Jupiter Doesn’t Get It

by | Sep 1, 2006 | Blog, Social Marketing, Social Media

David Schatsky of Jupiter Research has posted a response to the concerns of the social marketing community about the use of the term “social marketing” that shows that Jupiter doesn’t quite understand the issue:

If we find over time that the term loses its relevance in our industry we’ll revisit it. We have renamed coverage areas in the past. But for now, and with no disrepect to those who have worked at the other social marketing for years, whose efforts I applaud, I think the name for our coverage area is appropriate in our context and will stick with it.

Perhaps they already ordered the letterhead and don’t want to have to change it.  Perhaps they don’t want to appear to be backing down to bloggers again after an earlier controversy.  I’m afraid they see this as just an issue of us trying to defend our turf, when it should be about helping their customers find them and avoiding confusion when faced with pages of completely irrelevant (to them) search results for social marketing.

We lost this battle.  Can we win the war of words over time?  If you agree that this is an important issue for our profession, what do you think we can do to keep the semantic waters from becoming muddied?

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Leading Horses to Water – the Role of Advertising

by | Aug 31, 2006 | Blog, Communication, Marketing

Clara Jacob asks at the Post Haste blog why advertising alone can’t change behavior:

Is this true? With advertising we can get people to eat candy bars. But we can’t get them to drive the speed limit. Neuter their pets. Stop using meth.

Why is this? We did a direct mail piece recently, which included a coupon for a dollar off a gallon of milk and 5 cents off each gallon of gas. It got a 60 percent response. That’s phenomenal. It changed the behavior of hundreds of people. They went to stores and purchased milk and gas.

Couldn’t “social marketing,” as it’s called in the nonprofit world, change behavior equally well?

Or, as Wiebe asked about 50 years ago, “why can’t you sell brotherhood like you sell soap?” Yes, we can use the same tools, but people do not change their complex health and social behaviors as easily as buying a $3 carton of milk. Advertising is only one piece of what needs to be considered in a social marketing program, and if the other necessary components are not there to back up the advertising, the campaign will not be successful.

Quoting myself from the comments:

The important role that advertising can play is in raising awareness that there is a problem that needs to be addressed, or in helping an individual realize that they are personally at risk if they do not adopt the behavior being promoted. Advertising can create an environment in which the target audience develops a favorable impression of the “product” (ie the behavior) and begins to see it as socially acceptable and desirable.

But for an everyday lifestyle change (e.g., eating in a healthy way) or even an occasional but emotionally difficult behavior (e.g., getting an HIV test), advertising does not always offer enough personal support to lead someone to take action. That usually takes interpersonal communication from an influential person like a doctor, friend, family member or even a knowledgeable and caring person on the other side of a telephone hotline.

Advertising can lead the horse to water, but whether the horse drinks 8 glasses a day is another question.

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Social Marketing Morality

by | Aug 31, 2006 | Blog, Social Marketing

Seth Godin discusses the morality of marketing and the fact that we are responsible for what we sell and how we sell it:

Let’s start at the beginning:

Marketing works.

Marketing (the use of time and money to create a story and spread it) works. Human beings don’t make rational decisions, they make emotional ones, and we’ve seen time and again that those decisions are influenced by the time and money spent by marketers.

So, assuming you’ve got no argument with that (and if you’re a marketer who doesn’t believe marketing works, we need to have a longer discussion…) then we get to the next part of the argument:

Your marketing changes the way people act.

Of course, we engage in social marketing precisely to change the way people act. And given the critical, often life-and-death health and social issues that we address in social marketing programs, we have an extra obligation to the public trust to conduct ourselves in an ethical manner. The positive outcomes that we are trying to achieve in improving people’s health or quality of life never justify engaging in questionable practices to achieve our ends. I’ll leave the last word to Seth:

As marketers, we have the power to change things, and the way we use that power is our responsibility–not the market’s, not our boss’s. Ours.

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Dueling Social Marketing Definitions

by | Aug 30, 2006 | Blog, Social Marketing, Social Media

On the heels of Jay Bernhardt’s explanation of why the CDC uses the term “health marketing” instead of “social marketing” and Craig Lefebvre’s take on the term (“What the heck is health marketing?“), comes a new offensive on the definition of social marketing from the other direction.

Jupiter Research has just launched a new Social Marketing research service that will “provide marketers and site owners with recommendations on how to profit from the use of consumer generated content, blogs, podcasts and other emerging media tools.” Apparently they didn’t get the memo that there is already a long-established field called social marketing that uses marketing to bring about health and social change.

The burgeoning use of the term “social marketing” to refer to social media has already created confusion among techie types I know who have misunderstood what type of work I do. This leads to people talking past each other, thinking that the other knows what they mean when they are not on the same page at all. It’s as if one group of people suddenly started calling a new kind of dog a “cat;” they are very similar in general — four legs, furry, domesticated — but in the details they are quite different.

As a result of my initial discussion of this issue in March, the folks at Forrester Research decided to change the name of their “Social Marketing Bootcamp” to “Social Computing Bootcamp,” and they no longer use the term “social marketing” to avoid exactly this type of confusion. While I agree that “social marketing” would have been a great term to adopt if it did not already mean something else, it’s about 35 years too late for that.

I hope that, like Forrester, Jupiter will take another look at their erroneous terminology and take another stab at coming up with a term that is clear and accurate. Social network marketing, social media, consumer generated media, digital marketing — whatever they want to call it is fine. It would help potential clients find them instead of the many firms who offer social marketing services (using the real definition). And people won’t assume that Jupiter does health & social change research when they mention their social marketing research services. Do a google search for “social marketing” and you’ll see that for pages and pages of results there is nothing but links for companies and organizations working toward social change.

So if you are a social marketer, please join me in leaving a comment for Emily Riley, the lead analyst on the Social Marketing Service at Jupiter Research to let her know why they should consider changing the name, as well as letting other companies know when they use the term incorrectly.

It’s not just a matter of semantics. It’s about all of us doing the work we do best and making sure that the right people know about it. Everyone wins when clarity reigns.

UPDATE: Rohit, Craig and Carol have all weighed in on this issue as well. No response from Jupiter yet. I agree wholeheartedly with Carol when she says:

It is my hope that no one is made the villan here and that both groups can cooperate to make the differences in the two practices and methodologies clear. I think that this would serve the “greater good”. Additionally, the public discussion in the blogosphere could generate positive attention for both.

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Marketing to Terrorists

by | Aug 28, 2006 | Blog, Marketing

Back in May, I wrote about the filming of an anti-terrorism PSA intended to deter would-be suicide bombers in Iraq from their task. The spot (which can be viewed from the embedded YouTube window above) is now out, along with its accompanying campaign called “Terrorism Has No Religion.” It portrays the violence done by a suicide bomber who blows himself up on a busy street, with slow-mo Hollywood-style special effects.

Having seen the spot, my initial concerns about reinforcing just how effective bombs are in killing and injuring as many people as possible still hold. The PSA portrays the exact outcome that a suicide bomber intends; appealing to his humanity is not going to change the way he interprets the scene. And an ad on television (or a billboard or newspaper) is not going to have the same effect as someone’s imam telling them directly what they are expected to do to fulfill their religious obligations.

I also question the effectiveness of their slogan “terrorism has no religion.” I think if you ask people around the world which religion is most associated with terrorism, most will say Islam. If they are trying to convince non-Muslims with this slogan that Islam does not condone terrorism, they will come up against a lot of resistance. If they are trying to appeal to Muslims, the slogan makes no sense – shouldn’t it be turned around to “our religion has no terrorism” or something along those lines? The campaign seems to be trying to reach everyone, and in so doing is effective for noone.

While there is no information on the website about who has created this campaign, it appears to be Muslims who do not agree with the terrorist approach that many in their religion have adopted. They explain their message as:

To reveal the true and ample doctrines of Islam, and expose the contempt these terrorists hold for the spiritual essence of our religion. These terrorists and their ungodly way are the ones responsible for making Islam an easily marked target in the eyes of the world, as well as causing Muslims to be the subject of criticism before the world community.

The website and campaign quote verses from the Koran that directly challenge terrorist practices and appeal to religious values, which I had suggested might be effective in my original post because that goes to the heart of the issue. However, the television ad does not provide much reason for a suicide bomber to think twice about what he plans to do. Perhaps a better approach might be to show the bomber arriving in heaven eager for his 72 virgins and getting the door slammed in his face.

Rather than appealing directly to the suicide bombers themselves, this campaign might be more effective in changing the attitudes of people in the society who would not commit terrorism themselves but accept it as something that is positive (or at least just part of the normal course of events). If the bombers were no longer celebrated as martyrs and heroes by their community, it might become more unappealing.

I applaud the creators of this campaign for taking a stand against the dark forces of their religion (even though they do so anonymously) and wish them great success. I don’t think, though, that this campaign is going to do it.

You can read what others had to say about the campaign on Virtualpolitik and on Houtlust, where Marc collected opinions of bloggers from around the world about the campaign.

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