Professional Documents
Culture Documents
1. A driving concern with developing robust understanding and insight into the customer/
patient/ citizen
Social marketing is : ‘The systematic application of marketing ,alongside other concepts and
techniques to achieve specific behavioural goals, for a social good.’ French Blair Stevens 2007, Big Pocket
Book of social Marketing NSMC. London
Customer focus
All social marketing is based on a robust understanding of the target audience it is trying to help;
this understanding is developed from observational data, demographic and epidemiological data
together with market and consumer research. Consumer research is used to identify audience
characteristics and needs, and key stakeholder intelligence and understanding. A range of
different research analyses, synthesis and data fusion approaches are used to develop a robust
and rounded understanding of people’s motivations, needs, wants, and the enabling factors that
exist and the barriers they face in adopting targeted behaviors.
Professor Jeff French PhD, MBA, MSc, Dip HE, BA, Cert.Ed
Jeff.French@strategic-social–marketing.org
Behaviour
Insight,
Exchange /
Choice
Architecture
Competition
Intervention
Segmentation
Mix
Social Marketing concepts and principles are not of themselves a process or recipe for success;
rather they are the ingredients necessary for successful social programs that seek to influence
behavior. It is important that they are not confused with ‘process planning models’ i.e. how to
plan and deliver or do social marketing. There are specific process planning models for this
purpose (see the STELA Model and the TTP Model). Instead, the concepts and principles are
essentially the key elements that indicate if a programme is applying a social marketing
approach. It is also important to recognise that these concepts and principles are not a random
or arbitrary collection; rather they are derived from an evidence and experiential base about
what works and what does not in the development and delivery of public sector programmes
designed to deliver measurable change in behavior.
Professor Jeff French PhD, MBA, MSc, Dip HE, BA, Cert.Ed
Jeff.French@strategic-social–marketing.org
Concept 2: Exchange and Choice architecture
Consists of understanding and developing interventions that make it more likely that people will
adopt a particular behaviour. This core concept involves developing one of three approaches or
a combination of them:
Concept 3: Competition
A robust competition analysis is a key principle of social marketing programmes. Competition
analysis examines both internal and external competition and seeks to address these forces.
● Internal competition (e.g. psychological factors, pleasure, desire, risk taking, and addition)
● External competition (e.g. wider influences and influencers competing for the audience’s
attention, time, and behaviour, promoting and reinforcing alternative or counter behaviours)
Interventions seek to address four key behavioural issues not just the ‘behavior change’:
3 Behavioural change, understanding what will move and motivate or assist people to make
changes
and what barriers need to be addressed
4 Behavioural controls—understanding where voluntary approaches may not work and where
ethical criteria can justify the use of requirements or controls to influence the behaviour in
the given context
Professor Jeff French PhD, MBA, MSc, Dip HE, BA, Cert.Ed
Jeff.French@strategic-social–marketing.org
Social marketing is also distinguished by its explicit embrace of theory. Theory drawn from
many disciplines to inform and steer the development of programmes. Theory is used to inform
and guide development, with theoretical assumptions being tested as part of the developmental
process. An open integrated theory approach is applied to systematically examine which form of
theory offers the greatest utility in a given context, while avoiding the tendency to simply apply
the same ‘preferred’ theory to every situation and context.
Principle 2: Segmentation
Social Marketing applies a segmentation approach, going beyond demographic and where
relevant epidemiological and service uptake data by adding data about people beliefs, attitudes,
understanding and behaviours. Target audiences are segmented using this data into sub sets
that share common beliefs, attitudes and behaviours. Interventions are directly tailored to
specific audience segments rather than relying on ‘blanket’ ‘spray and pray’ approaches.
Learn
Scope Test Enact &
Act
www.strategic-social-marketing.org
Professor Jeff French PhD, MBA, MSc, Dip HE, BA, Cert.Ed
Jeff.French@strategic-social–marketing.org