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“How do you perform your social campaigns?” I asked an experienced NGO officer once.

“Ineffectively,” she answered candidly with a smile.

It’s a painful truth, but it’s one that we must swallow nonetheless. Those in the business of promoting social causes face an arduous uphill battle as they try to replicate the results of their for-profit marketing brethren.

What Doesn’t Work
The measurements are vague. The aim is arduous: long-term behavioral change. The variables are numerous. And, as a number of studies are showing, some of the traditional communication strategies of social marketers are ineffective. In fact, some of them produce the opposite of the intended results.

A number of social marketers still focus on communicating to the target market how lousy the target market is doing.

“You should never throw garbage anywhere other than its designated space. But you! You’re a litter bug! We know you throw garbage all over the place!” the ads would admonish the target market.

In practice, this and its variations, actually creates averse feelings towards the request. A study by Reich and Robertson in 1979 showed this. It may elicit feelings of guilt, reactance, and resentment, but studies have shown that it doesn’t produce noticeable difference in behavior. In other words, you’re insulting the target market for nothing.

Yet another approach is by emphasizing how a problem is very common. The message starts with “7 out of 10 men in Indonesia are heavy smokers,” or “Corruption is almost a culture in Indonesia. Virtually everyone working in the government is involved,” then followed by a call to action, something along the lines of “change starts now, and it starts with you.”

This focus on the unfavorable behavior actually reinforces the negative behavior. Using Cialdini’s terminology, this is social proof. His 2003 research pointed out people would prefer to do what everyone else is doing over doing the right thing.

Another well-intentioned, but misplaced marketing effort is the Landmark Event approach. A large, well-publicized event of course has its charms. It lends itself to easier measurements (number of participants, reach of media coverage, etc), and sponsors love it. However, when the even promotes uncommon behaviors, it may produce undesirable effects.

Take tree planting for example. How often does the average man plants trees in his day-to-day life? Not often enough, one might say. So why not organize a massive tree planting event? Sounds like a great idea? That’s what I thought too. My previous foundation even conducted a tree planting event with the 2007 Miss Universe getting down and dirty with us.

There is no problem if one measures the success of such an event from the number of trees planted during the event. The problem starts when one starts using the event to promote messages such as, “To be carbon neutral, one must plant 77 trees in his lifetime.”

Considering how seldom the average person plants trees, such a message may result induced hypocrisy. The message is along the line of, “To be a good citizen of the world, you must complete this uncommon, monumental task.” Any message along this line may produce short-term results (perhaps the message spreads because of its novelty nature) but long-term results would be nil. In fact, 3 out of 4 studies on marketing message using induced hypocrisy show no significant results. The 4th study shows that it actually produces the opposite of the intended behavior.

So, what’s a social marketer to do? Look for part 2 of this article, coming up soon.

Ghani Kunto is a Co-Founder of YouthLab Indonesia, one of Southeast Asia’s premier youth market research company. http://enterthelab.com By day, he is also the Director of Youth and Welfare of Komodo Dragon Foundation. By night, he hosts talkshows on radio and television. You can find his blog on marketing, entrepreneurship, and social marketing