Social Marketing, Lecture Notes Week 1

Methods for changing public behavior to increase health:

1)  Education - Do it because you should.  Give people information.  People are smart - there are other factors that are important and at play in changing behavior.  It is necessary to educate, but not sufficient.

2)  Coercion - Do it because I say so.  Negative consequences are threatened through policies at the organizational, local, and state levels.  In a free society, there are limits to regulating public behavior.  We have the freedom to choose the level of personal risks.

3)  Marketing - Do it because it will help you be the person you want to be.  Use of persuasion.

Marketing:

• taps into emotions - the reasons why people do things - mostly unconscious
• artistic, creative, original
• a bridge between provider and customer relationship - developing connection
• exchange - marketer and customer exchange.  what does the customer get with that product?  what is our audience getting in exchange for our product? 
• marketers try to associate emotions to products - products represent more than just the thing
• how do we take a product (say, getting a colonoscopy) and tie it into what we want - takes a creative approach
• figure out deep values that appeal to people - communicate how product will help people reach their personal goals

Social Marketing:

• behavior change is the bottom line.  an awareness campaign may need to be done initially but then move through the behavior stages of change (precontemplation, contemplation, action, maintenance, relapse)
• segmenting your audience - there is no "general public" target!  Know your audience by narrowing down your scope and in order to best reach them.  Target those ready to change, need change or have resources to make change.
• research guides all decisions.  To know what appeals to people - ask them, get to know them, conduct literature review, explore previous efforts, ethnographic research, one-on-one interviews, focus groups.  Research forms basis of strategy - that is, what kinds of messages they need, what values drive them, where do they get information (media source, doctor, spouse, peers)?

Social Marketing Mix:

• Product - what is the product? branding? how to position product?
• Price - what do people have to give up?  reduce the price and make it easier to adopt.
• Place - times and places to target so audience is most receptive.
• Promotion - ads, posters, campaigns, dissemination.
• Publics - groups taken into account
• Policies - work to put in place to support behavior change in the long term
• Partnership - collaborate for success
• Purse strings - funding and budget