of the disciplines we need to become more engaged with: economists on many different types of pricing issues and for the insights of behavioral economists, and social scientists for both their research approaches and the need to think about social networks and communities in new ways to meet the challenges of concurrent sexual partnerships for HIV prevention as well as obesity and tobacco use prevention. Finally, we need to get involved with business thought leaders by not just inviting one to deliver a speech at out conferences, but going and presenting at theirs. In this category I particularly reference social innovators and social entrepreneurs, those looking at business approaches to the base of the pyramid or the next 4 billion marketplace and social capitalists.

The next point I made had to do with our lack of appreciation for social markets rather than just focusing on audiences. In this section, I pulled from the work of Mechai Verivadya who has framed poverty alleviation for social marketers as one of working with producers, not consumers, as our partners.

A solution to may of these issues, and I did not touch on the need for workforce development for practitioners in this area as others had been talking about this at the conference already, is to stop talking about the differences and working in isolation from each other and come together as a community.

Moving forward we need to focus on:

• Earning respectability from our outside world  - the research community, policy-makers and others important for our success.

• Market creation (aka demand generation, finding consumers, developing producers)

• Sustainable markets (aka sustainability, community ownership)

• Serving the BOP market (aka reducing disparities, equity)

• Total Market Approach (aka unusual partnerships, large scale change)

To jump-start this process, I announced that we already have over $250,000 committed to establishing a global social marketing platform (or organization or association if you like) from USAID, the National Social Marketing Centre and CDC.  This platform, at least as I am conceiving of it right now, would have as its goal:

To continually improve the knowledge base and skill level of people who use social marketing in their professional activities to improve the health and social conditions of people around the world.

With the purpose to create a set of experiences for policy-makers; program planners, evaluators and implementers; and partner organizations that provide them with knowledge and tools to utilize social marketing to improve the health of poor and vulnerable populations

Based on what we have been discussing at earlier meetings about a social marketing organization, I suggest that we offer participants in this platform:

• Guidelines for practice that harmonize social marketing practice across contexts, audiences and health and social issues

• A research and evidence-base wiki

• Online education programs

• Sponsorship and convener of e-conferences, technical forums, podcasts, topical blogs

• Technical exchanges and mentoring among experts and peers

• Curate social marketing and selected health communications journals and publications

• Serve as a resource for champions and passionaries to advocate for and educate others on social marketing

The fund-raising for this platform has just begun, and I am grateful for the early support from the organizations named above. Now comes the hard work and the challenge I posed to the audience of about 400 marketers in the room: having social marketers from around the world get really engaged in making this happen. There are obviously many things that need to be done; foremost among them is to continue raising the money to make aspirations reality. Governance structure, by-laws (the fewer the better in my view), membership criteria and dues, creating a digital social network infrastructure to support these activities, and others I hope people will suggest, all will take time. And I am prepared to commit half of my time to bring this to life by February 2009. Let us know how your colleagues, the discipline and I can count on you in ways large and small. Judging from the people already talking to me after the presentation, the right people will get involved. There is more than social marketing at stake here. If you believe, like I do, that social marketing offers the best way we currently know of to achieve positive changes in health status and social conditions, than the bottom-line is all about lives and especially serving the needs of the poorest and most vulnerable in our world.

And if you know of any corporations who believe, like the recently passed Paul Newman, in their shameless exploitation for social good, or people who are trying to discern how their philanthropy can benefit others in a very personal way, let them know of this opportunity to support and become part of the movement.

The story will continue…

Comments

[Nedra Weinreich]

I'm a little behind in responding to your post, but definitely count me in. Let me know whatever I can do to help get this off the ground.