What gets the best results in Social Marketing?

National awareness campaigns verses local and regional tactical campaigns?

From reading a raft of press articles and based on a variety of client conversations, it appears that the debate over the effectiveness of national mass market campaigns and local or regional tactical campaigns continues when it comes to social marketing. What media should the client be using to change behaviour and what is the best allocation of budget?

National campaigns will often look to utilise mass media such as TV, press, cinema and the internet. This is due to the fact that they cover a high percentage of the identified target market and from a media planner’s point of view coverage looks good. On the other hand maybe the more sophisticated planner might look to use local and regional media as the target audience has more affinity with them. They often utilise the more trusted media such as local press, local radio, magazines and direct mail due to their closer relationship with the community.

In addition to the above, when you start considering the sensitivity of the message and how the media is being consumed it has a big impact on its effectiveness. Are people really likely to think hard about a personal issue when consuming media in a public situation - public consumption of media is anything where there are more people than just themselves consuming the media? If you are talking about health issues such as sexual performance, obesity, smoking, stress, heart disease, etc, am I really going to react to a cinema advert when I am trying to enjoy myself?

The above might be nothing new, however, it hits home for social marketing when you start analysing results. Pound for pound, local and regional campaigns – for social marketing - appear to drive more direct response and in turn results. The answer will be that national campaigns generate huge amounts of awareness and touch more people, but what good is web hits, unprompted and prompted awareness, etc, if people don’t take action? For example; I know its bad to be overweight, doesn’t mean I’ll do anything about it? Local media can often give the problem and the solution at the same time as they engage all aspect of the community.

Food for thought. We’ve got some interesting campaigns running which might well confirm this theory.

Kim McLellan
Director
Hunterlodge Advertising