Flashback to your middle-school days. If you are like me, you remember the anti-smoking education you were exposed to, in particular the pictures of
black and cloudy lungs.
Medical professionals & teachers loved these things - they were so educational! The problem was, they didn't prevent kids from smoking.
The response was predictable - MORE detailed and information-packed pictures and diagrams.
You will perhaps recall the creepy "cutaway" drawing of a human body, in full color, showing how smoking damaged lungs, heart, brain and vascular system.
But even these efforts failed to motivate most youth to avoid smoking.
Finally, by the early 1990s, the field of "Social Marketing" began to mature, and medical professionals slowly realized that educating people with the facts was NOT enough- that crafting the message was more important than the message itself, at least in the eyes and ears of the people you were trying to reach.
It's a trick that Democrats and Progressives could stand to learn as well, because it is a potentially powerful tool to defeat the Karl Rove "Echo Chamber" and its grip on America.
If you think this sounds like George Lakoff's "Framing" - you are partially right. Lakoff developed a highly-specialized and stripped-down version of Social Marketing in books like "Don't Think of an Elephant." But there is a rich set of tools available in full-scale Social Marketing that go beyond the "Framing" concept.
Guru Philip Kolter defines Social Marketing as
"... the use of marketing principles and techniques to influence a target audience to voluntarily accept, modify, or abandon a behavior for the benefit of individuals, groups, or society as a whole."
Social Marketing was first conceived in 1971, when Kolter radically proposed the use of commercial marketing methods for social and health issues.
Commercial Marketing professionals will recognize many of the key concepts of Social Marketing: market research, segmentation, product, "price", place, promotion, monitoring and evaluation The key DIFFERENCES are clear when it comes to the nature of the product, the "gain/profit", the behavioral change and the type of competitive environment.
In a nutshell, Social Marketing consists of the following steps [my outline, as applied to Progressive politics, and VERY simplified]
1) Identify what you specifically want your targeted individual or population to do - ie, support a particular candidate or policy, or change a particular viewpoint. This is pretty easy to do, but it needs to be specific, and going after an incremental action is better than going after a sweeping, broad action.
2) Identify what motivates your target population (or "market"). How do they see themselves currently? What do they aspire to? What is their current attitude about the action you want them to take? How strongly is that attitude held? Etc. Note how this DIFFERS considerable from the generally-held concept of "Opinion Poll" research!! It is not asking a group of people to give you an issue you can adopt to your platform... the "platform issue" has already been identified - hopefully by good, well thought-out progressive priorities. You should never select your issue based on market research - you promote your issue with a market research based message.
3) Craft a message or campaign that addresses the wants and desires of your target population (market) within the context of the action you want them to perform - in other words, let them know that by doing the action you want, they will fulfill their desire. This is where it can get really tricky. Two big pitfalls here:
[I] You can not lie about the 'payoff' - "Vote for me and always get your beer free" is a blatant lie. This is considered unethical in Social Marketing. You can somewhat "fudge" the direct connection between the action and the payoff. As long as the 'consumer' does not walk away from the exchange feeling cheated, you have not crossed the ethical boundary.
[II] You have to concentrate on the target population's motivations, even if they seem irrelevant or counter-intuitive to your own. In fact, you might need to avoid mentioning your own motivation altogether, if it is a turn-off to the target population.
A classic Social Marketing case example is with tooth brushing. Telling people that frequent tooth brushing helps them avoid dental carries and gingivitis is not really motivational. This is the clinical motivation for this behavior, but it doesn't motivate most non-dentists. After doing some good market research, the American Dental Association started to focus on issues like fresh breath and a "brighter smile." These were things that the target population was concerned about.
Now, is the ADA lying or "bull-shitting" people when they talk about non-clinical benefits like fresh breath and bright smiles? I would say no. But, just like many people on Daily Kos, health professionals have struggled with Social Marketing, because it seems "less honest" to focus on what they consider minor points while failing to mention major health issues. Again, what is 'minor' to the health professional is NOT 'minor' to the target population, and it is the behavior of the target population that we want to change.
I will work up a hypothetical example here: Pat Democrat is running against Ronnie Republican in a local race. Ronnie is tied to a polluter who wants to dump sewage into Lake McLean. Pat is environmentally aware, and does not want the lake polluted because of the endangered Turtle Darter fish population that lives there.
Using "classic" Democratic strategy, Pat might run a campaign based on "Save the Turtle Darter!" Pat would likely lose. Pat might also try to characterize Ronnie as an "evil polluter" ... which could be hard, 'cause Ronnie seems like such a nice person, and would bring into play the dangers [and expense!] of a 'negative campaign.'
So Pat uses social marketing, and does some research about the electorate. Pat finds - surprise, surprise! - that the good people really don't give a crap about the Turtle Darter fish population. Pat could adopt a policy change, and fall in with the polluters based on this "opinion poll" - but that is bad policy, and not the intent of social marketing.
The market research discovers that a majority of the voters in the district consider themselves "rugged individuals" and identify strongly with a "frontier spirit" that is the area's historic heritage. In fact, "Frontier Days" each June is one of the area's busiest, and most profitable, events, and the locals are very proud of this festival. The festival culminates with the locals creating boats out of gaudily decorated cardboard boxes for the "Frontier Flotilla" which - you guessed it - crosses Lake McLean, ending in fireworks. Pat doesn't personally feel the "Frontier Flotilla" is a very high political priority, and sees only a potential, not a certainty, that the event would be spoiled if Lake McLean is polluted. However, this is the issue of the voters. "Vote for Pat - Protect our Frontier Spirit" - Pat will keep our beloved celebration from being ruined. And the celebration WILL be protected if Pat is elected, even though it's just a side-effect of Pat's actual agenda.
This long diary only begins to touch on social marketing. MY agenda is to get people more used to the concept - it's not cheating, or "descending to the level of our opponents." As long as we are not promising something we can not deliver, or have no intention of delivering, this is the not a dishonest excersize in "message spin". And obviously we should never flat-out lie - saying we will NOT do something that we fully intend to do if we are elected. That _would_ be unethical.
But when we expext people to support something because WE think it is good for them, and not for their own reasons, is not honesty. It's foolish, patronizing and short sighted. We need to get beyond that type of thinking as soon as possible.
