limit-login-attempts-reloaded domain was triggered too early. This is usually an indicator for some code in the plugin or theme running too early. Translations should be loaded at the init action or later. Please see Debugging in WordPress for more information. (This message was added in version 6.7.0.) in /home1/enabling/public_html/blog/wp-includes/functions.php on line 6121A 2004 systematic review into the effectiveness of anti-drink-driving programs concluded that mass media campaigns that are carefully planned and well executed, that reach a sufficiently large audience, and that are implemented together with other prevention activities \u2013 such as highly-visible enforcement \u2013 are effective in reducing alcohol-impaired driving and alcohol-related crashes.[xii]<\/a><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n Summarising the evidence, Woolley (2001)<\/span> [xiii]<\/span><\/span><\/a> concluded that mass media advertising, when used alone, is unlikely to bring about significant road user behaviour change. However, advertising was found to play an important role in supporting other road safety activities, in particular enforcement.<\/span> What would an effective<\/strong><\/span> process<\/strong><\/span> for designing a social change program look like? I\u2019m done my best to evolve one over the last few years. It\u2019s available on my website, see The Enabling Change process<\/a>.<\/span><\/p>\n v2.2 Les Robinson, December 2010\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n \u00a0<\/span>
\nBarry Elliott, a Australian researcher who carried out a systematic review of road safety campaigns, summed it up pithily: \u201c<\/span>you can\u2019t sell road safety like soap.\u201d [xiv]<\/a><\/span><\/span>
\nWhat reduces obesity?<\/em><\/strong><\/span>
\n A recent US National Research Council report, Local Government Actions to Prevent Obesity<\/a> provided a nice summary of the kinds of interventions that have the greatest potential to tackle childhood obesity. <\/span>According to the press release: \u201cMany of these steps focus on increasing access to healthy foods and opportunities for active play and exercise.\u00a0 They include providing incentives<\/em><\/span> to lure grocery stores to underserved neighborhoods; eliminating<\/em><\/span> outdoor ads for high-calorie, low-nutrient foods and drinks near schools; requiring calorie and other nutritional information<\/em><\/span> on restaurant menus; implementing local “Safe Routes to School” programs<\/em><\/span>; regulating<\/em><\/span> minimum play space and time in child care programs; rerouting<\/em><\/span> buses or developing other transportation strategies that ensure people can get to grocery stores; and using building codes<\/em><\/span> to ensure facilities have working water fountains.\u201d<\/span>
\nIn other words, if we wanted to run a comprehensive anti-obesity program then the skill mix would include an incentives manager, a regulator, a building code planner, a nutritionist, a transport planner, an educator (and a courageous politician or two to drive these changes) but not a marketer.<\/span>
\nSo what, exactly, is wrong with social marketing?<\/strong><\/span>
\nSocial Marketing is a system of practice that does many things well. The problem is it what does not<\/em><\/span> do well.<\/span>
\n1) Just following orders<\/strong><\/span>
\nSM almost invariably assumes the prescribed behaviour or action is right, just, appropriate, and do-able. SM rarely goes behind the funding agency\u2019s brief, so we have:<\/span>
\n\u201cJust think.\u201d (the AFL\u2019s anti-alcohol-violence campaign);<\/span>
\n\u201cQuit now before it\u2019s too late\u201d (Australian Gov
\nernment\u2019s tobacco campaign)<\/span>
\n\u201cSlow down stupid.\u201d (Queensland\u2019s anti-speeding campaign).<\/span>
\nSM takes it as given that the particular behaviour should be adopted and can be adopted. It does not ask whether the prescribed behaviour make sense, whether it is capable of being adopted or whether it needs to be reinvented, matured, debugged, or replaced with an entirely different behaviour.<\/span>
\nFor instance, California\u2019s anti-drug campaign has now abandoned the typical \u201cJust don\u2019t do it\u201d or \u201cTalk to your kids\u201d approaches and opted for a far more subtle \u201cDinner makes the difference\u201d approach, where the behaviour is simply to have dinner with your kids. This requires a fundamental re-think of the problem and the solution. We simply do not see this in typical SM programs where the funding agency\u2019s assumptions are rarely challenged.<\/span>
\n(The reason, of course, is the structural separation, in separate silos, of the policy-bods and boffins who devise strategies, the health workers who implement them, and the educators and marketers who communicate them.)<\/span>
\n2) Context blindness<\/strong><\/span>
\nSM and CBSM are tokenistic in their treatment of context. Context, as we discussed, is central to the adoptability of behaviours and products. It\u2019s more than the usual cursory consideration of the 4 Ps: \u201cproduct, price, place, promotion\u201d. Instead the entire contextual system needs to be the subject of strategizing and modification, including physical infrastructure, service design, place design, management and regulatory systems. Getting these right is usually what makes or breaks a change program, as we\u2019ve seen in tobacco control, road safety, pollution control and littering.<\/span>
\nThis work can only<\/em><\/span> be done by multi-disciplinary teams using a system-based approach. Again, it\u2019s easy to see how silos enforce dysfunction here, and busting or bypassing silos is the prerequisite for effective systemic interventions.<\/span>
\n(By the way, this is not nearly as hard as it sounds. For a rapid method for identifying doable interventions in a whole system, see How to make a theory of change<\/a>.<\/span>
\n3) Crop spraying<\/strong><\/span>
\nSM, as almost universally understood and practiced by governments, is all about big budget mass media advertising. This approach treats people as isolated individuals and sprays them from afar with messages the same way a crop duster sprays a crop of canola. But who still thinks that human societies change this way?<\/span>
\nFifty years of Diffusion of Innovations<\/a> scholarship and more recent social network studies (notably the remarkable work Nicolas Christakis and James Fowler<\/a> on the diffusion of obesity, happiness and smoking cessation through social networks) demonstrate that decisions to adopt new behaviours travel primarily along social networks of people who know and respect each other, on a wave of conversations, and mass media has very little to do with it.[xv]<\/a><\/span><\/span>
\nThe programs that are likely to influence voluntary behaviour change are therefore those based on fine-grained, conversational, local approaches (like facilitated workshops, forums, field days and the like). Unfortunately, the advertising agencies that win big budget SM campaigns have no incentive to share this insight with their funders.<\/span>
\n4) Theory fetish<\/strong><\/span>
\nIt\u2019s a fine thing to have our thinking expanded by psychological and change theories, but it\u2019s another thing to arbitrary impose a particular psychological theory on a real life behaviours of real people leading complicated lives in the real world. It\u2019s quite common to see social marketing and health promotion programs introduced with a statement that \u201cthis program is based on the Transtheoretical Model\u201d or the Health Belief Model or Social Learning Theory, or whatever. Excuse me, but this is crazy. The theory of change that informs a program should come from one place only \u2013 the reality of people\u2019s lives, and it will be very different for each set and each setting and each moment in time. Generic theories and models can help us \u201csee\u201d better as change agents, but only by getting to know people face-to-face and listening intently to their stories can we begin to construct solutions to their needs.<\/span>
\nCraig Lefebvre, a perceptive internal critic of Social Marketing, is clear on this when he writes that \u201cOne principle that distinguishes the best social marketers, I believe, is an unrelenting understanding, empathy and advocacy of the perspective of our priority population or community that is <\/em><\/span>not slanted by what the theory or research evidence does or does not tell us<\/span><\/a><\/em><\/span>.\u201d [xvi]<\/a><\/span><\/span>
\n5) Power blindness<\/strong><\/span>
\nSM and CBSM campaigns tend to be one-sided exercises in power by government-employed professionals who decide what behaviours are wrong, what behaviours are right, who needs to change, and what they need to know. Only problem is: people HATE being given advice by strangers about how they should behave. SM and CBSM don\u2019t even begin to have answers for the waves of denial and resistance that are evoked by well meaning attempts to tell people how they should live their lives. See, for instance, the literature on psychological reactance<\/a> [xvii]<\/span><\/a> and the Boomerang Effect<\/a>. [xviii]<\/a><\/span><\/span>
\nMany SM programs have figured out a way to remain oblivious to denial and resistance: they evaluate their efforts at the level of awareness. Awareness, however, cuts both ways. Awareness may<\/em><\/span> help drive change, but it is just as implicated in driving people to do the opposite to what they are told. There\u2019s plenty of evidence, for instance, that marketing efforts may reinforce good behaviour amongst those who are already doing the right thing, but drive greater denial and\/or resistance amongst the actual target audience.<\/a>[xix]<\/span> Even a seemingly benign effort like asking householders to calculate their ecological footprints has been shown to produce this effect. [xx]<\/a><\/span><\/span>
\n6) Message Fetish<\/strong><\/span>
\nLastly, SM and CBSM have \u201cmessage fetish\u201d embedded deep in their genomes. Marketing has always been an art of mass communication. It is concerned, above all else, with language and image. It will always be, for better or worse, about the magic of the message. It\u2019s hopelessly infected with the assumption that the right form of words is the key to the human psyche. If it was that easy we\u2019d all long ago have been living in paradise (or, more likely, hell). It just ain\u2019t that way.<\/span>
\nAnd my point is\u2026<\/strong><\/span>
\nI don\u2019t discount the utility of SM, CBSM and COMBI as communication practices, but as social change practices they fall short. The halo of omnipotence that currently surrounds them is unwarranted. They are a valuable support practices, not the messiah.<\/span>
\nThere is nothing wrong with marketers being involved in designing change programs. They bring a valuable set of skills and perspectives. In fact a change program that doesn\u2019t involve marketers is probably only slightly less problematic than one that is run entirely by marketers.<\/span>
\nHowever, the ability to change the world will never the shining glory of any one discipline. Successful change efforts happen when engineers, planners, politicians, regulators, facilitators and marketers step out of their cosy professional fugs, mix it up with each other, let their assumptions be challenged, be prepared to defend those assumptions with evidence, and invite the public to genuinely collaborate in this process. That\u2019s when the shining glory begins.<\/span>
\nIf not SM, then what? I don\u2019t think the alternative is rocket science, just a little uncomfortable:<\/span>
\n1) Get the \u201cwho\u201d right first<\/strong><\/span>
\nBypass silos, work in multi-disciplinary teams, and invite the users to share the big decisions with you.<\/span>
\n2) Get inspired by what works elsewhere.<\/strong><\/span> Don\u2019t start till you\u2019ve got lost in Google and Google Scholar a few times and been genuinely excited by the methods others have used, no matter how unfamiliar.<\/span>
\n3) Listen to users and non-users<\/strong><\/span> and don\u2019t stop listening till you\u2019ve been startled or confronted by what you hear.<\/span>
\n4) Notice your own power and actively share it around<\/strong><\/span>, especially with those whose behaviour you hope to change.<\/span>
\n5) Think in terms of systems.<\/strong><\/span> Map the system and don\u2019t limit your palette of interventions.<\/span>
\n6) Get all<\/em><\/strong><\/span> those who can make a difference around the table<\/strong><\/span> before you start planning<\/strong><\/span>. Let them share the thinking, the planning and the credit.<\/span><\/span>
\n7) Intervene in the context.<\/strong><\/span> Act to modify the environments in which people make their decisions, and then use communications to draw peoples\u2019 attention to those changes and model appropriate behaviours.<\/span>
\n8) Be ready to abandon your own assumptions<\/strong><\/span>, even the ones you don\u2019t know you have.<\/span><\/p>\n
\n\u00a0<\/span>
\nFor more detailed critique of Social Marketing, see: <\/span>
\n\u00a0<\/span>
\nTilbury, D., Coleman, V., Jones, A., MacMaster, K. (2005) A National Review of Environmental Education and its Contribution to Sustainability in Australia: Community Education. <\/em><\/span>Canberra: Australian Government Department for the Environment and Heritage and Australian Research Institute in Education for Sustainability (ARIES), pp17<\/span>
\nhttp:\/\/www.aries.mq.edu.au\/pdf\/Volume3_Revised05.pdf<\/a><\/span>
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\n<\/span>
\n <\/p>\n
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\nhttp:\/\/www7.nationalacademies.org\/dbasse\/Environmental%20Law%20Review%20PDF.pdf<\/a><\/span>\n<\/div>\n