Astute Marketing Accomplishing Social Goals

“Shared value is not social responsibility, philanthropy, or even sustainability, but a new way to achieve economic success.”

- Michael Porter and Mark Kramer

Marketing is an indispensable part of a business and needs to be strategically effectuated to pull out propitious results.

There are copious marketing strategies with multifarious aims. Unmapped furtherance can lead to a state of dilapidation. The archetypal steps of marketing- research, innovation, communication incentive schemes etc. can escalate profits but they can also be employed for public good.

Designing a goal and a purpose, especially a specific one, can help target more people through education and communication programs that promote a salubrious lifestyle.

Ruminating on crucial questions like: What behavioral changes can be imparted by the brand that has a measurable impact on the society whilst benefiting the brand? What is the best approach to accomplish these ambitions? Is the organization confident that the campaign can amplify existing public sector initiatives? How can trust be established between the brand and stakeholders? Does the company have enough resources and capital to successfully pilot the initiative and scale it up? A concept of “brand do- brand say” has been postulated, where “brand-say” refers to the purpose of marketing and “brand-do” is the social challenge taken up by the brand.

Credible brand advocacy can aggrandize a vision for the future and speak for shared humanity. In contrast, using Marketing ploy can raise serious ethical questions and even lead to lawsuits that can harm the reputation of the firm. We have a great deal to learn from business paragons like AB InBev and Unilever that have addressed public problems from health & disease to violence. They have undertaken global health challenges and have established their supremacy that is worth acknowledging. Lessons from these brands can help structure ways to market a product or service. Above all, influencing is what marketers do the best.

Handwashing with soap had been trivialized, until Unilever came into the lime-light and partnered with NGOs, national/ international organizations, and even competitors (like P&G in this case) to fillip hand washing in middle and low income countries whilst marketing the 125 year old Lifebuoy soap. The iconic ad that aired in 1992(India), portraying a football player bathing with the soap after a match, to a decade later ad released showing Bunty replacing his “slow-sabun” with bacteria killing lifebuoy had stupendous impact. A controlled trial of 2000 Indian families has shown 25% curtailment in the number of cases of diarrhea, 15% reduction in acute respiratory infections and 46% in eye infections that lead to blindness in the fullness of time. Attenuation in the number of premature deaths and pneumonia has been axiomatic only after mammoth marketing that normalized handwashing with soap, building the concept of shared value. Lifebuoy is now the world’s most selling antibacterial soap, growing it’s business at the rate 46% faster than any other.

The approach to catalyze positive change in the society has four key elements : behavioral change, gathering internal support, measurement of flair and extrinsic partnership.

Unilever’s perspicacious approach of promoting handwashing makes perfect sense.

Similarly Knorr, another Unilever’s brand, renowned for its instant soup and noodles in India, aimed to ameliorate women’s health in third-world countries like Nigeria to impede iron-deficiency, Anemia. It launched an iron-rich bouillon product to add into soups and stew. The campaign publicized adding green and leafy vegetables apart from the ferrous supplement and included celebrities and famous pop singers to further stress their nub. Instead of reciting health benefits, the ad focused on invigorating mother-daughter relationships and portraying how appetizing and fun to make healthy dishes can be.

The placebo effect produced by this campaign affirmed that even greens can be delicious and ergo there was a 41% increase in the number of people who started putting veggies in everyday meals and 28% increase in people who used bouillon-product in their soups/stews. Had marketing not been so nimble-witted, the numbers wouldn’t be this tall.

BUT, not all companies have goals to healthify people, some may have exacerbated their name and then obliged to do some damage control of their iniquitous act. This is what “fair & lovely” needed to do.

AB InBev,a multinational drink and brewing company, vowed to tackle domestic violence that was inadvertently promoted by their 1980s ad which focused on defining masculinity. It feathered Carling’s black Label as a chief drink after a long and tiring day.In 2000s, the brand associated “their ‘’ beer with entrepreneurs and businessmen, the real role models. That’s where things started to stumble, when the number of alcoholics skyrocketed in South Africa, being the leading cause of murders, rapes and violence targeting women. Instead of abstaining from the predicament, Carlings decided to come to grips with the problem. It wanted to keep South African women safe whilst maintaining its brand name and remain as an emblem of masculinity. This is ironic and risky to play with because the problem it seeks to resolve is what its product sought to create. Hence, marketing needs to be rational and able to make a solid case.

So, in 2017, Carling launched a TV commercial, a social media campaign under the hashtag #NoExcuse with tagline “No excuse for women’s abuse” and a concept of “smart drinking”.

It partnered with big media communication and influencer marketing firms to take its message to the public via soccer fields and other mass gatherings. The players of the two soccer teams involved in the campaign, wore armbands with “#NoExcuse” written on them.

Local social entrepreneurs were engaged and almost 45 million people were involved giving persistent support, which trivialized the need for big infrastructures.

AB InBev has pooled $1 billion for social marketing with goals like creating low-alcohol beverages taking 20% of the total volume production by 2025. It can’t keep advertising the opposite of what it delivers. It has previously launched no-alcohol beers as well.

There is no data that shows the decrease in rapes/murders/ domestic violence, because it is hard to assess its effect in such a small span of time, unlike the handwashing campaign which lasted for more than a decade. But this colossal campaigning can surely be deemed successful because the public was satisfied. In a survey, 69% of South Africans adults declared that the campaign helped break silence on domestic violence.

What we learn from these companies is that, almost any brand can espouse social issues by associating their product/service to it and taking up the challenge to combat the impediment to the burgeoning world. For example, Companies that manufacture art and craft items can promote these hobbies that embrace the power of recreational art. New startups that are trying to centralize the idea of clean eating can focus more on careful analysis and measurement of the impact that their product can produce with real data figures like Lifebuoy did, rather than simply promulgating health benefits. Women can be employed in endorsing cars to debunk the myth that “women are terrible drivers’’ which is totally in contrast to statistical studies. This way, they can be cheered up. Brands and issues can even be like chalk and cheese to produce humanitarian effects, like a cement brand promoting living in harmony in a joint family, a coffeehouse chain promoting same-sex marrige etc.

The present-day necropolis of the market is filled with marketers who patronage the conventional marketing tactics leading their business to nowhere. After all, thinking out-of-the-box is what makes a brand outshine others.

This article was summited for Madazine, the bi-annual magazine of the Marketing and Advertising Club of Vinod Gupta School of Management, IIT Kharagpur. It backed the 1st position.