The value of social marketing
The effectiveness of social marketing was the topic of a paper presented by New Zealander Jude Varcoe at an international conference in Berlin in May.
The managing director of the Wellington office of international research company TNS, Jude was one of a small group of New Zealanders who attended the ESOMAR Public Sector Social Research Conference. The others were John Jensen from the Ministry of Social Development, who presented a paper on living standards research, which was rated best paper of the conference and nominated for the best paper of the ESOMAR year; Sandra Kirby from ALAC and Pete McMillian from Business and Social Research, who presented a paper "The Way We Drink"; and Geeta Das, from MSD, who was on the programme committee.
Jude says social marketing has been defined as the use of commercial marketing concepts and tools to improve the well being of individuals and of society. Her paper provides a framework for assessing the effectiveness of social marketing.
"In the past 10 years there has been considerable spending on social marketing. But there is no systematic way of proving its effectiveness. My paper considers how the effectiveness of social marketing should be assessed and the extent to which effectiveness is currently determined, and suggests a framework for evaluating the effectiveness of social marketing.
"The paper suggests that best practice in assessing the effectiveness of social marketing requires systematic assessment at five levels of change (awareness, engagement, behaviour, social norm and wellbeing). To comprehensively assess the effectiveness of social marketing campaigns, their contribution at all five levels of effectiveness need to be considered."
Jude will present her paper in July this year. Contact Nina.O'Meara@tns-global.co.nz if you would like to attend.
John's paper is available at www.spear.govt.nz (under working papers).
