 At
the November 2005 face-to-face meeting of AD/SSI participants,
Ric Young, president of E.Y.E., joined the group to share
his expertise and thoughts on social marketing as a means
to frame, inspire and sustain social innovation.
In the 1970's, Phillip Kotler and Gerald
Zaltman pointed out that standard marketing principles could
be used to promote ideas, attitudes and behaviors that benefit
target audiences and society (Weinreich, 1999, www.social-marketing.com).
One frequently quoted definition of social
marketing is 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" (Andreasen, 1995).
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 For
over twenty-five years, Eric (Ric) Young has been at the vanguard
of social marketing, a discipline focused on the development
of strategies and campaigns to promote social change. He is
the founder and president of E.Y.E., an agency that works
with leading government, corporate and voluntary organizations
to address some of the most pressing issues facing contemporary
society. Young has been the architect of numerous campaigns
for change ä and social innovation projects in areas
ranging from health, environmental sustainability and ethics
in sport to citizen engagement, corporate social responsibility,
community development and global humanitarian relief.
He has written and lectured extensively
throughout North America on the challenge of change, and the
remaking of community in the 21st century.
He currently serves on the board of Ecotrust
Canada, the Canadian Advisory Board of Right To Play, the
editorial advisory board of the Social Marketing Quarterly,
and the Corporate Citizenship subcommittee of Imagine Canada.
He has joined the faculty at the Center for Corporate Citizenship
at Boston College. He is a fellow of The Royal Society of
the Arts and a member of Massey College’s Quadrangle
Society.
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The conversation with Ric Young regarding
social marketing was free-flowing and evolving. Below you
will find a few of the highlights from our conversation.
- The Historical Moment - There seems to be a
new narrative being constructed, one that moves from mechanical
to relationship. Social marketing understands the strategies
that create robust relationships over time. Social marketers
have a relational view of the world; they aim to build
sets of relationships with constituencies over time.
- Creating the narrative - We need to identify
our narrative for the future – our metaphor for
the future. Lisbeth Schorr says there is a statistic for
every story, and for every story there is a statistic.
Communicating works when you harness passion to truth
telling: voice and authenticity matter. Marketing is not
about messaging; it is the making of meaning.
- Live the change you desire to see –
Develop a narrative of possibility, talk to scale players
and scale thinkers.
- Connection between conversion and conversation
– There is an important difference between conversion
and conversations; social marketing tends too much towards
the former, as do many, if not most, non-profits. Dialogue
(listening, not talking) is key.
- Role of efficacy - It is critical to establish
relevance or a sense of advocacy for the issues we’re
working on. Caring without acting is hard; you must give
people something to do. “They became what they beheld.”
– Robert Blake
- Branding : A vessel filled with meaning
– Branding is a system to manage meaning as
practice. A brand has a personality and character.
- A new starting point for social change - Ideas
are an important part of social change. Communication,
or the sharing of ideas, also plays a role. But what are
the patterns that get things done? One model that seems
to work has three elements:
- Aspiration – we can project powerful desired
futures
- What is your real hypothesis of change?
- Theatre of operation: ideas, branding, place where
idea will grow, tactics to drive meaning into an idea.
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Our
Millennium - An initiative with Community Foundations
of Canada to encourage Canadians to come together to do something
for the future of their communities as a way to commemorate
our passage into the 21 st century. This initiative fostered
more than 6500 projects in over 700 communities across the
country involving millions of Canadians, and was heralded
by The Caledon Institute as “a national exercise
in building social capital in communities”. Learn more
here.
True
Sport - Working with the Canadian Centre for
Ethics in Sport, E.Y.E. have been the architects of True Sport
– a Canada-wide social movement to promote values-driven
sport and to help sport live up to its full potential to make
a powerful positive contribution to the development of both
kids and communities. In its development stages, True Sport
has fostered a high level of collaborative participation by
federal and provincial governments, and major national sport
and community agencies.
Right
to Play - E.Y.E. created the social brand for
Right To Play – The Red Ball and its central idea, Look
After Yourself / Look After One Another – as
the heart of a global humanitarian movement to harness the
power of sport and play to help children in the world’s
most troubled places. The Red Ball has become integral to
both Right To Play’s programming in the field (promoting
health, development and peace) and to its global marketing
which engages sport celebrities from around the world.
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