Social Marketing

I was impressed by the Vietnamese in promoting 3R initiative in Hanoi during my visit there recently. Instead of normal propaganda campaign by the Government agencies, they engaged the upcoming and popular young artist to be the spokesperson for the campaign. The 3R song with easy to understand and sing melody attracted many young followers. The artist becomes idol for many teenagers and they tried to follow what have been envisioned for, to recycle.

While disseminating civic messages is always the main task of Government, many have been carried out without considering the attractiveness and appearance to the target groups. Youngsters with their ideas and thinking is no more interested to listen patiently to the boring civic message. They like to see multimedia effect, to follow what their idols are doing and etc. Hence, effective social marketing is becoming important if one hopes to engage the mass.

Social marketing is effective if it is fulfilling the social need of the people and closely related to their needs and desires. For example, launching a campaign urging people to walk on the street instead of driving is heading to failure whereas the community is very much concerned about safety and crime prevention. Priority has to be set first, and right.

Secondly, to provide sufficient infrastructure in meeting the social needs. For example, urging people to recycle without providing sufficient infrastructure and incentive is tantamount of doing nothing and leading to failure.

Thirdly, social marketing must have a sustaining plan in which follow through actions and constant monitoring is critical in ensuring that the success of a campaign is not for a short period only. More than often, numbers of campaign with very good start ended up with failure due to sustainability issue.

Having said these, social marketing is critical at the beginning and gearing for a good start is important for project implementation. Therefore, engaging artist or popular figures as the programmes promoter or ambassador might be a good idea.