[caption id="attachment_1069" align="alignnone" width="297" caption="Smoking area ceiling mural"][/caption] One of my favourite projects involved working with an Asian government organisation tasked with improving the health of their citizens - it felt good 'selling' concepts for the greater good of a community. It also did not hurt that the whole marketing team has PhDs in health disciplines (know their stuff!) and share a passion for public service. Their far-sighted CEO decided that social marketing could be productively supplemented with the learnings from commercial 1 to 1 marketing - to produce Citizen Relationship Management (CRM) with a focus on the individual citizen as an interactive part of her community. The parallels with "Above the Line" versus "Below the Line" are quite clear. Well, the project opened a whole new world of marketing for me - but there are some old familiar names responsible for the definitive text of Social Marketing - Kotler and Lee. Here is their latest work. Rather than a one way street - commercial marketing teaching these social marketers how marketing has evolved since the 1970's - I found that Social Marketing's focus on the customer (citizen) in the context of their community - is spot on relevant to our growing use of online brand communities through social media. [Social Marketing is '...a practical approach that integrates the insights from individual, interpersonal and community theories and evidence. Typically the approach aims to change both the individual and the environment around the individual.'] This is where our idea that we should mash-up the best of the old and new (conversational) marketing came from. A good example of this convergent thinking was recently published by the Australian Public Service Commission - 'Changing Behaviour: A Public Policy Perspective'. In this recommended paper, Kotler & Lee's 12 principles of effective social marketing are presented. They are also a good set of principles for online community marketing...

1. Take advantage of prior and existing successful campaigns (see this site for examples)
2. Target people most ready for action (social marketers knew all along that you first need susceptible citizens. Interestingly, they call them 'sneezers' rather than 'Influentials', consistent with the concept of the 'contagion' of ideas)
3. Promote single, doable behaviours - one at a time
4. Identify and remove barriers to behavioural change
5. Bring real benefits into the present
6. Highlight costs of competing behaviours
7. Promote a tangible object or service to help target audiences perform the behaviour (Helplines, 'How To' cards etc)
8. Consider non-monetary incentives in the form of recognition and appreciation
9. Have a little fun with messages
10. Use media channels at the point of decision making
11. Get commitments and pledges
12. Use prompts for sustainability

I am going to go back and take another look at this school of marketing - looks to me that us commercial marketing types can learn more than a little about community from the  folks trying to persuade us to eat well, exercise more often, not smoke... generally improve the quality of our lives.