A closer look at Social Marketing

I will be honest--I was unaware that social marketing could be applied to public health issues. One of our assignment consisted of reviewing a CDC module on social marketing. Here is what I discovered...

Social marketing encompasses key elements of influencing health behavior. Although commercial strategies are applied, changing health behavior is voluntary and marketing techniques are not used to force or coerce target populations. Social marketing principles also recognize the importance of individual welfare and how it affects the community at large. This debunks the assumptions of social marketing as advertising or awareness campaigning to reach everyone. This is a methodical process that seeks to target certain sub-populations through formative research and segmentation.Throughout our coursework in this program, instructors have emphatically expressed that thorough research of the target population is what makes an intervention or program successful. I believe social marketing principles, which is not a theory or a conventional health planning model, best embodies this mission. The quote from Wendy Carlin, a program coordinator, confirmed my sentiment. It is not a matter of raising awareness in the target population, but to understand what needs to happen to create change. 

I am amazed by the versatility in applying social marketing concepts; the CDC states that concepts can be used for environmental and policy changes, considering who the actual target audience is. Social marketing also considers  current behavior, as seen in TTM, and what motivate that current behaviors, as opposed to immediately attempting to change that behavior. It appears to be a more realistic approach to health issues in a target population. Competition is noted as “behaviors and related benefits that the target audience is accustomed to or may prefer to the behavior you are promoting”. Following social marketing planning process, researchers would know why someone would prefer a behavior with negative health outcomes over the health-promoting behavior.

As in the individual, social and environmental health behavior theories, self-efficacy is also emphasized in the exchange concept of social marketing. Starting with small, feasible goals will allow for the target audience to move towards the ideal behavior.The objective of the exchange is to increase benefits, while minimizing costs, which are also constructs of HBM. Social marketing borrows from SCT, referring to expectations and expectancies for the marketing mix. The CDC also reiterated that the planning process for social marketing is cyclical, which allows planners to evaluate from the beginning to the implementation of the program intervention. After completing the CDC social marketing module, I have discovered the usability of social marketing for health-promoting behaviors. I would have never inferred how relatable it is to the health behavior theories we have discussed.

In my next post, I will discuss Know Your Power, a great example of a social marketing campaign.