I came across the term “pyromarketing” in this week’s Economist as I was reading about the growing trend of reconciliation between religious and corporate America which intrigued me and I wondered how it might fit with “green” or sustainable marketing.
Pyromarketing is a term coined by Greg Steilstra, formerly the chief marketer for Zondervan, a religious publishing house owned by Rupert Murdoch’s HarperCollins which oddly enough also owns Regan books which publishes “How to Make Love Like a Porn Star”, but that’s another story in of itself. Instead of using traditional mass marketing media, like television, pyromarketing relies on “consumer evangelists” who spread the word (like fire) among like-minded people. Greg uses the metaphor of the steps it takes to start a fire to describe his process for pyromarketing. It is very similar to viral marketing or “buzz marketing, but so far I’ve only heard it used in the context of marketing religion.

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Recently I saw a Bank of America commercial that didn’t look like a commercial at all. The commercial looked like an advertisement promoting a new town image resulting from an urban renewal program. The commercial showed a city center with many historical buildings in various stages of renovation. The narrator started with a litany of facts regarding historical buildings and districts in the United States, and then followed by the numbers of buildings, historical sites this organization has been directly involved in preserving and renovating. In the closing moments the final statement was one related to the cost of renovation projects and at that moment the B of A logo comes on the screen. When the logo was at the center of the screen then the narrator mentions Bank of America as long time contributor to this organization contributing to the preservation of American heritage.

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TerraCycle, a company that manufactures organic plant fertilizer, was started a few years ago by a then 19- year old Princeton University drop-out. Their product is simple: liquid organic fertilizer made from worm poop. Red worms digest organic waste and the resulting excrement is made into a liquid plant food. Worm poop fertilizer is not a new idea, but research from Rutgers University has helped substantiate the company’s claim that TerraCycle brand fertilizer outperforms standard chemical based home fertilizers. The company has grabbed shelf space across Canada and the US in WalMart, Home Depot, Whole Foods and Wild Oats and is expected to top $1.5 million in sales next year.

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The book, Marketing Management 12e, by Kotler and Keller, introduces one of the shortest definitions of marketing there is; “meeting needs profitably.” After reading that definition I was shopping at Long’s drugstore in Santa Cruz when I noticed something that struck me as odd consumer-based marketing. The cigarettes (product) were displayed along the wall so that you would see them as you were checking out (place and promotion). Next to the cigarettes were nicotine gums, patches, and assorted other tools for quitting smoking. The cigarette display cases were exciting and bold colors of red, white, and black. They evoked a sense of adventure and at the same time relaxation; the good things in life. While the colors of the cases displaying tools for quitting were faded, out of focus, sterile blues and whites. The case made me feel like I might have a cold just looking at it. It was clear that these cigarette substitutes were medicines. It looked like it was attempting to appeal to folks who were ill. Clearly, the display cases were mismatched. Quitting cigarettes renews your life and gives you back the good things in life that you were missing.
If the manufacturers of the gums and patches were out to “meet needs profitably” surely they would market there products as life enhancing, sporty, yet mature, goods. Instead, they make one feel sick and desperate just to look at them. What gives?

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During the 1980s, the “two fisted slobber” was an animated character who would appear periodically during Milwaukee Brewers baseball games on the video scoreboard. His purpose was to address a rash of bad stadium etiquette. He was fat, drooled, and spilled beer and ketchup on the people sitting near him while simultaneously belching and yelling at the top of his extremely large lungs. This behavioral social marketing campaign on behalf of the Brewers organization was designed to make a mockery of bad behavior in an amusing way and to inspire fans to say to each other – hey, I think you’ve had enough – Don’t be a “two fisted slobber”!.
The problem with the “two fisted slobber” is that fans, over time, actually grew quite fond of him, seeing him as a model for amusing antics rather than the dismal fool he was, even rising out of their seats to toast him whenever he appeared. He was eventually pulled from the game. He lives on in kitschy t-shirt shops.
I would not go so far as to say the “two fisted slobber” completely backfired, but I don’t think he was especially effective. So the question is – is there something inherently faulty about negative social marketing? Is social marketing more effective with positive reinforcement dominates?

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The current demand for disaster relief supplies and workforce greatly exceeds the supply at the moment. The recent earthquake in Pakistan has killed 87,000 people and left another 2.8 million people homeless. There is currently an estimated need for $550 million in disaster relief funding and $5.2 billion in reconstruction costs. The disaster relief agencies have been also experiencing lack of manpower to enable successful relief work. It is thought that the supply of people willing and able to perform such duties, even for paid positions may be tapped due to other recent large-scale natural disasters. This is hindering relief agencies from carrying out their core competencies.
The earthquake is currently being seen as yet another disaster, but in reality, billions of dollars are needed to ensure the health and well being of millions. Just supply the public with the facts may not be enough to get the world to take action in this case or in the future. Global climate and environmental degradation may be causing there to be a dramatic increase in the severity and prevalence of natural disasters. The global response to this problem may have a tremendous impact on poverty that otherwise ensue. This situation provides a marketing opportunity to express the importance and urgency of support to these aid organizations in such a manner that people are called to action.

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Social marketing defined by Kotler: “Social marketing is the use of marketing principles and techniques to influence a target audience to voluntarily accept, reject, modify or abandon a behavior for the benefit of individuals, groups, or society as a whole. Since Kotler created this definition more than 25 years ago, it has been associated with selling a new and “better” behavior and the competition has been the current or preferred behavior of the target market. An aberration to this concept was noted in this week’s edition of the Economist in an article about Vancouver’s struggle with its swelling drug problem.
During the past decade, Vancouverites have lived with open drug dealing on their streets, deaths from drug overdoses, and disease spread from dirty syringes. All types of crime associated with drug dealing have been on the rise. In the past we have seen social marketing campaigns based on the premise of “Just say NO to drugs”. Remember the “This is your brain on drugs” with the woman swinging an iron skillet filled with scrambled eggs? As most of us in the health care field have experienced, this message carries little credence. Five years ago the Vancouver city council adopted a “four pillars” strategy which included harm reduction, prevention, treatment, and enforcement. This has led to a more lenient European-style approach to their city’s drug problem. Since then, two programs unique to North America have been started: a safe injection site for heroin addicts where nurses are instructing intravenous drug users on the proper usage of IV needles and a clinic prescribing free heroin to hard core addicts. The people promoting these programs hope to see a decrease in blood borne diseases like HIV and hepatitis, a decrease in overdoses, and a decrease in public drug use and problems stemming from discarded needles. There are supervised injection sites (SISs) in 27 cities around the world where there has been a documented reduction in the aforementioned problems.

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I’m a happy tap water drinker. Maybe I’m blissfully ignorant, but the idea of buying bottled water just seems silly and wasteful to me, unless I’m on a camping trip, in which case I’ll often buy a bottle of Pepsi’s Aquafina – simply because that brand’s bottles are the right size to fit in my backpack and they have a larger spout which I find easier to drink out of, plus they last.
The fact is a high portion (see this Ocean Arks PDF for details) of bottled water comes from municipal sources anyway, and winds up being 240 to 10,000 times as expensive, often with only minimal nutritional differences.

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If social marketing is the planning and implementation of programs designed to bring about social change using concepts from commercial marketing, U2 singer Bono might be the master of it.
Through his plan: “One campaign to make Poverty History” launched this year, Bono has been signing up his audience as members. He hoped to get a million people, he got 2 million members so far since March. During an interview with the SF Chronicle, Bono announced that: “By the next election, the One Campaign to make Poverty History will be larger than the National Rifle Association”. Perhaps one of the U2 singer’s most important steps is the recent cancellation of debts owed by a number of Third World countries to the world’s richest countries. In the past, Bono was successfully focusing on funding AIDS and malaria relief after volunteering in 1984 with his wife for six weeks in an Ethiopian refugee camp. The ultimate proof of his tremendous impact in the world is that he is seriously considered as a Nobel Peace Prize candidate.

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Between the 1960s and 1980s, the percentage of overweight children in the US hovered around 6%. Since 1980, the rate of obesity in children aged 6 to 11 has more than doubled, and the rate in adolescents has tripled to 16%. Currently one child in five is overweight. The increase is in all age, race and gender groups. The main culprits are the same as those for adult obesity: eating too much and moving around too little. Almost half of children aged 8-16 years watch three to five hours of television a day. Kids who watch the most hours of television have the highest incidence of obesity, not only because little energy is expended while viewing but also because of concurrent consumption of high-calorie snacks. Other factors of obesity are: poor nutritional habits, life style, heredity.
Since obesity in kids is now epidemic in the United States, Kraft is taking a stand and addressed the issue by banning some food ads targeting children and by introducing healthier food for children (lower content of fat and sugar). Under Kraft’s new policy (at work since 2003), any product advertised on a TV show where more than 50% of the audience is under 12 (as measured by Nielson Media Research) has to meet the nutritional standards set by the company.

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Is it possible for an oil company to change its brand image/essence? Can we be convinced of their sincerity as they try and convince us that they want to “go green”?
What is a brand? According to the AMA a brand is “A name, term, design, symbol, or any other feature that identifies one seller’s good or service as distinct from those of other sellers”. Brands can include products, services, events etc. According to Lyn Upshaw, the true meaning of a brand is when trust is transformed into value. (Upshaw lecture 10/22/05)

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This has very little to do with sustainability, or the integrated bottom line, though I suppose I could make a case that it has something to do with cross cultural relations. Anyway, here’s an interesting marketing phenomenon – rebranding something that’s utterly generic in one country as something special and/or exotic in another.
Boots is a pharmacy chain in Britain that can be found on almost every corner in any town in the country. There must be a thousand in London alone. It’s like Walgreens, but smaller. Basically it’s a place to go when you need some deodorant. There’s nothing exotic about it whatsoever. In fact Britons would probably laugh if you suggested that the store, or anything in it, was even worth talking about.
Enter the Target marketing channel…

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Having only recently become aware of the Cultural Creatives market, a 50-million-strong and growing segment that shares such values as environmental sustainability and a healthy lifestyle , marketers are seeking ways to effectively communicate with it. According to hereshowmarketing.com, Cultural Creatives don’t mind advertising, but they want it to be informative, clear, and truthful without the hard sells or emotional manipulation . Two synergistic business trends might offer some businesses a great opportunity to differentiate and communicate their products’ value to this particular market: 1) the increasingly sophisticated process- and information-focused collaborative partnerships along the value chain and 2) environmental product designs within system-based, life-cycle processes such as in Design-for-Environment (DfE) and Cradle-to-Cradle (McDonough & Braungart, 2002) approaches.

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