Social marketing... could it really make you choose the apple over the Mars Bar?

Marketing is about people. It’s about influencing them to like and adopt what you have to offer them. But successfully altering an audience’s behaviour to achieve this goal (and then to make that behavioural change actually last) is every marketer’s ultimate challenge.

For social marketers, ‘challenge’ could be considered as a bit of an understatement. In essence, a social marketing campaign will ask an individual to stop doing an activity that is easy or pleasurable to instead begin doing something more exerting or even painful. Whether it is as straightforward as giving up three seconds of your life to put on a seatbelt, or as demanding as resisting Nicotine cravings to quit smoking, social marketing campaigns ask people to give up what is easy, in order to do what is right.

Diet improvement is certainly not exempt from the hurdles faced in other social marketing fields. In fact, a unique combination of factors means social marketers in this line of work are confronted with one of the most daunting challenges of all. Just consider some of these issues:

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  They face a David and Goliath-like battle with the junk food industry, which is believed to spend at least $200 million a year on TV advertising and sport sponsorships in Australia [1].
  


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  A recent study has suggested that the sugar, fat and sodium in junk food have the same addictive response in the brain as heroin and cocaine [2].
  

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  Unlike causes where one simple proposal can be made (e.g. “belt up” or “don’t smoke”), dietary recommendations can be much more complex, varying from one individual to the next, depending on body mass index, age, genetics, activity level, specific medical conditions, and so on [3].
  

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  There is no genuine agreement about which dietary strategies are actually most effective [3]. As evidence of this fact, you need only to consider the seemingly endless spate of diet books and weight loss programs that capitalise on consumers’ uncertainty.

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  Following from the point above, recommendations can be contradictory. For example, one study shows fibre reduces colon cancer risk and another shows no association between the two [3].
  

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  If individuals adopt one specific behaviour, there’s a chance they will only replace it with an alternative that has no greater benefit [3]. For example, swapping full-fat yoghurt for another that has lower fat, but far more sugar.
  
  

In spite of these challenges, there have been some examples of success at positively influencing dietary habits with social marketing.

The best local case is the Go for 2and5 campaign. It used its catchy tagline to increase Western Australian adults’ awareness of the need to eat more fruit and vegetables and to encourage them to increase their intake to the respective 2 serves and 5 serves every day. Running from 2002 to 2005, it employed a comprehensive multi-strategy approach that included mass media advertising, public relations, publications and an interactive website. The campaign was successful at increasing awareness in WA adults, and it resulted in a net average increase of 0.2 servings of fruit and 0.8 servings of vegetables across the population [3].

Go for 2and5 drew from the earlier 2 Fruit and 5 Veg Every Day TV advertising campaign which ran in Victoria from 1992 to 1995. After its first year of running, reported consumption of fruit and veg had significantly increased, and this higher level of consumption seemed to be maintained throughout the campaign. [3].

Looking overseas, the 1% or Less campaign which ran in the USA is a held as a model of campaign success. In the small community of Wheeling, West Virginia, health promoters ran paid advertising for 6 weeks preaching one simple recommendation: switching from full-fat milk to 1% or fat-free milk. In the month after the campaign ran, low-fat milk increased from 29% of all milk sales to 46%, and the increase had been sustained 6-months later [3]. The campaign was so successful it was replicated in other communities and, later, on a state wide scale in Hawaii, where a 10% positive change was reported immediately following the campaign [4].

On face value, you might be thinking the results of these campaigns actually aren’t all that impressive. In a sense, you’d be right, but recall again the challenges social marketers face - especially those in the nutrition game. A behavioural change effect of only 5 to 10% is actually considered a substantial success in social marketing [5], and these campaigns have met and exceeded these benchmarks.

Stay tuned for my next and final entry, where these campaigns will be examined further to glean insights into the critical components of a successful social marketing nutrition campaign.

References:

1. Caldwell, A. Health groups unite to fight junk food ads. 2009.

2. Balaji, R., Junk food may be addictive. Student BMJ, 2003. 11: p. 50.

3. Robert, H. and K. Bridget, Communication and Diet: An Overview of Experience and Principles. Journal of Nutrition Education and Behavior, 2007. 39(2S): p. S5.

4. Maddock, J.P., et al., Statewide Implementation of the 1% or Less Campaign. Health Education and Behavior, 2007. 34(6): p. 953.

5. Fishbein, M., Editorial: Great expectations, or do we ask too much from community-level interventions? American Journal of Public Health, 1996. 86(8): p. 1075.