Case Studies on Social Marketing

In 2011, Volkswagen launched a new version of its Passat model with an attractive advertising campaign entitled “The Force”. This campaign starred a cute boy dressed as Darth Vader, from Star Wars. The success of the campaign was used by Greenpeace to protest about Volkswagen’s policy of not supporting the measures to reduce air pollution that were being discussed by the European Union. The environmental group remade the original advert as a way of protesting against the German carmaker. The video quickly spread through the social networks. This protest campaign was reactivated in 2015 to denounce the fraud involving the CO₂ emissions of Volkswagen cars.

This case allows us to understand the concept of green marketing from the social perspective and the characteristics of an anti-advertising strategy to put pressure on companies to modify their behaviour and fight against greenwashing.

Between 2005 and 2010, within the framework of the Policy of Wildfire Prevention implemented by the Government of Córdoba Province (Argentina), the “Primary School Sessions on Prevention of Fires of Hills and Grassland” took place.

This educational plan of action was jointly carried out by the Department of Preschool and Primary Education (Ministry of Education), the Bureau of Environment of Córdoba and the Foundation of Environment, Culture and Development. The complexity of the issue of fire required an approach that integrated institutions related to prevention, fighting and remediation of fire; therefore, a jointly work was coordinated.

This social marketing programme not only attained awareness increase within the population, but it also eventually allowed to diminish fire hotbeds in the province.

The apparel industry has been criticized for its unsustainability, with dominant fashion firms promoting continuous changes in clothing trends, product obsolescence, and ever-increasing consumer purchases. Apparel firms have also been criticized for using highly pollutant, insecure, and unhealthy production methods, setting irregular work conditions, and paying exceptionally low wages, among other unsustainable practices.

Greenpeace’s Detox campaign was a major response to the need for profound supply- and demand-side sustainability changes in the textile industry. The main goal of the Detox campaign was to reduce water pollution caused by toxic chemicals stemming from the global textile industry by targeting and securing commitment from major clothing brands. This case study draws attention to the agent/developer (i.e., Greenpeace as an NGO), main targets (brands), and the scope of the Detox campaign. It will also consider the barriers to and benefits of the pursued goals, approaches, strategies, marketing actions taken to address those barriers and benefits, and the societal outcomes and industry consequences.

Until the mid-1990s, much of the focus in social marketing was on individual behaviour change, the so-called downstream social marketing. In recent years, scholars have proposed a broadening of social marketing’s horizons beyond the individual to attempt to influence those that help shape the determinants of human behaviour, namely, the structural and immediate social environment. This broadening highlights the necessity to go upper stream in search of the causes of social problems (upstream social marketing).

This case study addresses how a more comprehensive social marketing approach can be applied. To do that, “Jamie’s Food Revolution” campaign is analysed. This campaign looks for engaging different agents in an attempt to take into account their role in the change and push governments to improve their food and nutrition policies. This campaign offers us a good example for examining the potential of an upper stream social marketing approach to address a social problem.

The present case study focuses on the application of social marketing principles to the promotion of blood donation. In this regard, many lives depend on the availability of safe blood supplies for transfusions and medical procedures, and the voluntary contribution of people is key to the success of the blood donation system. Specifically, we introduce the demographic profile of blood donors in Spain, paying special attention to the younger segment as a relevant target in promoting donations. We also detail the restraints and motivations that guide people’s behaviour regarding blood donation. Later, we describe the actions carried out by the Blood Donor Association of Cantabria (i.e. the main non-profit association in charge of creating the permanent blood bank in this geographical region) to promote voluntary donations, paying special attention to young people and experienced donors. The case study ends with conclusions and discussion questions.

At the beginning of 2016, the World Health Organization (WHO) declared the infection caused by Zika virus a global health emergency, what triggered alarms worldwide. Social marketing campaigns had a fundamental role to prevent transmission, raise awareness, and involve citizens in solving the problem.

In this paper, the application of social marketing in the case of this disease will be studied in depth. In order to do so, an exploratory study has been conducted. Images from 47 campaigns launched in 19 countries of the American continent have been analyzed.

These campaigns are characterized by being designed mainly with illustrative pictures and simple texts so as to reach the whole population. The message focuses on providing information about the Zika virus and on catching the attention of all the population in order to prevent the disease. Different tones have been used: imperative, informative, interrogative, and alarming (causing fear). All kinds of media were used to broadcast the message: radio, TV, the press, billboards, the Internet (websites, YouTube, social networks such as Facebook or Twitter), and different apps.

HIV infection has been a concerning health issue prioritised by health governmental institutions that has required the development of public health policies with an integrated social marketing intervention in an upstream dimension. A behaviour change strategy should invest in segmented communication for priority targets, in partnership with multiple stakeholders.

This case explores and discusses the integrated social marketing programme developed by the Portuguese Ministry of Health to prevent HIV/AIDS in the period 2006–2011 and its long-term evaluation in behaviour change, comparing data from 2005 and 2017. This case shows the initial diagnosis; the social marketing strategy developed for different targets in partnership with civil society organisations, following a variety of theoretical frameworks; and effectiveness evaluation in epidemic outcomes. A guide is provided with questions for discussion.

Social marketing influences in a relevant manner the process of producing and disseminating social knowledge, thus asserting attitudes and approaches according to various objectives of social evolution.

The field literature reveals the fact that for the area of public health, the studies on social marketing are based both on improvement of specific social knowledge and strategic approaches for knowledge transfer towards the beneficiaries of public health policies, transfer designed to have impact on change of attitude and enhancement of social knowledge level.

The current chapter presents a case study concerning the social marketing campaign in the area of public health, “NO to randomly taken antibiotics”, in Romania, aimed to promote adequate antibiotic use by informing the doctors and nonspecialized public concerning their risk of excessive and wrong use.

Mental health and related issues have lately emerged as a crisis engulfing the global population. Despite the recent surge in awareness and acknowledgment of mental health crisis, these problems have received scant attention from low- and middle-income countries, barriers being lack of funding due to diversion of funds to existing public health programs, government’s priorities, scarcity of trained professionals, and the difficulties in delivering mental health-care services in primary health-care centers.

Vidyasagar Institute of Mental Health and Neuro Sciences (VIMHANS) started as a mental health and rehabilitation institution in 1983. But, with sources of donations drying up, the stigma associated with mental health issues and lack of interest of the government in mental health-care sector, it is increasingly becoming difficult to run the organization.

The case examines whether the conscious use of social marketing for awareness and community engagement can result in better performance of the hospital and help it in garnering the requisite support.

This study aims to describe and analyze the social marketing campaign undertaken by the Portuguese public company AdP—Águas do Porto, E.M.—since March 2015. This campaign focuses on the incentive of promoting new habits of drinking water consumption and has been a pioneer in the water distribution sector, establishing a trend followed by other public companies in the country.

The AdP case discusses the contribution of social marketing in the changing of rooted and generalized consumption habits, the benefits of consuming tap water instead of bottled water for the individual and the society, and the strategy of the campaign and its linkage to the global city brand “Porto Ponto.”

This case focuses on the application of social marketing to a controversial cause: the eradication of child marriage, which is a common cultural practice in many countries.

Our aim is to study this problem from a social marketing perspective. Thus, we examine different projects carried out by different nonprofit organizations (NPOs) that deal with this issue, and we focus on a campaign: Thea’s Blog, by Plan International.

We conclude that causes that foster child marriage are clearly identified: they have a sociocultural and economic nature. Thus, actions for the eradication of this phenomenon should be focused on these two areas: sociocultural (tradition, religion, and superstitions) and economic (poverty and inequality).

Campaigns such as Thea’s Blog have helped to become aware of this problem in Western countries. Now, child marriage practice has a global dimension and there is a higher international pressure to eradicate it.

The Győr Kids Festival was established to be a free outdoor festival for socially disadvantaged children. The organizers later expanded the festival so it would be longer than 1 day and children could participate in all kinds of programmes including sports, culture, arts and crafts. The festival’s primary target audience were the parents of children 3–14 years old.

The product was designed to create access to cultural events, and due to subsequent behavioural changes, such as starting or increasing the participation in cultural activities, the families could experience the benefits of an improved well-being. In order to achieve the realization of the desired behaviour, the Vaskakas Puppet Theatre (VPT), as the main organizer, should coordinate different complementary approaches, namely, an economic, a technological and an informational one. In this case two major strategies can be followed: a reinforcement and an induction. In 2015, the VPT launched a development in the marketing mix to reduce the barriers of participation in the Györkőc Festival. This festival has increased the number of visitors every year, and now it is the largest free outdoor children’s festival in Hungary with 26,000 registered children and approximately 50,000 visitors.

Social innovation consists of developing and implementing new ideas to meet social needs and create new social relationships or collaborations. Social marketing can contribute to achieving socially desirable outcomes or impacts, including those originating from new solutions to social problems. The goal of this chapter is to understand how the application of commercial marketing to influence the ideas and voluntary behavior of target audiences can contribute to the development and implementation of innovative solutions to social problems. Our case study focuses on work integration as a relevant social challenge globally and analyzes the social marketing campaign undertaken by the Spanish Red Cross to promote equal opportunities and treatment in the labor market for the most vulnerable citizens. Findings suggest social marketing may not only be a key strategy to promote socially innovative initiatives for work integration but also become a social innovation of the marketing type in its own right.

The objective of the present case study is to describe to what extent the design and implementation of socially innovative activities and projects by Civil Society Organizations take into consideration the principles and tools of social marketing. With this objective, REAS (a Spanish Network of Alternative and Solidarity Economy Networks), and its online financial education platform economiasolidari​a.​org, has been selected as unit of analysis of the case. The empirical study developed reveals how REAS is effectively a nonprofit organization very oriented to the market, in the sense of adopting the concept of marketing, and how marketing-mix variables (fundamentally, the variables product, place, and promotion) have been very important in the design, implementation, and dissemination of its online platform.

The chapter presents the social marketing campaign “Ask the fiscal receipt!” as a case study for revealing the relevant contribution of consumers as actors of the fiscal policies.

The campaign developed in Romania since 2010 has powerful resonance, being compatible with practices in other European states or countries on other continents, namely, the Tax Lottery, as well as with the regional or continental policies on improving VAT collection, as a source of enhancing development and diminishing fiscal evasion.

The case study represents an example of an analysis on indirect social marketing, designed to highlight the necessity to involve the citizen within adjacent processes with impact on the general and individual welfare.

In 2015 a partnership of two Italian and three Salvadorian NGOs launched “Niños Protagonistas” Project (NPP, www.​ninosprotagonist​as.​org), [“Protagonist Children”, in English], an integrated social marketing programme based on a relational model and financed by the Italian Government. Spanning across five Salvadorian cities, this programme intended to prevent and reduce teenagers’ involvement in maras (gangs). NPP used segmentation, integrated communications and marketing mix strategies to engage 908 youths and 287 teenagers, the latter throughout this 3-year project. With an ecological strategy including the environmental systems with which children interact, the campaign reached out to hundreds of parents, women and relevant stakeholders in order to promote a culture of inclusion and interpersonal peace, diminishing institutional and intra-family violence. In addition to its international outlook, the NPP case would help researchers, practitioners and policy-makers to apply social marketing principles and models to promote inclusion and social capital, especially among young people.

This paper proposes a practical case to be incorporated in marketing courses and, more specifically, in courses of non-profit marketing and/or social marketing. From the social marketing model proposed by Mier-Terán (Igualdad y violencia de género, https://​druidadelmarketi​ng.​com/​violencia-de-genero/​Apuntes-de-clase, 2017a; Un análisis de los resultados de las estrategias contra la violencia de género en España desde una óptica de marketing social, 2017b), the main goal is to present to university students with the necessary tools to develop a social marketing campaign: analysis and test of the problem, campaign focus, definition of goals and strategies and, finally, evaluation. The starting point for this is an applied case study, carried out within the University of Cádiz (Spain), which considers the problem of gender-based violence in the university context, with a specific focus on women university students.

Accessibility in Serbia is defined through the Strategy for Improving the Position of Persons with Disabilities. Commitment activities started in 2010–2012, through the project “No Obstacles” developed by the Centre for the Development of an Inclusive Society (CRID) and the Accessibility Audit Association in Serbia (AAAS) with the support of the Norwegian Embassy in Belgrade. Contextually, the chapter aims to present a practical case regarding social marketing campaign that was developed by NGOs, through the support of local governments, major local agencies (urban planning, communal and architecture inspection bodies) on a municipality level—a Serbian case study. The implementation of this social marketing project creates the preconditions for increasing accessibility upon the principles of Design for All and building communities where all citizens have equal opportunities. The project used all the elements of the marketing mix and/or primary intervention methods.

Faced with the problem of a high accident rate in Spain, the campaign called “Caminantedigital” is an important shift in the marketing strategies of the General Directorate of Traffic (Dirección General de Tráfico or DGT in Spanish). For the European Road Safety and the United Nations Global Road Safety Week, the DGT focusses on the target audience. In this case it focuses not only in drivers but also pedestrians, who have not been taken into consideration in past campaigns. The main goal is to raise awareness through a photographic competition of the high accident rate and to encourage walking as opposed to using motorized vehicles, as well as promoting the enjoyment of public spaces. An innovative factor is that this campaign has introduced a marketing strategy based on “Creative Gamification.” One of the keys for its success is that the receiver of the information goes from being considered as a mere passive subject to being considered an active participant.

Social marketing is based on the adaptation of the contemporary commercial marketing theory and practice as a means of guiding and aiding social change campaigns. In this context, animals are abandoned and mistreated every day. Rescue organizations and public institutions spend countless hours working to save these animals. Because animal cruelty has traditionally been seen as a minor crime, basic quantitative information as to the nature and extent of animal cruelty has been limited. Therefore, the main objective of this study is to systematize the main determinant aspects of a campaign for the abandonment and mistreatment of animals as a social marketing case study (i.e., “animal mistreatment is a crime”—promotion). The case study is applied to the Public Security Police (in Portuguese contexts), but the problematic evidence in this manuscript is common to several countries in the world.