Fostering Sustainable Behavior

Conclusion

A colleague of mine, who designs ICI waste reduction strategies for a regional municipality, told me that while he was reading a draft of this book he grew increasingly uncomfortable. His discomfort, he explained, came from realizing that the tools and strategies set out here are more effective than the ones he was presently using and that he would have to change how he designed and delivered programs. He went on to explain that using community-based social marketing would involve relearning important aspects of his job and that he had grown comfortable with the tools that he has used for some time. Resistance to using community-based social marketing, he correctly pointed out, has to be overcome even by those who believe in its utility.

Overcoming Resistance in Yourself

Clearly, the tools and strategies detailed in this book will initially require more work. Implementing a community-based social marketing strategy requires careful preliminary research, strategy development, piloting, implementation and evaluation. However, this attention to detail is in large part why community-based social marketing is often so successful. Following the steps described here can greatly increase the likelihood of your program being successful. For example: the literature review allows your program to build on the work of others; the focus groups and phone survey allow you to determine what barriers will need to be overcome in order to design an effective community-based social marketing strategy; piloting the strategy will allow you to test its impact and further refine the strategy to increase its effectiveness; and evaluating the program once it has been implemented across the community will allow you to speak with confidence regarding its impact and provide you with the data you need to ensure continued funding.

Program design and evaluation are critical components of community-based social marketing, but they are not unique to it. Increasingly, program design and evaluation are being mandated for a wide range of social programs. As governments are increasingly held accountable for the wise use of tax dollars, program design and evaluation will become the norm rather than the exception. Further, over time program design and evaluation reduce the cost and effort that has to be expended to foster sustainable behavior. Programs that are not properly designed and evaluated are frequently less effective. As a consequence, several programs often have to be developed and delivered to bring about the same change in behavior as one well designed program. In short, properly designing and evaluating a community-based social marketing strategy will initially entail more work on your part, but this effort will be rewarded both through greater impact and lower long-term costs.

Overcoming Resistance Among Colleagues

The approaches detailed in this book are new and may be seen as unproven by your colleagues. How can you overcome their resistance? It will help if you prepare for some of the problems that you might encounter. You will need to be prepared to deal with concerns your colleagues will have over the length of time that it will take to design and implement a community-based social marketing strategy. You will need to reassure them that the approaches outlined here are more likely to succeed, and as a result, resources and staff will be used more responsibly and effectively. Additionally, be prepared that some of your colleagues may not want to evaluate programs for fear that evaluation might produce negative results. You may also encounter resistance to community-based social marketing since using these approaches may be seen by some colleagues as an implicit admission that past initiatives were not designed as effectively as they might have been. Here are some suggestions for increasing support for community-based social marketing in your organization: ask colleagues to read this book (copies can be ordered online at this site); bring in a speaker to introduce community-based social marketing to your organization (McKenzie-Mohr Associates provides workshops on community-based social marketing: see Workshops); distribute articles that demonstrate the effectiveness of community-based social marketing strategies; ask someone who has successfully implemented a community-based social marketing strategy to come and speak to your organization about it; ask that current programs be rigorously evaluated and that the evaluation focus on behavior change rather than awareness of marketing messages. It is easy to believe that a program is working if little or no concrete data exists to measure its success. Be prepared that it may take a considerable length of time to overcome resistance from your colleagues. Indeed, you may put forward several community-based social marketing proposals only to find each of them rejected. Remember, as you advocate with resistant colleagues, you are slowly creating new norms regarding how programs should be carried out. You can be confident that eventually community-based social marketing strategies will replace the more traditional approaches discussed in Chapter 1 for one simple reason: They are more effective.

Going Forward

As we move rapidly toward a world with twice today's inhabitants, and ever dwindling renewable resources, the tools and methods described here will become increasingly important. Community-based social marketing holds great promise in promoting sustainable behavior. The speed with which community-based social marketing supplants less effective traditional approaches will depend, however, upon the quick dissemination of successes and failures in using this new approach. As discussed in the chapter on effective communication, the adoption of new lifestyles is often the result of social diffusion. Similarly, the adoption of new techniques, such as community-based social marketing, occurs primarily through the informal sharing of information. I encourage you to actively discuss your efforts in using these new techniques with others, and to make use of the on-line discussion forum at this site. Through this forum, you have the opportunity to share your successes and failures in the use of community-based social marketing, and to learn from the experiences of others who are tackling similar problems. Each time we share information and refine our techniques, we collectively become a little wiser and move a small step closer to the sustainable future our children deserve.