Andy Jaeger big thinking for a small world

World Social Marketing Conference 08 – day one review

It's the morning of day two of the conference, and having missed hearing Alan Milburn speak, I thought I'd take the time for a quick update on yesterday's key speakers. I have some ten pages of notes and all my tweets as a starting point, but given the amount of information yesterday, this is just a summary.

The first half of the morning's plenary was comprehensive in its scene setting for the UK and international health context and the role that social marketing plays. After an introductory video from UK health minister Dawn Primarolo, Angela McNab (director of public health, performance and delivery at the Department of Health England) spoke about how social marketing helps people make the changes they want to make. She talked on the need for good social marketing to be based in good research, and pointed to the launch of a one stop research shop for social marketers next summer. She was followed by Philip Kotler (marketing god... not sure if there's a more appropriate job title) who gave a presentation provocatively titled "Reducing poverty through social marketing". If I was in any doubt that marketing was going to save the world, Philip Kotler was extremely persuasive. He set out a series of principles in social marketing, namely

• framing the problem
• segmenting the market
• targeting segments where the most good can be accomplished
• determining desired behaviours
• developing strategies using all four tools in the marketing toolbox
• and finally monitoring and evaluating results

As a sideline, the four Ps themselves have been under much discussion, particularly on the sidelines of the conference, with lots of talk on whether they provide a robust and comprehensive framework. Anyhow, as much as Kotler's talk was an exposition of the great work done my many social marketers internationally to help people raise themselves out of poverty - the example of Mechai Viravaidya, Thailand's "condom king", sticks in my mind - it was also a clear call to action to us as marketers. As he said

Social marketers with compassion with ask "What do you need?" and "What will help?"

Broadening the context even further, Sameer Deshpande talked about the history and context of social marketing in Asia, particularly in south Asia, reminding us that marketing is not education, nor is social marketing social networking. Sudha Tewari ended the first half of the morning's plenary with a reminder of the real life impact of social marketing in the Indian context. With 5.5 million unwanted children born every year and 6.7 million unsafe abortions, condom marketing has never been more important, and her organisation is leading the way.

The second half of the plenary (after a very well deserved coffee) saw Nancy Lee take the stage with four real life examples of the four Ps in practice, looking at tobacco cessation, littering, HIV testing and... using flags to cross the road. I can't begin to imagine that British people would even begin to think about carrying a flag across the road, but the benefits in road safety were clear. What was most striking from Nancy's presentation was the enormous cultural difference between the UK and US - and it certainly is a reminder to challenge my assumptions that I understand the context in which I'm working. Driven by real consumer understanding and deep research, Nancy's examples showed how powerful the four Ps could be in shaping meaningful social marketing programmes.

The afternoon's highlight for me was Katherine Lyon Daniel (from the US's national centre for health marketing at CDC). I heard her speak twice, once on the context of health marketing in the US and the other on her centre's work on autism. She was inspiring. In her first talk, she challenged us to take a long view, and talked about a native American saying that

In every deliberation we must consider the impact on the seventh generation.

She talked too about how consumers were overwhelmed with information, how we needed to ensure that health information, like Coca Cola, was "within an arms reach of desire" and she set out four principles for social marketing, drawn from her centre's mission statement. She said that it should be

• Accessible - ensuring we address issues of the digital divide and health literacy
• Accurate - stressing the need for us to document research and outcomes and build our body of knowledge as a profession
• Relevant - needing to understand audiences and undertake appropriate research, and finally
• Timely - again, going back to the concept of information being within "arms reach of desire"

That's it for now. About to start day two in earnest!