| Index |
THINKING LIKE A MARKETER
Excerpt from “Social Marketing Traction”
A NHTSA Publication Developed with
The Academy for Educational Development
Marketing is an exchange. The marketer asks the consumer to perform
an action (say, buy a Coke) and in exchange, the marketer gives the consumer
a benefit (for example, sweet taste and a cool image). This is true in
commercial marketing, where the objective is to get people to buy something,
and it is true in social marketing, where the goal can be encouraging
safer or healthier behavior. You have to think about what you are offering
members of your audience. They are unlikely to do something just because
you asked.
A marketer’s offering does not have to be something concrete. We
are all familiar with commercial marketing campaigns that try to add
value to a product by associating it with an image – that is part
of what separates Coke from the grocery brand. Social marketers can use
those same techniques and more.
So what does it mean to “think like a marketer”? In part,
it is recognizing your side of the exchange – the fact that you
need to offer something. What’s more, a social marketer should
understand some of the basic principles of marketing. Of course, there
are many marketing principles. Entire textbooks are written about just
one slice of marketing. In social marketing, however, five principles
are among the most important:
1. KNOW EXACTLY WHO YOUR AUDIENCE IS AND LOOK AT
EVERYTHING FROM THAT GROUP’S POINT OF VIEW.
Marketers are consumer-focused. It is crucial that you understand who
your target audience is and that you look at the world from its point
of view. Why does a marketer think this way? To motivate people to take
an action, you have to understand the world from their standpoint. What
do they want, what do they care about, dislike, struggle with? The people
you are talking to will not listen if they sense that you do not understand
them.
One way to get a handle on understanding an audience is to break it down
into groups. This is called “segmentation.” The idea of segmentation
is to break up the entire audience into smaller groups with whom you
can use the same strategies to reach and persuade them. It also requires
being as specific as possible in describing exactly who you’re
reaching. For each segment, you might reach members of the audience in
a different place, and when you reach them use a different pitch.
Marketing is about an exchange. If you look at ads on TV or in magazines,
you can often determine who the audience segment is for that ad. Commercial
ads do not attempt to reach the entire U.S. population. Some ads are
directed to men who watch football; others are directed to women who
are home during the day. They are not only selling different products,
but also using different strategies, which match the characteristics
of the target audience.
2. YOUR BOTTOM LINE: WHEN ALL IS SAID AND DONE,
THE AUDIENCE’S
ACTION IS WHAT COUNTS.
Unlike classroom teaching or entertainment, all marketers really care
about is action. You want people to perform behaviors that keep them
safe. Although you might want to educate them about safety, for them
to feel good about driving with a seat belt, or to call a phone number,
if you do not persuade them to perform the action, your program has failed.
It has failed regardless of how much people learned about the risks involved
or the reasons that seat belts should be used.
The best way to implement this principle is to define and promote a specific,
simple action for the target audience to perform. But what looks like
a simple, straightforward action to us is sometimes more complex to them.
The clearer you can be about the action or behavior, the more successful
your programs will be. Behavioral scientists can help you to analyze
a behavior. While you may not have those credentials, you can help break
down the steps of larger actions to understand all of the steps involved
and where problems may lie in persuading people to perform complex behaviors.
3. MAKE IT EASY-TO-IRRESISTIBLE FOR YOUR AUDIENCE TO ACT.
As noted earlier, social marketing includes the concept of exchange – the
assumption that people do things in exchange for benefits they hope to
receive. People weigh options and make these behavioral choices within
complex environments. If people believe something benefits them, they
will take the action. If they believe there are more costs than benefits
to taking the action, they typically will not take it. What marketers
are looking for is the tipping point – when people believe there
are sufficient benefits to outweigh the barriers, or that the benefits
matter more than the barriers, they are more likely to take the action.
A benefit is something that people want. Usually, it is a promise in
exchange for taking action. Some benefits might include an improved self-image,
good health, peace of mind, convenience, and the approval of people who
matter. Note that many of these benefits are “internal” to
people, something they perceive as a benefit of the action or of the
product.
A barrier is something that stands in the way of the person’s acting.
Marketers think of barriers as costs. They may be actual monetary costs
or a different type of “cost,” such as inconvenient hours
or social stigma. A barrier could be ignorance about how to act or a
belief by the target audience that it lacks the ability to act. Some
barriers you can work on; others you cannot.
To make an action easy-to-irresistible, a marketer must emphasize the
aspects of the action that members of the audience believe will be beneficial,
and minimize or eliminate those things that they believe will get in
their way. For the most part, people act in their own best interest.
It is our job as social marketers to make the action we are promoting
coincide with what members of the target audience perceive as being in
their best interests. It’s important to know what people view as
benefits and as barriers.
Sometimes we assume that the benefit that’s important to us is
the same one that is significant to the target audience. Often, this
is simply untrue. We think wearing a helmet is safer, so we do it. Members
of your target audience may not care as much about safety. Perhaps they
care more about how they look – and maybe what they need isn’t
more information about the risks of head injury but a better-looking
helmet.
4. USE THE FOUR P’S OF MARKETING.
When designing a successful marketing strategy, marketers often refer
to the four P’s. These four words help keep efforts on strategy
and guide decisions about what type of tactics – using television
spots or news events, for example – make the most sense.
Product: Think about what is being offered to the target audience. In
commercial marketing, products are clear and tangible. In social marketing,
products are often behaviors to be changed or maintained. The product
must be positioned so that its benefits are meaningful to the audience.
Price: What the audience must give up or overcome to receive the product’s
benefits. The most basic price is monetary. The highest prices are often
social or psychological. Messages and services attempt to lower the various
barriers that an audience faces.
Place: Channels and locations for distributing the product and related
information and support services. Planners must identify places that
offer maximum reach and greatest audience receptivity. Planners must
also aim to help audiences overcome key barriers by expanding access
to products and support services.
Promotion: Efforts to persuade the target audience to try or adopt the
product being offered. The promotional strategy includes not only the
content of messages but also their tone and appeal, their timing, and
the credible channels and spokespersons that will deliver them.
5. BASE DECISIONS ON EVIDENCE AND KEEP CHECKING IN.
Marketers do not simply rely on their instincts, or what they think an
audience might want. Commercial campaigns are often expensive, and their
outcome is monetary. Marketers cannot afford to blindly try out different
options. They have competition. If they head in the wrong direction,
they could lose market share.
Marketers, therefore, turn to audience research. They examine the needs
and wants, buying preferences, and lifestyles of audiences, where they
see advertising and whom they believe. This research is conducted both
at the beginning and during a campaign. Marketers also track what is
being bought and by whom. Results can be checked against assumptions.
The campaign is not only designed based on research findings but also
modified as the audience’s reaction to the marketing campaign or
product is better understood.
You should also try to use other people’s research whenever possible.
What’s important is that you take out as much guesswork as possible.
Base as much as you can on objective evidence.
So, how do you use these marketing principles in the real world? To begin,
try breaking down the behavior you want to change so that you can understand
what is behind it. Only then can you think about how you might change
it. The Academy for Educational Development developed what they call
the BEHAVE framework.
The BEHAVE framework is organized around key decisions that are made
all of the time by anyone managing a marketing campaign. It is deceptively
simple. As you will discover, however, filling in the blanks requires
a significant amount of informed decision-making.
The framework is based on the presumption that before you even think
about an intervention – a message, a system change, or an outreach
effort – you need to answer three questions:
- Who is your target
audience, and what is important to that group?
- What do you want your
audience to do?
- What are the factors or determinants that influence or could influence the behavior, and are they determinants that a program can act upon?
Once you have answered these three questions, you then can consider this question:
- What interventions will you implement that will influence these determinants so that the determinants, in turn, can influence the behavior?
The answers to these questions are the steps
of the BEHAVE framework. The reasoning for one step derives from the
previous steps. You must know a lot about your audience before you
can identify the action that you will promote. And you should have
decided upon the audience and action before identifying the perceptions
worth addressing. Only then will you consider what types of interventions
to develop, because the interventions will act on the perceptions that
will act on the specific action for that audience.
Jumping from knowing who your audience is to designing an intervention
is tempting, but this approach usually fails. We have all seen it happen: “We
need to reach young African-American men; let’s record a rap song!” someone
says. But the rap song does not connect with the audience or address
the reason these men are not engaging in the safer behavior. The
project is, therefore, doomed to failure.
Using the BEHAVE model is not difficult to do. After all, this approach
should not be entirely new to you. Every day, you make decisions based
on some evidence and some assumptions. The framework helps slow down
your thinking a bit to ensure that your assumptions are valid and that
you have thought of everything as you make intervention design decisions.
THE NEXT STEP
At this juncture, you should have an understanding of what social marketing
is all about. We have talked about the overall framework of social
marketing – that
to influence behavior, you need to understand the perceptions influencing
that behavior.
- What are the benefits people seek?
- What are the barriers to accomplishing
what your marketing program wants them to do?
We also have talked about thinking like a marketer – using many of the same concepts commercial marketers employ to sell products such as soap or beer. The BEHAVE framework gives social marketers a way to think through the behaviors they target.
BRANDING TRAFFIC SAFETY, SAVING LIVES NATIONWIDE:
THE NEED TO STAY THE COURSE
THE BRANDING MODEL
What do Nike, McDonald’s, Miller, Marlboro, Oscar Meyer and Coca-Cola
all have in common?
They’re all big brands that have created memorable marketing campaigns
that have influenced consumer behavior, increased revenues and sustained
their success by becoming part of American culture.
As we work together to convince and remind more drivers and passengers
to always buckle up their safety belts and to designate a sober driver,
much can be learned from these big-brand marketers.
Whether it’s “Just Do It,” “You deserve a break
today,” or “Tastes great/Less filling,” an effective
national campaign relies on a message and brand that resonates and sticks
with the intended audience. These corporate campaigns have been successful
(generated attention and revenue) because they followed the basic concepts
of marketing:
- Research what is important to your audiences
- Know where and how to
reach your audiences in their existing environments
- Build, sustain,
and extend your brands with relevant message and media mixes
- Implement
comprehensive, integrated national and local campaigns to market the
brand.
THE SOCIAL MARKETING CHALLENGE
Like commercial marketers, traffic safety campaign managers have the
same principal challenge – affecting consumer behavior. Typically
most commercial campaigns are focused on getting you to choose their
brand before or as you purchase a product you want. Think of the last
time you chose toothpaste and what compelled you to choose one brand
over another. Was it tarter control, price, minty taste, the color
scheme, the promise of whiter teeth, or a brand name?
In social marketing, the challenge is tougher because the objective
is to “sell” consumers on performing an action (product) that
they may not want to perform. In many cases, it’s not enough
to merely raise awareness. You must make clear to them the tangible
benefit of taking the action you want them to take.
For example, most people are aware of the dangers of not buckling up,
yet they choose not to wear a safety belt. The key to influencing audience
behavior is researching what will motivate them based on their existing
likes and dislikes. With 18-to-34-year-old males, for instance, the
data makes clear that while touting the inherent danger of traveling
without a safety belt has little impact, the credible threat of being
ticketed and losing money is a proven motivator.
BUILDING THE BRAND
Once a year, NHTSA encourages partners and States to unify their efforts
to promote the Click It or Ticket mobilization in May and the You
Drink & Drive.
You Lose. crackdown in September. By leveraging our combined efforts
to promote a universal brand focused on highly visible enforcement,
the traffic safety industry is able to saturate nearly every neighborhood,
city and state with the same message to affect behavior.
The campaigns are successful because they follow the same basics of
marketing that corporate giants Nike, Coke, and Marlboro use to increase
exposure of their messages:
- Instant Brand Recognition. People recognize,
understand, and react to messages from established brands faster than
from less-established or non-established brands. So, Federal, State
and local funds invested in a Click It or Ticket ad campaign – an
initiative that has achieved real “brand equity” over time – work
to more efficiently remind people to buckle up than do new campaigns.
- Established
Brand Credibility. Highly visible enforcement is crucial to Click
It or Ticket. Research shows that 18-to-34-year-old males are more concerned
about paying fines than losing their lives. Consumers see the highly
visible enforcement and know that the ad campaign is not an empty threat.
- Proven Brand Recall and Response. Given
today’s message-cluttered
world, finding messages that are relevant, that stick and truly influence
your audience is crucial. The message has to be conveyed clearly
and quickly. If there’s no connection, there’s no action.
- Promote
at the National and Grassroots Levels. Like politics, marketing is
about reaching local people in their daily lives. National ads and
related efforts reinforce local marketing by providing additional credibility
and recognition to the message.
SUSTAINING THE BRAND
But after several years of advancing proven highway safety brands or
messages, some states and communities are beginning to think it could
be time to move on to entirely new or differently named campaigns.
If we’re to learn from the professional big-brand marketers,
sticking with and continuously building brands like Click
It or Ticket as an instantly recognizable national, State and
local highway safety brand is critically important to our effectiveness
in actually changing public behavior, for several reasons:
- Marketing
experts tell us that achieving and maintaining national brand status
and instant brand recognition requires: 1) consistency in presentation,
and 2) broad geographical coverage.
- Our consistency on Click It
or Ticket pays off by convincing more people to buckle up. Consistency
also sustains the new social norm of buckling up, reinforcing and complimenting
that appropriate behavior.
- Broad geographical coverage makes the brand
pervasive. In our highly mobile nation of movers and travelers, the
more people see, hear, and recognize the Click
It or Ticket brand – wherever
they may be in America – the more powerful and more meaningful
the brand’s
status becomes.
EXTENDING THE BRAND IN A DISCIPLINED WAY
Obviously you cannot promote high-visibility enforcement every
day, everywhere and be credible. It’s
too expensive to buy media year-round, and the press typically will
not cover the same story in consecutive media cycles. Moreover, promoting
your campaign without enforcement is like Burger King not providing
customers burgers “your way”-- eventually they stop buying
it. Moreover, young audiences are media-savvy and are typically
more cynical. Without real enforcement, the word will quickly get out that
you’re “crying wolf.”
Unfortunately, sometimes “message discipline” is wrongly
interpreted as saying the same line every day, everywhere. Knowing when
not to use your message is just as important as using it consistently.
Too much use of a brand like You Drink & Drive. You Lose. can
actually be counter-productive and not cost-efficient.
That’s why NHTSA is currently sponsoring only one safety
belt mobilization and one impaired driving crackdown every year.
The goals of the national campaigns are to bring real national
attention to the issue and enforcement blitz, and to leverage the
power of the unified brand to local audiences through local and
national media.
USE ENFORCEMENT AND A SOCIAL-NORMING MIX
During the rest of the year, NHTSA believes localities are in a
better position to know what works best in their markets. A good
approach to bridge the media gaps between national efforts is to
launch an appropriate mix of local enforcement and social-norming
media campaigns to extend your core highway safety messages. The
appropriate mix depends on the market, but developing a marketing
plan and calendar will help ensure that you build needed dips in
your coverage so that you can create peaks for your primary campaigns
truly focused on what works best – highly
visible enforcement.
Using other nationally recognized non-enforcement brands like Buckle
Up America and the Friends Don’t Let Friends Drive Drunk provides
an opportunity to extend the core message while not over-saturating the
use of a strong crackdown message. It also allows you to look for marketing
alliances with sports organizations and businesses already familiar to
and “consumed” by your targets who might not be comfortable
aggressively promoting a strong enforcement message to their customers.
PARTNERSHIPS ARE KEY
NHTSA greatly values its strong, proven partnerships with America’s
highway safety and law enforcement partners at the national, State and
local level. By continuing to stay the course with our strong national
brands, we know we can collectively make a real difference in saving
more lives on our Nation’s highways.
Excerpts from
BRAND WARFARE: 10 RULES FOR BUILDING THE KILLER
BRAND1
By David F. D’Alessandro
“Brand building [is] about communicating with consumers, and that means
that someone on the other side of the television, radio, or newspaper has to
understand.”
“You have to understand what your brand means not within the confines of
your offices, but out in the world, where the consumers are.”
“Ideally, the brand will make decisions black-and-white not just at the
top of the [organization] but also all the way down the line, so that even the
people who answer your phones understand the right way to handle every difficult
situation they face.”
“The people who work for good brands derive a sense of belonging, direction,
and purpose from them.”
“As difficult as it is to find the right message in the first place, it’s
even more difficult to hang onto it. And that is because brands cannot simply
stand still. They must pull off the neat trick of retaining all the goodwill
they’ve build up throughout history while changing with the times – and
they have to pull off this trick again and again.”
“For every brand that loses its way because it fails to keep its message
fresh, another loses its way because it fails to keep its message consistent.”
A brand builder is “anyone who is in any degree responsible for the care
and feeding of a brand.”
“The job of the brand builder is not very different from that of the political
operative. He or she figures out a message that, first, suits the product the
voters are asked to buy; and that, second, speaks to the voters. Then he or she
drives that message home like a spear, until the product is identified with nothing
else and the voters cannot resist this juggernaut.”
“One of the biggest mistakes you can make as a brand builder is to assume
that advertising agencies want to help you build your brand and sell your products.”
“Clients always say how wonderful the idea is initially, because they like
to think of themselves as the kind of people who are sensitive to the creative
process.”
“Many [organizations] wind up wasting unbelievable amounts of money on
advertising time they don’t need…. Buy only the commercial time
you need to buy to move your audience. Any more than that is just wasted.”
“What is truly important is asking the question. ‘Will it help or
hurt the brand?’”
1 D’Alessandro, D.F. (2002). Brand warfare:10 rules for building the killer brand. New York, NY: McGraw-Hill.
Excerpts from
MEDIA PLANNING: A PRACTICAL GUIDE2
By Jim Surmanek
“A media plan should always be devised before any advertising media
are purchased. If you don’t know where you’re going, chances
are you’ll never get there. The media plan is the road map leading
to your final destination.”
“Much of media planning is judgment – informed judgment based
on knowledge of the mechanics of each medium and some empirical evidence
of how consumers react to media – but, nevertheless, judgment.”
“To guide the media planner in making correct decisions…a
structure is sought. We call this structure a media plan.”
“The objectives of any media plan define media goals. Objectives
should be established before the media plan is written, evening if the
plan recommended does not meet every objective precisely.”
"
The goals must be positive, action-oriented statements representing an
extension of the media objectives.”
“The best way to define objectives is to answer questions that
have a bearing on media selection and usage.”
- Audience: Who do you
want to reach? What is the relative importance of each group (if more
than one target audience)?
- Geography: Where should you concentrate your
media outreach efforts? Establish a target for each geographic market
and allocate the media delivery plan to each market in accordance with
these targets.
- Reach & Frequency: What reach level is needed? How
much frequency is required? Should reach/frequency levels vary by the
market you want to reach? Should reach/frequency levels vary by time
of year?
- Testing: Should a media or copy test be conducted? What information can be garnered with a test? “Testing should always be considered in every media plan…. Regardless of the media plan recommended, there is always room to conduct a test.”
“Media strategies are the solutions to the media objectives.” Be sure to answer the following questions:
- Which media will be used?
- How often will each be used?
- How much of each media will be used?
- During which periods of the year
will media be used?
2Surmanek, J. (1996). Media
planning: A practical guide. New York,
NY: McGraw-Hill
LINKS TO PDF FILES
Tips for Marketing to and Communicating with Urban Teens (pdf)
Choosing Appropriate Channels of Communications (pdf)
Localizing National Campaigns (pdf)
Six Challenges to Effective Social Marketing Practice (pdf)
Face to Face vs. Telephone vs. Online Focus Groups (pdf)
Businessweek
FRIENDLY SPIES ON THE NET
by Faith Keenan/ July 09, 2001
http://www.keepmedia.com/jsp/article_detail_print.jsp
Businessweek
THE VANISHING MASS MARKET
Anthony Bianco/July 12, 2004
http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/04_28/b3891001_mz001.htm
Wired Magazine
THE LOST BOYS
Frank Rose/August 2004
http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/12.08/lostboys_pr.html
Las Vegas Business Press
MINORITIES NEED MORE THAN JUST TRANSLATING
Ian Mylchreest/October 27, 2003
http://www.lvbusinesspress.com/articles/2003/10/10/news/news03hispanic.txt
