User:Amacgray/sandbox

Additional Social Marketing "P's"

Publics-- Effective Social Marketing knows its audience, and can appeal to multiple groups of people. "Public" is the external and internal groups involved in the program. External publics include the target audience, secondary audiences, policymakers, and gatekeepers, while the internal publics are those who are involved in some way with either approval or implementation of the program.

Partnership-- Most social change issues, including "green" initiatives, are too complex for one person or group to handle. Associating with other groups and initiatives to team up strengthens the chance of efficacy.

Policy--Social marketing programs can do well in motivating individual behavior change, but that is difficult to sustain unless the environment they're in supports that change for the long run. Often, policy change is needed, and media advocacy programs can be an effective complement to a social marketing program.

Purse Strings-- How much will this strategic effort cost? Who is funding the effort?

Everett Rogers, communication scholar and author of “Diffusion of Innovations”, claims that the following five factors can help determine whether a new idea will be adopted or not, including the idealism of the shift towards “green”:
 * 1) Relative advantage: is the degree to which the new behavior is believed to accrue more beneficial outcomes than current practice.
 * 2) Observability: is how easy it is to witness the outcomes of the new behavior.
 * 3) Trialability: is the ease with which the new behavior can be tested by an individual without making a full commitment.
 * 4) Compatibility: is the degree to which the new behavior is consistent with current practice.
 * 5) Complexity: is how difficult the new behavior is to implement.

Corporations are increasingly recognizing the benefits of green marketing, although there is often a thin line between doing so for its own benefit and for social responsibility reasons.

In January of 2012, Patagonia became the first brand to register for "Benefit Corporation" status. A benefit corporation is an alternative to its standard counterpart as it operates under the legal premise of 1) creating a positive impact socially and environmentally in its materials, 2) uphold Corporate Social Responsibility in terms of considering its workers, its community, and the environment as well as challenge its current boundaries in those areas, and 3) report its activity as a company as well as its achievements in social and environmental areas publicly using a non-partisan third party source.