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Efficient marketing, not just short-term gain

Mark Blayney Stuart, head of research at The Chartered Institute of Marketing, discusses creative approaches to funding and marketing.

As public sector cuts have bitten over the last two years, ‘efficiency’ has become the buzz word. In principle, this means that efforts are well-used for the intended task; surely a practice that no-one can quibble with. But when it comes to public awareness marketing, are we mistaking efficiency for short-term gain?

In the previous issue of this magazine, I wrote about the need to ringfence social marketing campaigns, whereby information is provided to the public which might be educational or informative – from health awareness to family welfare allowances, for example. This is because, even in straitened times, investing in social marketing or behaviour change marketing is likely to produce significant cost savings in future years. The advantages of public education or public information marketing campaigns are widely understood and accepted, but the argument does not always stand up well in the face of economic realities.

In December last year, health minister Simon Burns announced that the Government spent £60.3m on health related advertising in 2009/10, compared to just £4.2m in 2010/11. A number of campaigns have had their funding cut completely – for example the flu vaccination campaign, sexual health/ teenage pregnancy and drugs campaigns.

There seems to be a disparity between the clear strengths of behaviour change marketing and the cuts to these campaigns. In the interest of efficiency with long-term gain, the answer may lie in innovation and creativity of fund and implement behaviour change campaigns.

Devolving control

Public sector marketers must be alive to new developments in marketing as they look for fresh ways to implement established thinking.

Traditionally, large scale behaviour change marketing campaigns have been centrally managed, by the COI. There is something attractive, even romantic, about a nationwide government marketing campaign – a connection with the very successful and now much-merchandised government marketing of the second world war, perhaps – which makes it seem the natural choice for informing people throughout the nation. Certainly, there are significant benefits to working in this way – from the cost savings made by centralising planning and media buying to the consistency of messaging and creative collateral.

But, just as the COI is set to be broken down into smaller ‘hubs’, so responsibility for behaviour change marketing is moving away from central government: its long-term benefits make it too important to abandon when central government funding is not forthcoming. One option, which is already being extensively explored, is to move towards a system of public-private partnerships. The NHS has recently launched its new year ‘pushes’ in the Change4Life and Quit Smoking campaigns – two projects that did escape the cuts – and both of these see extensive private sector buy-in and involvement. As Marketing magazine reported on January 3, the ‘Supermeals’ campaign will send four million recipe leaflets to families that have already signed up to the Change4Life campaign. Supermarkets will also be offering discounts on ingredients featured in the recipes, and chef Ainsley Harriott will be creating a recipe book promoting healthy dishes that can be created for under £5.

The campaign has been criticised for the way in which commercial brands are involved. But, in reality, it is an example of devolved social marketing. It represents a partnership between numerous bodies, with funding and support-in-kind coming from central government, local partners and national commercial brands. Critically, this partnership does not just provide a cash boost to the campaign: rather, it allows the campaign to move away from simply telling consumers that they should eat more healthily to actually making it easy for them to do so.

Just a nudge

The Change4Life campaign is a classic example of ‘nudge’ marketing: when consumers perceive that they are being helped, rather than persuaded or exhorted, they are much more likely to act in the desired way. In the same way that the Barclays cycle hire scheme in London makes cycling more attractive by providing practical interventions – the hire bikes and infrastructure – which make it easy and convenient, Change4Life utilises partnerships with supermarkets to make it cheaper and less daunting for consumers to eat healthily. The same theory applies to the new year quit smoking campaign, which, in partnership with almost 7,000 pharmacies, offers smokers a kit of practical tools and advice to help them.

If partnering directly with commercial brands offers one creative means of funding behaviour change marketing, bringing government marketers to the table alongside industry-funded bodies might offer another bite at the branded cherry. The ‘drinkaware’ campaigns, for example, are funded by drinks companies themselves, and at present there is no direct government involvement in the scheme: with the ads performing a valuable and necessary role, there is perhaps no need for government intervention or involvement in this particular case.

What is arguably needed is a firm but gentle touch from public-sector bodies, able to provide the right degree of encouragement or coercion to elicit funding and co-operation from the private sector in each case.

The ‘Start Today’ sustainability initiative provides another example of how this theory can work in practice: big brands including P&G, EDF, IBM and M&S commit to unifying their marketing for the initiative around the strapline ‘Start something good today’, used across radio, print, direct marketing and social media. The scheme is coordinated by a partnership between Start, The Marketing Society and Business in the Community, and, crucially, helps to devolve the financial commitment and risk involved. With each brand only committing to part of a whole, the resources invested by each are effectively multiplied through the use of a single strapline and call to action. It is group buying for the marketing world, and recalls the idea of a ‘common good communications council’ recommended by Matt Tee in his 2011 report: this council, Tee suggested, would link up agencies, media owners and voluntary organisations to fund government ads for free. Though not identical in its composition, the Start initiative certainly harnesses the fundamentally cooperative approach proposed by Tee.

Integration

It is worth adding one final footnote to this idea of partnership. The Department of Health has recently integrated all its communications into a single agency – Freud – to provide a better environment to support cradle-to-grave engagement with the public. Freud, of course, also handles the accounts of big brands such as Walkers Crisps and KFC – hardly, one might suggest, paradigms of a healthy diet.

If we are to believe that gone are the days of centralised, big-spending government campaigns, it is perhaps time to embrace the possibilities of partnership and devolution.

This creative approach to the funding of behaviour change marketing must be matched by an equally creative approach to the marketing itself. One of the principal dangers for behaviour change marketers is lapsing into nanny-state authoritarianism, a dangerous move when we consider the accepted wisdom that consumers are very likely to respond negatively to any marketing which tells them to ‘stop this’ or ‘do that’. There could therefore be considerable scope for behaviour change marketing which talks around an issue, rather than confronting it head on. The Drink Drive campaign has in the last few years shifted away from highlighting the effects of drink driving on the driver themselves and towards pointing out the impacts on other people. In the same way, graphic new anti-smoking adverts picture children smoking in the presence of their parents to draw attention to passive smoking.

These campaigns deviate only marginally from the tactics of old, and I would not want to suggest that there is no place for this ‘direct assault’ method, but could there also be some value in, for instance, the NHS associating itself with gyms, swimming pools and football clubs? By positioning the brand in a space which connotes health and wellbeing, not just illness, there is a more positive, encouraging offer for the consumer to engage with. Pampers have had great success talking about parenting rather nappies; it may be time to consider the possibility that the public sector could also benefit from such tangential tactics.

Trust the messenger

If public bodies can see their way to talking about effects above cause, perhaps they can also begin to countenance the idea of other parties talking around the same subjects.

The Chartered Institute of Marketing’s research paper on government marketing considers in some detail the idea of brand ambassadors, and the evidence showing that a message is much more likely to be trusted if it is perceived as coming from a real person – a firefighter, a nurse – rather than a public body. In the private sector it is widely accepted that genuine peer reviews inspire much more trust than brand messaging and there is considerable capacity for exploring a marriage of these ideas in the public sector. If testimonials – negative as well as positive – from those who have used a ‘Quit Smoking’ kit, or a made use of ‘Supermeals’ recipes could be incorporated in the marketing of these campaigns, the engagement, trust and, ultimately, results achieved will arguably be much improved.

It is in exploring creative approaches to behaviour change marketing like this, as well as creative and innovative approaches to funding it, that the public sector will secure its future in this area and continue to reap the proven and substantial long term benefits that such marketing offers.

If we can curb the behavioural cause – whether poor diet or knife crime – then we can limit the effect on society on the longer term.

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