WHAT IS COMMUNITY BASED SOCIAL MARKETING AND HOW CAN IT HELP PROMOTE SUSTAINABILITY?
A Solution

Historically, organizations promoting sustainable behaviors did so using only awareness-building tools such as brochures, newsletters, and advertising. Program success was often determined by the number of promotional pieces printed and distributed, and the frequency and strategic placement of radio, TV, and newspaper ads. Doug McKenzie-Mohr and William Smith, in Fostering Sustainable Behavior, respond by saying that, “While education and advertising can be effective in creating public awareness and in changing attitudes, numerous studies show that behavior change rarely occurs as a result of simply providing information.”

An increasingly popular alternative is ‘community-based social marketing’ (CBSM), which is defined by Alan Andreasen in Marketing Social Change as “the application of commercial marketing technologies to the analysis, planning, execution, and evaluation of programs designed to influence the voluntary behavior of target audiences in order to improve their personal welfare and that of their society.”

Proactive change agents around the world use CBSM to build innovative, interactive programs, the bottom lines of which are behavior change. The success of their programs is measured by the number of commuters who get out of their cars and onto their bicycles, the number of water customers who shut off their sprinklers during the hottest part of the hottest day in July, and the number of businesses who recycle all reusable materials.

All Fresh Outlook Foundation programs reflect social marketing theory, which states that:

  • Consumer behavior is the bottom line.
  • Strategies must begin and end with the customer.
  • Target markets must be carefully segmented.
  • Market research must be used to design, pretest, and evaluate programs.
  • Competition must always be recognized.
  • Programs must reflect the four ‘Ps’ of commercial marketing: product, price, placement, and promotion.
  • Programs must be cost-effective.
In keeping with its Passion Statement, the foundation will enable and encourage community sustainability via the design, development, and delivery of well-researched and tested audience-focused community-based social marketing programs that inspire sustainable behaviors at home, work, and play.

The Fresh Outlook Foundation Values Community-Based Social Marketing

We believe that community-based social marketing — which uses commercial marketing strategies to analyze, plan, execute, and evaluate programs that influence the voluntary behaviors of target audiences — is key to addressing the behavioral piece of the sustainability puzzle.

We believe that we can enable and encourage behavior change by using skilled and passionate facilitators to deliver proven, practical, affordable, and measurable community-based social marketing strategies that build awareness, transform attitudes, encourage appropriate actions, and track resulting performance in specific target audiences.

We recognize that community-based social marketing is being pioneered by proactive communities everywhere using tools such as ‘commitment,’ ‘prompts,’ ‘norms,’ ‘communication,’ and ‘incentives’ to remove internal and external barriers to sustainable behavior — and that these communities are willing and able to share their successes.