Commercial Marketing Techniques for Social Messages: The Social Marketing Dilemma

The TV commercial is set in what looks like a pub, commonly found in many big African cities, a table of friends it would seem, encouraging one of their friends to take part in what looks like a who can down more beers competition. The scene changes to show a young man and his girl-friend order for a glass of water, the ensuing message talks about resisting peer pressure: its an HIV aids commercial. Messages like these are common all over Africa, from large outdoor signs highlighting the virtues of abstinence, to promoting testing, to informative messages about different causes, malaria, water, sanitation . The list is endless.

The African landscape:

Marketing has come of age in many respects in Africa, driven by the growth of the different media available for use in conveying key messages, the increase in brands now available across the continent, and growing consumer choice. Coupled with varied consumer media habits marketers are faced with the challenge of how to reach and talk to their target consumers. Seeking ways to differentiate in a growing commoditized market, and for the first time in many decades they are spoilt for choice Social marketing has not been left behind, in utilizing traditional media as a form of information dissemination tool to reach core targets.

In Africa and perhaps the wider developing world, social Marketing has adopted commercial marketing techniques to reach their various target groups.

The very nature of social messages is centered around just that, social issues: health care, development , governance and a host of relevant community life improving causes.

The social dilemma

Social marketing is centered around change for the good of the community. The focus on individual behavior is only in favour of wider changes for the improvement of community life. The ever growing marketing landscape in Africa has seen proliferation of media of more than 100% giving social marketers the much needed access to harder to reach communities. The result of this is that social marketing messages are now actively competing for consumer attention with commercial messages in the same media space. This is worsened by the trend where social marketers used traditional advertising models to devise messages that were relevant to their targets in communicating desired behavior changes. The Marketers solution to the cluttered markets in Africa was to go bigger and louder, gaining quicker awareness in a crowded market and placing their brands constantly in the path of the consumer. Whilst this approach worked for brands wanting immediate recognition and quick trial for their consumers, it was hardly a strategy that social messages could adopt. For too long Social Messaging campaigns have been devised in advertising boardrooms and tested to small target groups for acceptability. The results of this are clear in a number of significant instances where messages failed to actively meet their intended objectives Social marketers need to find new ways to engage with their targets. The core of social messages is in making meaningful

relationships that are deep enough to drive change in behavior. This can no longer be achieved in a crowded market place, where awareness techniques far exceed real engagement.

The real custodians:

The advertisers model for Commercial messages are individual in nature and for the good of the brand, which in many respects remain central in the overall relationship with the consumer. Studies done on the key social issues show the larger communities remain the custodians of real behavior change, as key beneficiaries of individual change in behavior. The approach to marketing for social messages must therefore lie in engaging communities who stand to benefit: for the good of all. The social Marketer now needs to consider how to engage with core targets that influence their communities behavior for the good of all and not for the good of the individual. Consequently the nature of social Marketing must change to counter the effects of the competitive landscape and engage with core targets in meaningful ways.

Social engagement
The key lies in accepting that the custodian of social messages is the wider communities who stand to benefit most from a change in social behavior. And the most powerful form of engagement comes in Experience marketing For real success to be achieved, focus should be on community ownership, partnership and

empowerment that cannot be achieved from top-down marketing mix model, as applied in traditional marketing but rather a bottom bottom-up campaign focused on real engagement.

multidimensional strategies to deliver a single thought process. There are tools will be able to effectively measure the impact of the messages beyond the traditional onal reach and recall parameters utilised in the traditional advertising models, needed most by social marketing practitioners.

Social intervention models: odels:

Social Messaging must start from identifying emotional triggers of the target audience and relating them back to the opportunity required for behavior change. This can only be done by living, and understanding the lives of the communities we seek to change. This bottom up approach assists ts in defining and understanding interventions needs and the targets emotional and physical realities from which ideas can be developed and executed. Once applied, the creative process of aligning the needs to the message ssage can be effectively developed but more importantly consistently utilized across all different forms of media, traditional and non- traditional. Integrated,

The The core of social messages is in making meaningful relationships that are deep enough to drive dri change in behavior. This can no longer be achieved in a crowded market place, where awareness techniques far exceed real engagement

For case studies on how this s has successfully been applied visit www.expagency.biz www.expagen or contact the writer at carol.abade@expagency.biz

Carol Abade is the group CEO of Exp, the largest Pan African Experiential Agency, operating in more than 22 countries in the continent.