Fomenting Change and Revolution [July 06]

This month I’m on a personal mission to revolutionise social marketing research. And hopefully, social marketing itself. Actually I think it'll take longer than a month. Let’s not dwell on that.

The cause of my mission was a recent project that required me to read a lot of social marketing research reports from a lot of different government departments.   Much of it done by the same few companies which in turn led to a lot of conceptual “sameness”. 

Most of it was contained in 75 page reports that were in turn accompanied by 75 slide PowerPoint presentations. The embodiement of "dispropotionate response". Neither weapon should  ever be inflicted on actual people trying to make a decision.

My job was to summarise these reports and draw conclusions from them.  In most cases I reduced the findings to one or two paragraphs, because I was looking for insights and there were only one or two per project. 

As you’d expect. They’re not that common.  Harder to find though, when there's 75 pages.

It’s fun being critical, but better to be constructive. My revolution will begin by taking the point of view of the ultimate funders of government sponsored social marketing. What do we want from the exercise?

• Since we, the people, are the subjects, both of the research, and the campaigns that result, we'd appreciate a realistic portrayal. Find out what we’re really like and what really matters to us. [The best reports did that.]
• We don't want programme designers to be tricked into believing that the intentions expressed by a person in a situation as artificial as a survey or a focus group bear much relation to what we’ll really do. We don’t usually know what we’d really do unless we’ve already often done it or something very like it.

• And bear in mind that you're not the only kids on the block here.  Clear and present danger is a great motivator for change but the story of the boy who cried wolf does apply.. Too many social messages on too many different themes lead to the social marketing equivalent of compassion fatigue. Guilt fatigue!

Defensive liars are a far more common outcome of social marketing than reformed sinners. Even when it works and the message really does get in! Awareness is one thing but it is the very weakest measure of all.

Especially when it's up against the kind of defences the general public can bring to the battle for their hearts and minds. As I said to the Social Marketing Downunder Conference in 2005, if only you were trying to increase the prevalence of denial! That really works.

It’s hard to get people to do the right thing. They don’t want to – even if they do.

 Despite numerous exhortations to quit smoking, exercise more, prepare for unscheduled adversity, drink less binge-ily or save the planet, the social change initiatives that have worked best have almost always incorporated changes in scientific knowledge, cost, enforcement practice, safety procedures or technology which have served to make changing easier and the consequences of NOT changing much more problematic.

Social marketing and communication is often very useful in making these other elements apparent to people. That's great, but it’s part of a package, not a universal solution. We need to think conceptually of complex systems with multiple parameters, needing multi-faceted solutions, not of discrete behaviours under conscious moral control.

I guess you've realised I have a fundamental difficulty with the underlying assumption that you can make self-harming or myopic people into paragons of social virtue through mass communication alone.

I think humans are who they are - for better or for worse. As Shakespeare and Jane Austen have clearly illustrated, human nature doesn't change very much. We only change when we have to, we don't anticipate unless we must and we don't read the instructions first.

 

[Copyright Windshift Communications Ltd 2006] Distribute [unchanged] with impunity. Quote with attribution.