Social Marketing vs. Applied Behavioral Science: Old Wine in New Bottles?

Behavioral science has been around for a long time. But in the past decade or so it, along with behavioral economics, has become a trendy buzzword that many people outside the field seem to interpret as meaning “magic tricks to make people do what you want them to do.”

With the increasing emphasis on nudges and behavioral insights, I see organizations using these types of tactics in isolation, rather than as part of a systematic approach. Often, the result is a micro-level change—a tiny tweak in framing the message, sending a reminder at just the right moment, or adjusting existing processes.

These behavioral science-driven techniques sometimes have a big impact, and the practice of using methods like randomized controlled trials to sort out what works and what doesn’t is a significant step forward in proving the effectiveness of behavior-focused interventions.

But despite the increased hype about the behavioral insight approach, it still feels like old wine in new bottles.

The field of social marketing has used similar behavioral science-derived approaches for decades, in a comprehensive framework that ensures that we pack as much impact as possible into our interventions. Social marketers look at the big picture, understanding our audience and how all the different behavior change levers can work together.

In case you’re not familiar with social marketing, the term refers to an approach that applies marketing techniques to create behavior change for social good. Social marketing is not the same as social media marketing. And it’s not just about creating public service announcements.

I've encountered the term “applied behavioral science” and thought “Hey, that’s essentially what social marketing is.” But I rarely see behavioral scientists (from outside the field) mention social marketing as an approach they can use to address health, social, environmental and other related issues.

When social marketing is done right, and when its practitioners are conversant with behavioral science in theory and practice, we can “wrap” the smaller nudge-level tools into a broader intervention that motivates and enables individual behavior change and creates a supportive environment to make it sustainable.

The social marketing mix guides our thinking on how to put behavioral science principles into play in a strategic way. When social marketers talk about designing and positioning our "product," we’re drawing on behavioral theory to determine how best to motivate people to take action and make the behavior attractive.

“Price” is all about making the behavior as easy as possible; behavioral economics also offers tools for using mental biases and heuristics to our advantage.

“Place” helps us think through how we can use nudges and other methods to reach people at the right time and right location where they are making a decision about taking action.

“Promotion” is how we package and distribute the message about the product, which requires a strong understanding of behavioral science and social psychology. We can bring in social elements to influence adoption and spread of the desired behavior and optimize the messaging based on theory and testing.

Other elements of the social marketing mix take into account the larger context and identify strategies to address various stakeholders, potential partners, organizational and governmental policy, and funding issues. Each of these pieces require knowledge of how to leverage individuals, organizations and policymakers, which is critical for many of the types of wicked problems we address.

Social marketing programs done correctly follow a systematic development process involving audience research, segmentation and testing that is used to ensure that the elements of the strategy are evidence-based. It’s not intended as a one-off activity, but an ongoing, comprehensive approach to create and support individual and social change.

Note that this post is not intended as a criticism of behavioral scientists. For the most part, it seems they are just not aware of social marketing as a parallel discipline. That’s our fault as a field. Ironically, social marketing has a major branding problem. I will admit that although I consider myself primarily a social marketer, I have rebranded myself as a “behavioral design strategist” when talking to people from outside the field because that's what they understand.

In contrast, behavioral economics and behavioral science have managed to make themselves the next shiny object for policymakers and social impact-focused organizations. These are useful tools to apply to social change efforts. But we also have a more comprehensive and proven process in social marketing. We need to do a better job of getting the word out, including allying with the applied behavior science field. While social marketing is firmly based in behavioral science, behavioral scientists can benefit from the tools social marketing offers as well.