Dear Readers,
I asked myself today, if ever we, as marketers will be in a position to make a great change to the world through our expertise? Can we change the world? Can I make a difference in the change I want to see? What do I need, to get this done?
To answer the question, I’d suggest you to watch this link… http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4TdijSqYwqI . President Obama is the man who is the biggest evidence that Marketing can Change the world. He made it happen, and the key point to ponder is, FAITH in CHANGE.
This has inspired me.
Marketing is all about seeking attention isn’t it? The challenges are divided into two, passionate and non-passionate ones. If marketers were able to motivate a massive reorientation of cultural values and behaviours in relatively little time many years ago, can’t they do it again? Would you agree if I say that religion is a marketing system that was built to manage followers using the strategy called ‘Faith’? You’d agree if you’re in the passionate list.
Let me use the latest trend in marketing, the social tool as my key example for today’s topic. Could a revolution in social marketing, where marketing principles are used to change social behaviour rather than sell a product, drive a new set of values that would lead to the lifestyles and political changes necessary to confront today’s ecological crises? Absolutely yes! With this, did you notice and realized the rise of Political marketing? Mostly we tend to see the down-fall of politicians through social media, but President Obama stood firm through it too, positively!
Certainly, social marketing faces major hurdles with advertising spending approximately US643 billion worldwide. Today approximately only quite a sum of money is spent on broadcast public service announcements that market for the public good, and only a tiny portion of that is spent on sustainability issues. As social marketers craft a strategy for this critical next decade, understanding and harnessing the power of emotional story telling may be their most important task. This is how the change has started.
Well indeed, “marketer” often isn’t associated with “selfless servant of a better future.” But I think it could be, should be. Actually, I think it needs to be. A common philosophy holds that marketing represents the tastes and preferences, fears and desires, of the culture at large. In other words, we simply find out what’s happening in culture, and then we capitalize on those values and emotions in order to sell more product. We do things with rational reasons for our betterments. Of course, that’s only a part of it. But there’s more to the picture. A lot more! Marketing became the change for this.
But there are also enormous opportunities. Social marketing has a 40-year history of experience to draw upon, plus there are vast lessons to learn by observing traditional consumer marketing. Contradicting OOH advertising still pioneers the advertising formulas out there is now should be seen as a good tag with newcomers like social medias. If this happens, the change has started its work.
The internet has rapidly leveled the playing field in the media marketplace by reducing distribution costs and removing the barriers of traditional corporate gatekeepers who limited the broadcast of messages that ran counter to consumerism’s values. The change in cost effectiveness was done by marketing.
Social media has introduced a ‘viral’ distribution model through which an inspiring message can move almost instantly and at nearly no cost through networks of mutual trust. This is to play a role in the transition from consumerism to sustainability, they will need to draw on the main lesson learned by consumer marketing in the 1950s as facts alone do not sell behaviour change. Instead, people working to foster sustainable behaviour must use storytelling to reach audiences on a human, personal scale.
Iconic, story-based marketing campaigns do not simply shift the perception of a product or activity. To change behaviour on the scale they do, such campaigns have to shift how millions of people see themselves and how they are defined by, for example, their choice of cigarette, car, computer, or social behaviour. But do you see the storytelling campaigns that makes these campaigns so successful? Can you see the change in it?
In fact, in an increasingly marketplace-driven and globally connected world, marketing becomes that much more integral to social change. What if marketing were “change-guru” instead? I think it can be as Marketing doesn’t represent culture but it creates it. It doesn’t just speak to the wants of a consumer but also fuels and drives those wants.
The world is strange isn’t it? The more you’d want to understand, the lesser you do.
Yes, we can change the world as we did before!
pk
