My Christmas gift shipped on the 23rd - the formal release of the AMA (2007) definition.*

Now that precursor material I was working on can go live - officially.

Merry Christmas Intertubes!

* I’d preleased and jumped the embargo back at ANZMAC on the Dec3-5 :), and maybe just jumped the embargo

Social marketing is perpetually on the rough end of the pineapple with what we set out to achieve - a competitive alternative to sex, drugs, rock & roll lifestyles, high fat food, chocolate and high speed driving. We need all the firepower of the commercial techniques and then some - commercial marketing is smart enough to walk away from the laggards and the hyperresistant - we tend to start with them and work downhill once we’ve saved the unsaveable.

Social marketing is the mission impossible team - getting voluntary adoption of competitive alternatives to hedonism in the name of uncertain future benefit.

We do it. We do it well, and we do it with marketing. That’s why we’re social marketers.

Social marketing is the adaptation and adoption of commercial marketing tools and techniques for social change.

Social media marketing is the use of social networks, Web2.0, social media and networked word of mouth for marketing purposes.
For a good head to head between the two terms, see Nedra Weinreich’s post on social marketing covers the dual terms quite comprehensively.

In February 2007, I presented a seminar session on “Adding Commercial Marketing Thinking to Government Marketing” at the IQPC Government Marketing 2007. The take out from the two day session was clear – social marketing in Australia is accepted, succeeding, and being aided by two key factors – community engagement and the drive for evidence based policy.

Community engagement is the cornerstone of the successful approaches profiled from audience generated media such as the Transport Accident Commission’s “Make a film, Make a difference” campaign through to the novel approach to message channels used by the NSW Food Authority’s AU$60K campaign for “Health Fish Message”. NSW Health reaching out to pregnant women through the networks of fishmongers and retail outlets to provide key information at the point of purchase (and most valuable decision making moment). The Child Support Agency’s shift from payment enforcer to support mechanism for the separated parent was perhaps the biggest shift from seeing the client as a problem to be solved to engaging the end user as part of the process.

Evidence based policy has also provided a supportive framework with market research driven interventions and community engagement increasingly enabling the government to place limited resources into more effective campaigns. Post-intervention evaluations have become a cornerstone of the Australian approach – none better than the NSW Health “Environmental Tobacco Smoke and Children” campaign which tracked significant increases in the desired behaviour, and found areas for future inventions from formal market research and real world data (eg calls to helplines).

Ultimately, if any lesson needs to be learnt by the government social marketer, it’s simple self confidence. Many presenters peppered their speeches with remarks of how they could do better, or needed greater market share or weren’t as innovative as their commercial peers, whilst at the same time explaining how they were using cutting edge internet campaigns, bleeding edge technology and novel marketing solutions to reach and persuade resistant audiences. As the commercial marketer, my speech became more of a pep rally as the core lesson to learn from commercial marketing. In my view, the need step of commercial marketing thinking to add to social marketing is realistic targets, longer term goals and a big dose of self confidence. After all, commercial marketing calls 40% a success, 80% the iPod, and 90% a good time to seek a break up of the market monopoly.

Cursory glance over the RSS lists this morning provides two apparently unrelated articles.

Young warned over social websites : Millions of young people could damage their future careers with the details about themselves they post on social networking websites, a watchdog warns

Women Growing To Become Great Majority On The Social Web

Can’t quite shake the sense that the two are connected.

Still safely retired from politics.

Tomorrow, back to just writing about it, and not having to come out of retirement and into the battlefield.

Tonight, new Prime Minister, new direction and an interesting period in Australian history to unfold.

On Saturday, Nov 24, the outcome of the Australian election will determine whether I stay a political marketing researcher who lives on the sidelines, observing, recording and generally theorizing away happily… or whether I come out of retirement and back into the battleground

To celebrate my impending uncertain future, I spent the day working on a political marketing paper, and redefining the concept of “political marketing” at the definition level.

Depending on Saturday’s results, I may have to go off and redefine political marketing at the practical level as well…

Step 1. Talk to the intended audience
Seriously, just talk. Ask the target audience about what they do that you’re looking to change. What do they like about the behaviour? What don’t they like? What would they do differently if you gave them a chance? What do they think you can do to help them change?

Step 2 Forget “health” as a benefit.
Nobody cares about health. You don’t buy a box of unhealthy at the drive-thru – you buy convenience, flavour and instant gratification. Appeal to those options before you appeal to the generic “health” option.

Step 3 Make an offer. Then get ready to start the negotiations.
Put the offer on the table and see what the market thinks. Remember, this is a negotiation process – this is the deal making, haggling and bargaining. If their offer won’t achieve your goals, it’s not that much use. But if your offer isn’t accepted by the market, you’re not getting closer to the goal anyway. Compromise where it helps, hold the line where it doesn’t and strike a deal. You can always make another later offer .

Step 4: Don’t cheat
Don’t cheat. If the market doesn’t like your offer, go back and make a better deal. Don’t force change with law if you’re not making headway by making deals. It’s cheating, and the market feels cheated. You’re saying that “if you won’t play nicely, we’ll force you to play”. If you must, just take your bat and ball and go home. Otherwise, go back to step 1, and start the process again to find a better offer for them.

Step 5. See it through for the long term
Social change campaigns take time, effort and a willingness to get things wrong along the way. Commercial marketers do not have immediate, automatic and market dominating success any more than social change campaigns ever do. Take a lesson from Apple. It took seventeen years, hundreds of different offers and a totally unrelated product to their computer line up to create the iPod success. So take an iPod social change approach – look for success after refining the offer again and again until you strike a sweet spot with the consumer with the right deal.

After all, you want them to do something for you, the least you can do is give them something they want in return.

“Authentic marketing is not the art of selling what you make but knowing what to make. It is the art of identifying and understanding customer needs and creating solutions that deliver satisfaction to the customers, profits to the producers and benefits for the stakeholders.”
- Philip Kotler

Policy matrix? or a good map of campaign promises?