Defining Social Marketing: Lessons from London’s NSM Centre – 8 Benchmark Criteria

Being in the social media space, and telling others I write about social marketing, I often preface the convo with a 25-word de-briefer between social media and social marketing.

This post hopes to further clarify and define social marketing by highlighting the eight benchmarks that London’s National Social Marketing Centre developed. And, will be used to evaluate future social marketing campaigns in the future.

Background: Alan Andreasen, one of America’s social marketing thought leaders, originally developed 6 benchmarks for defining social marketing in 2001. The NSM Centre then embarked on further evaluating these benchmarks in 2006. Some may point out that other benchmarks should be used as defining criteria, so it is important to note the NSM Centre created these eight benchmark’s as the characteristics unique to social marketing.

How to Use: These benchmarks can be used as a tool when working to identify whether a certain approach or campaign is identifiable as social marketing. These benchmarks are not necessarily the approach to conducting social marketing. However, they can help inspire new ideas and be used as a resource.

These benchmarks may also be useful when: A) considering and/or developing social marketing strategy, B) conducting social marketing trainings, C) in academic research and for reference. If one can not find these benchmarks within the work, then that work could very well not be ‘official’ social marketing.

Who Should Use: Government agencies, consultants, changemakers, evaluators, researchers, professors, trainers, policy makers, non-profits, foundations, charities, Ad Agencies, Communications Firm, Environmentalists, International Development folks, and more.

The Eight Benchmarks:

Customer Orientation: Does the strategy develop a full understanding of the consumer? Is consumer research gathered from a variety of sources?
Behavior: Is there a clear focus on behavior? with specific behavior goals in mind?
Theory: Are the behavior goals theory-based and draw from an integrated theory-supported framework?
Insight: Does the strategy work to gain a deeper ‘insight’ approach? looking at what ‘moves’ and ‘motivates?’
Exchange: Does the strategy incorporate ‘exchange’ analysis? What must one give to get?
Competition: Does the strategy address the ‘competition?’ What behaviors compete for the time and attention of the audience?
Segmentation: Are you going beyond targeting and delving deep into various audience segments?
Methods Mix: Are you utilizing an appropriate ‘mix’ of methods?

Take Aways:

The social marketing field is evolving. As the definition has continually been tweaked and expanded, it is helpful to decipher among what is and what is not, social marketing.

Social marketing, as a field of study and practice, is increasing its professionalism. These benchmarks help to decipher social marketing from public service advertising, cause communications, health communications, education, corporate responsibility, nonprofit communications, advocacy, lobbying, and social advertising. These fields may overlap and share common factors within social marketing but they in and of themselves, are unique, but could be possible social marketing tools.

To Access: The full PDF outlining these social marketing benchmarks, along with other helpful social marketing materials, can be accessed on the NSM Centre’s Web site.

6 thoughts on “Defining Social Marketing: Lessons from London’s NSM Centre – 8 Benchmark Criteria”

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craig lefebvre August 25, 2008 at 12:24 pm

Looking at this list for a 3rd or 4th time now since they were first published, I am impressed by how little marketing and social are really emphasized here. Lots of buzzwords for the ‘insiders’ – exchange, competition, theoretical frameworks. Actually sounds more like a group of professors with grading criteria than something to change how people work better at doing good. What if instead people asked themselves about their work:

1. Do I understand and have an insight into what motivates my priority audience to engage (or not) in healthier, more environmentally-conscious, and more socially productive behaviors?
2. Am I focusing on behavior as my product (what am I encouraging a large number of people to adopt or sustain)?
3. Does my program influence or try to alter the relative balance of incentives and costs for either maintaining the current behavior or adopting a new one?
4. Do we attempt to increase access and opportunities for the audience to try the new behavior and then sustain it?
5. Are communication and other promotional techniques used to assure that we reach and engage our audience in ways that are relevant, attention-getting, tap into existing motivations and aspirations and have sufficient frequency to be remembered and acted on?

Action on changing the answer to any one of these questions, let alone all of them, would bring more programs closer to what we call social marketing.

socialbutterfly4change August 25, 2008 at 1:54 pm

@craig Thank you for your comment! I was highly curious what your thoughts were regarding these benchmarks. I know you analyze many campaigns on your blog “On Social Marketing and Social Change,” and I am familiar with some of the classic ‘this is social marketing campaigns.’

However, from your perspective and experience, what are some of the best case studies or initiatives to help others gauge what truly is and what truly is not, social marketing? Are there any benchmarks that you see people using to define social marketing that you would disagree with?

Melanie Guin August 25, 2008 at 4:31 pm

What is the average timeline for social marketing efforts to begin to pay off?

http://www.charitynetusa.com/blog

socialbutterfly4change September 5, 2008 at 1:34 am

@Melanie

I apologize for my the delay in my response. You probably won’t like my answer but it depends….on objectives, timeline, resources, audience, barriers, etc. I will say that many social marketing efforts are sometimes focused on the short term behavior change or too much on awareness and promotion, rather than implementing strategies and tools that will empower the audience to make lasting, long-term behavior changes.

Nick Davies July 21, 2009 at 7:04 am

I’ve heard that the average length of a campaign is 3yrs and that around 8% behavioural change (of the target population) in that time can be considered as a successful outcome

Alex Post authorJuly 21, 2009 at 9:09 am

@Nick

I’ve heard that before, and it does offer I guess a line for “success.” But, I’m slow to live by it as 1) I don’t generally like to apply the word “campaign” to behavior change or use the word “campaign” nowadays, 2) I think initiatives should focus on both short-term and long-term goals. Three years is a bit short-term for me. …and 3) I would also offer to further define “success” beyond an 8% data point. What about qualitative benchmarks? Additionally, sustainable behavior change takes time…sometimes you might not get your data back for years after implementing an initiative, which is one reason why real measurement and evaluation of behavior change is a sticky subject that continues to frustrate many of us practitioners.

I think there’s much more that could be said on this topic. In the meantime, I encuorage one to read “Up and Out of Poverty.” Not only does it look at the issue of poverty, but it also lays out the purpose of social marketing and offers some insight into what and how we might want to re-define “success” when it comes to behavior and social change.

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SocialButterfly

Exploring the Art + Science of Social Change.

6 thoughts on “Defining Social Marketing: Lessons from London’s NSM Centre – 8 Benchmark Criteria”