I have to admit to still being somewhere between Cloud 9 and a state of shock over the sheer intensity of the conference, and my successes at the Conference. 
The Good
First and foremost, a massive thank you to TCP and to the National Social Marketing Centre for the event. I had the honour of working in with the two teams by running the WSMC twitter account. I owe a massive debt of thanks to Patrick Ladbury at the NSMC for letting me set up and run the WSMC twitter account. Thank you. It’s a tribute to you and the Centre that I was able to come into the picture at the last moment and just slot into the framework.
The Brilliant
Philip Kotler. This man is one of the most seriously impressive people I’ve had the honour to meet, and to hear him talk about social marketing in person is an amazing privilege. This man is a living legend in the marketing business, and a genuine icon of the commercial marketing sector. He was there at the opening of the conference, and was present and participating throughout the entire process. I know many key note speakers fly in, speak, and fly out. He was there in the sessions, listening, learning and observing the progress of the discipline he helped build from a great idea to powerful social force.
Plus…
 - Kotler, P, Dann, S and Dann, S (2008) Social Marketing Conference Photo, World Social Marketing Championships, Brighton
I have a signed copy of the Kotler and Lee (2008) Social Marketing text, and I was lucky (and bold) enough to be photographed with Kotler, and have my photo taken with Nancy Lee (my social marketing icon).
 Lee, N and Dann, S (2008) Social Marketing World Championship Dinner, Brighton The Downright Astonishing
I was named as one of the 18 senior social marketing figures. The conference held a lunch time breakout session to have “Lunch with senior social marketeers”. The list of names of the Social Marketing “Team of the Century” (as I’ve taken to calling it)
- Clarence Room – Philip Kotler & Nancy Lee
- Sandringham Room – Bill Smith & Seynabou Mbengue
- Osborne – Rob Donovan & Tane Cassidy
- Lancaster Room – Gerard Hastings & Alan Andreasen
- Edinburgh Room – Francois Lagarde & Jeff French
- Ambassador Room – Sue Peattie & Doug McKenzie Mohr
- Library – Craig Lefebvre & Katherine Lyon Daniel
- Surrey Room – Stephen Dann & Ray Lowry
- Gloucester Room – Sameer Deshpande & Juan Manuel Urrutia
I am honoured and humbled to be in the same line up as these icons of the business. I was affectionately referring to the conference as the World Championships of Social Marketing, and I think I can comfortably say I walked out of the event with a title belt and a baggy green cap as part of the World Championship squad.
The Future
This conference involved me staking a major bet on the production of a new definition of social marketing which paid serious dividends. The full paper based on the conference presentation has provisionally been accepted into the Journal of Business Research with no changes. There’s interest in the methodology used in the paper from another journal. People were literally screencapping the definition with digital cameras. This was the biggest event of my career, and one of the most amazing days of my life to stand before peers, icons and idols, and put a legitimate claim on defining the meaning of social marketing.
There’s much more to recap and write up from the event for the next few days. For now, I’ll just settle with being extremely honoured and humbled to be part of an amazing event.
Social marketing is perpetually on the rough end of the pineapple with what we set out to achieve – a competitive alternative to sex, drugs, rock & roll lifestyles, high fat food, chocolate and high speed driving. We need all the firepower of the commercial techniques and then some – commercial marketing is smart enough to walk away from the laggards and the hyperresistant – we tend to start with them and work downhill once we’ve saved the unsaveable.
Social marketing is the mission impossible team – getting voluntary adoption of competitive alternatives to hedonism in the name of uncertain future benefit.
We do it. We do it well, and we do it with marketing. That’s why we’re social marketers.
Social marketing is the adaptation and adoption of commercial marketing tools and techniques for social change.
Social media marketing is the use of social networks, Web2.0, social media and networked word of mouth for marketing purposes.
For a good head to head between the two terms, see Nedra Weinreich‘s post on social marketing covers the dual terms quite comprehensively.
In February 2007, I presented a seminar session on “Adding Commercial Marketing Thinking to Government Marketing” at the IQPC Government Marketing 2007. The take out from the two day session was clear – social marketing in Australia is accepted, succeeding, and being aided by two key factors – community engagement and the drive for evidence based policy.
Community engagement is the cornerstone of the successful approaches profiled from audience generated media such as the Transport Accident Commission’s “Make a film, Make a difference” campaign through to the novel approach to message channels used by the NSW Food Authority’s AU$60K campaign for “Health Fish Message”. NSW Health reaching out to pregnant women through the networks of fishmongers and retail outlets to provide key information at the point of purchase (and most valuable decision making moment). The Child Support Agency’s shift from payment enforcer to support mechanism for the separated parent was perhaps the biggest shift from seeing the client as a problem to be solved to engaging the end user as part of the process.
Evidence based policy has also provided a supportive framework with market research driven interventions and community engagement increasingly enabling the government to place limited resources into more effective campaigns. Post-intervention evaluations have become a cornerstone of the Australian approach – none better than the NSW Health “Environmental Tobacco Smoke and Children” campaign which tracked significant increases in the desired behaviour, and found areas for future inventions from formal market research and real world data (eg calls to helplines).
Ultimately, if any lesson needs to be learnt by the government social marketer, it’s simple self confidence. Many presenters peppered their speeches with remarks of how they could do better, or needed greater market share or weren’t as innovative as their commercial peers, whilst at the same time explaining how they were using cutting edge internet campaigns, bleeding edge technology and novel marketing solutions to reach and persuade resistant audiences. As the commercial marketer, my speech became more of a pep rally as the core lesson to learn from commercial marketing. In my view, the need step of commercial marketing thinking to add to social marketing is realistic targets, longer term goals and a big dose of self confidence. After all, commercial marketing calls 40% a success, 80% the iPod, and 90% a good time to seek a break up of the market monopoly.
Step 1. Talk to the intended audience
Seriously, just talk. Ask the target audience about what they do that you’re looking to change. What do they like about the behaviour? What don’t they like? What would they do differently if you gave them a chance? What do they think you can do to help them change?
Step 2 Forget “health” as a benefit.
Nobody cares about health. You don’t buy a box of unhealthy at the drive-thru – you buy convenience, flavour and instant gratification. Appeal to those options before you appeal to the generic “health” option.
Step 3 Make an offer. Then get ready to start the negotiations.
Put the offer on the table and see what the market thinks. Remember, this is a negotiation process – this is the deal making, haggling and bargaining. If their offer won’t achieve your goals, it’s not that much use. But if your offer isn’t accepted by the market, you’re not getting closer to the goal anyway. Compromise where it helps, hold the line where it doesn’t and strike a deal. You can always make another later offer .
Step 4: Don’t cheat
Don’t cheat. If the market doesn’t like your offer, go back and make a better deal. Don’t force change with law if you’re not making headway by making deals. It’s cheating, and the market feels cheated. You’re saying that “if you won’t play nicely, we’ll force you to play”. If you must, just take your bat and ball and go home. Otherwise, go back to step 1, and start the process again to find a better offer for them.
Step 5. See it through for the long term
Social change campaigns take time, effort and a willingness to get things wrong along the way. Commercial marketers do not have immediate, automatic and market dominating success any more than social change campaigns ever do. Take a lesson from Apple. It took seventeen years, hundreds of different offers and a totally unrelated product to their computer line up to create the iPod success. So take an iPod social change approach – look for success after refining the offer again and again until you strike a sweet spot with the consumer with the right deal.
After all, you want them to do something for you, the least you can do is give them something they want in return.
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