Putting social marketing into practice

Abstract

An old enemy and a new friend Marketing has long been a force to be reckoned with in public health. In the hands of the tobacco, alcohol, and food industries it has had a well documented effect on our behaviour.3–6 In the case of tobacco companies this has culminated in extensive controls being placed on their marketing activities. Social marketing argues that we can borrow marketing ideas to promote healthy behaviour. If marketing can encourage us to buy a Ferrari, it can persuade us to drive it safely. Marketing is based on a simple and unobtrusive idea: putting the consumer and the stakeholder at the heart of the business process. Whereas Henry Ford focused on selling what he could produce—any colour you want as long as it's black—modern marketers invert this rubric and produce what they can sell. This deceptively simple change has revolutionised commerce over the past 50 years, making Nike and Coca-Cola the behemoths they are. It has succeeded because, paradoxically, listening to consumers and taking care to understand their point of view makes it easier to influence their behaviour. Social marketers argue that attempts to influence health behaviour should also start from an understanding of the people we want to do the changing. The task is to work out why they do what they do at present—their values and motivations—and use these to encourage healthy options. Often the picture is much more complex than ignorance of the public health facts. Most people know, for instance, that smoking is dangerous or how their diet could be improved. They continue with unhealthy behaviour because they see some other benefit in doing so—relaxation, perhaps, or a treat. The secret for the social marketer is to devise a way of enabling them to get the same benefit more healthily. In this sense social marketing has a great deal in common with good, patient centred health care. The extensive health expertise of doctors and other health professionals is much more effectively deployed when combined with empathy for the patient. Ultimately, better health has to be a joint endeavour.