Social Advertising in India

                            Social Advertising in India Health Care Sector

Social Marketing: putting people at the heart of policy, communications and delivery to encourage behaviour change.

The term social marketing was first coined in the 1970s and refers to the application of marketing to the solution of social and health problems.  However, over the years there has been a growing perception that it is being confused with generic marketing especially recently with the advent of on line tools such as "social media" and "behavioural targeting".

The health communications field has been rapidly changing over the past two decades. It has evolved from a one-dimensional reliance on public service announcements to a more sophisticated approach which draws from successful techniques used by commercial marketers, termed "social marketing." Rather than dictating the way that information is to be conveyed from the top-down, public health professionals are learning to listen to the needs and desires of the target audience themselves, and building the program from there. This focus on the "consumer" involves in-depth research and constant re-evaluation of every aspect of the program. In fact, research and evaluation together form the very cornerstone of the social marketing process

While social marketing initially developed from a desire to capitalize on commercial marketing techniques it has in the last decade matured into a much more integrative and inclusive discipline that draws on the full range of social sciences and social policy approaches as well as marketing. Increasingly social marketing is being described as having 'two parents' - a 'social parent' = social sciences and social policy, and a 'marketing parent' = commercial and public sector marketing approaches.

Social Marketing
Social marketing is the planning and implementation of programs designed to bring about social change using concepts from commercial marketing.

Among the important marketing concepts are:

• The ultimate objective of marketing is to influence action;
• Action is undertaken whenever target audiences believe that the benefits they receive will be greater than the costs they incur;
• Programs to influence action will be more effective if they are based on an understanding of the target audience's own perceptions of the proposed exchange;
• Target audiences are seldom uniform in their perceptions and/or likely responses to marketing efforts and so should be partitioned into segments;
• Marketing efforts must incorporate all of the "4 Ps," i.e.:
  • Create an enticing Product (i.e., the package of benefits associated with the desired action);
  • Minimize the Price the target audience believes it must pay in the exchange;
  • Make the exchange and its opportunities available in Places that reach the audience and fit its lifestyles;
  • Promote the exchange opportunity with creativity and through channels and tactics that maximize desired responses;
• Recommended behaviors always have competition which must be understood and addressed;
• The marketplace is constantly changing and so program effects must be regularly monitored and management must be prepared to rapidly alter strategies and tactics.

Social sector advertisements in the print medium during the period January-June 2007 have registered a 17 per cent drop in volumes compared to the same period in the previous year.   According to a recent AdEx India study, a division of Tam Media Research, the dip was due to lack of issues that required immediate communication.   "Social sector advertisements are almost always issue-driven. So, if there is an issue that requires urgent communication, for instance, awareness on how to tackle sudden occurrence of bird flu, social sector advertisements automatically go up. Therefore, the 17 per cent dip in print advertisements by social sector in 2007 may be because the advertisers did not have any immediate communication requirement," pointed out Siddhartha Mukherjee, vice-president of communications, TAM Media Research.   While the print ads for social sector went down, they saw a 10 per cent rise in volumes on television in the same period as compared to the previous year. The agency says the two could be linked.   "Audio-visual medium, with celebrity endorsements, appears to push the credibility of the issue. For instance, if Amitabh Bachchan is pitching for polio immunisation, a lot more families, especially in rural areas, would take interest in it," Mukherjee said.   According to the AdEx report, in early 2007, maximum social ads were endorsed by Amitabh Bachchan with ‘health awareness' ads being most prominent among all.   According to advertising agencies, organisations that advertise heavily in social sector ads, spend at least Rs 5 crore annually in print advertising.   Moreover, government organisations as well as NGOs have increased ad spends by about 30 per cent over the last five years owing to the growing economy and literacy levels that have also boosted their work volume.   According to the AdEx report, early 2007 saw non-metro city newspapers garnering 56 per cent of the overall social ads, while mini-metro newspapers followed close behind with 11 per cent share.   Metro city newspapers had only 3 per cent share in social sector advertising during the first half of 2007. This is because most social sector activities are region-specific, say advertising agencies.   Approximately 40 per cent of the ad volumes in print in the early half of 2007 were accounted for by the Government of India, Ministry of Health and Family Welfare, Government of Assam, NACO and Government of Delhi.   Out of the approximately 400 social sector organisations that advertised in print throughout 2007, more than 90 per cent of ad volumes were garnered by government organisations. Comparatively, 2006 saw central and state governments garnering 93 per cent share in social advertisements in print.   While the Centre topped the print advertising chart in 2007, followed by the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare, the latter had topped social advertisements in print last year.   The top new organisations in social sector advertising in 2007 include the Government of Tamil Nadu, Cancer Aid and Research Foundation, Laadli Mumbais Girl Child, Government of Uttarakhand, PneumoADIP, Ministry of Social Justice and Empowerment, Ministry of New Renewable Energy, ICONGO, SIAM, and Suvarna Gramodaya.