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Dr Chahid Fourali, Head of the Marketing and Sales Standard Setting Body (MSSSB) looks at the development of standards and best practice in social marketing |
Marketing comes of age
Social marketing seems to have appeared as an after-thought following the realisation by its early proponents, Kotler and his colleagues Levy and Zaltman, that, after all, the marketing concept is an all inclusive one that doesn't just apply to producing toothpastes and cars.
Last year The Chartered Institute of Marketing held a debate in Westminster about whether marketing or economics offered a better potential for saving and protecting the environment. At the end of the debate a vote was cast which went in favour of marketing. On one hand it was great to recognise the value that marketing can deliver to help with social and environmental causes, but on the other, it seemed to demonstrate yet again marketers flexing their muscles but not assuming their responsibilities. Hence the title “With great powers…”
For too long marketers have been accused of acting irresponsibly as they promote a greedy, unhealthy society for the sake of financial profitability.
Counter to this line of argument is that marketers, just like any other professionals, use the tools of their trade for either healthy or unhealthy goals.
Enter social marketing
Policymakers have long realised that social problems require a complex approach if they are to be effectively addressed. As an example, addiction problems can be dealt with in several contexts: on a one-to-one counselling basis or through group counselling. However, given the costs and limited reach of these approaches there is a need for a more effective approach that could apply to wider populations.
Researchers soon came to the view that as marketing has shown its effectiveness in developing products and services and communicating these effectively they could adopt these techniques to help them reach large groups of people, often scattered throughout large geographical areas.
However, this did not mean that they abandoned the very informative knowledge and techniques gathered over decades by social scientists (and in particular psychologists). They adopted and integrated both tools. They adopted marketing to ensure that approaches were client-oriented and adopted a strategic perspective to address their challenges (appraising the situation, defining the problem, assessing the competing forces and developing solutions that link directly to the needs of the targeted groups, thereby maximising the chances of success).
Additionally, they made use of the social sciences to learn about what techniques tended to be effective. What is interesting is that both marketing and social sciences tend to agree on what works. This is not surprising as what generally works at the individual level also tends to work at a group level.
For instance, recent work by Robert Cialdini shows that people tend to take certain messages more seriously if certain communication principles are taken into account (principles of reciprocity, scarcity, use of expert and authority views, consistency and consensus).
Spreading best practice
Following countless examples of the effectiveness of social marketing in inducing healthy social changes, there has been a steady increase in marketers seeking advice about what constitutes best practice.
After consultation with stakeholders in this area, the UK's Marketing and Sales Standards Setting Body (MSSSB) was assigned the task of producing world-class benchmarks of best practice.
The new task was to cover the following steps:
1. Demonstrate the need for advice for this discipline
2. Carry out a desk search about best available practice in the UK and internationally
3. Draft standards of best practice
4. Consult with stakeholders both within and outside the UK about the adequacy of the drafts, using various communication channels to reach as many practitioners as possible
5. Finalise the draft
Early findings
At this stage only the early findings of the project can be presented as the project is still ongoing.
The diagram below shows the latest version of the functional map for social marketing:
As you can see from the above map, there appears to be a significant overlap with the marketing perspective, particularly reflected through Areas A, B and C covering:
- Gathering intelligence
- Developing a strategy
- Managing social marketing programmes
Although the remaining areas also have significant overlap with marketing, they nevertheless seem to reflect specific areas of concern in social marketing.
As the consultation is still ongoing, it is not clear how many and in what format the standards will be presented. One thing that is sure is that the new standards will cover both behavioural and knowledge dimensions that describe, to a high degree of accuracy, the skills that are needed to perform as a social marketer.
If you have any query about the social marketing project or you would like to take part in this work, please contact Dr Chahid Fourali at chahidfourali@cim.co.uk |
