Recently I have been interested in Social Marketing, since I stumbled upon it on the internet. On the website I found a team from the Christian Albrechts University in Kiel, Germany describe the project they are running, which supports all efforts of industrial countries towards climate protection. But more about this later.

So I asked myself what the big difference is between common marketing and social marketing. To put it simply marketing usually tries to sell a product to a certain group of people. Social marketing tries to sell something else: a set of values. Those values are often different to the once which are rooted in society – they try to raise the bar. Otherwise why would there be a need to market them? Social marketing appears on the scene when the government, law and administration reach their limits. So it’s left to private enterprises, social lobbies or the media. That’s why social marketing is often used as an equivalent to Non-Profit-Marketing or the marketing of Non-Profit-Organisations.

Traditional marketing is directed towards a target group, but social marketing is aimed at the whole population, since the aim must be to convince as many people as possible about the desired values. But sometimes a Non-Profit-Organisation chooses a target group as a focus, because this group is in special need of the support. That’s often done when it comes to children. For example D.A.R.E. the drug abuse resistance education is focused on children and teenagers.

The methods and tools are free to choose, but since it should influence people to change their values, which are obviously not that easy to change, it must be a very powerful tool. That’s why TV commercials are frequently utilized, although those are very expensive and you may asked yourself if that’s not a waste of money when you want to feed kids in Africa. But this is a conflict in social marketing itself: to change values you need to reach as many people as possible in order to really help, but in the process of reaching many people you need to spend money and critics will scrutinize if that money is well spend.

Since there is no transaction involved (you get an ipod for small money), the person is not able to achieve an economic advantage, that’s why something else must be the perceived benefit, for example a personal or social motives. In order to know how to create a successful social marketing campaign, there is a need to know how people behave and why. So once again, just like traditional marketing, insights from social psychology are required.

Here I come back to the project of the University Kiel. This project is called Nordlicht. On the website they post articles about climate protection intervention from a social psychological point of view and call their strategy participatory social marketing. They coined this term, because they not only want to influence the person to save energy and via that protect the climate, they additionally want this person to persuade others to act the same. Like that the person should become a part of the climate protection campaign.

But how do you change individual behaviour to that extent?

Dr. Friedemann Prose, who is running this project, explains that climate protection should be perceived as a personally important problem and crucial for the common good (now and in the future). And can only be achieved through a process which comes from inside the person itself.

Unfortunately his articles and the Nordlicht website only exist in German language, but maybe that will chance soon.

1. I wrote my bachelor thesis, which I handed in and already received a quite satisfactory grade for it.

2. I prepared and took my final exams, which I all passed… thanks.. thanks … he he

3. I graduated and thereafter needed to do some heavy celebrating.

That means I have my bachelor degree now and am searching for a job – worldwide. I experienced, that it is not that easy. The reasons for that are not only the still lingering economic crisis, but also my need for something truly challenging. After 3 years of studying, a lot of books, a lot of exams and projects I am very eager to put my full strength into a job. I guess that’s how almost every student feels after their graduation. Don’t you think?

Meanwhile did I apply for German unemployment benefit to finance this – hopefully short – transition phase. I can tell you, that the German governmental support system is pretty good, but also complicated. I feel like I filled out at least 50 pages of forms and I spoke to about 10 different clerks, just to get it all in order.

But this also has it’s upsides: I can help out my mum at home and spend some time with my family. I just hope that it won’t be too long before I can show my paces!

What are the reasons for this? Ask yourself these questions and you can find out which type the human resource manager you’d like to contact belongs to!

• Are specially skilled and highly experienced experts needed?
• Does the company belong to the web 2.0 industry?
• Does the firm have high affinity to the internet and it’s services?
• Does the company have difficulties in finding suitable candidates?
• Is it rather small or unknown firm? (as a result can only generate a low number of applicants?)

If you answered most of this questions with YES  your target group consists of Type A HR managers.

BUT

• Is it a well-known company and as a result generates tons of applicants interested in a job?
• Is it a rather traditional firm with low or no affinity to the internet and it’s services?
• Does the company have a sufficient supply of applicants for posted job offers?

If you answered these questions with YES your target group consists of Type B HR managers.

Now you know your target group and can choose and appropriate marketing strategy in the next step of Online Self-Marketing. And no worries, there also will be a strategy helping you with a rather heterogeneous target group, which consists of both types of HR managers.

If you think about it, this differentiation in HR managers can be applied to customers as well.

When I was a child I was the kind who drew a lot and whose parents would always be very impressed with their child’s drawing skills, which seemed to them beyond their kid’s age. So I got a drawing teacher, an art student from University, who taught me different techniques, like how to use oil paint, water colors or coal to draw or paint pictures. So when I was sitting in the heating room of our house, the heaters buzzing in the background, I was painting for hours without noticing how time passed by.
Back then I just needed a blank paper and a pen to fuel my creativity, but after I finished Junior High and studying became more important, the painting tools collected dust in a corner of my room.

Now when I take a blank page, I stare at it – not knowing what to paint, feeling the need of a creative genius to help me.

The creative genius is what the old Romans and Greek assigned to people, who where creative. That’s also what Nick Vasiljevic, managing director of the company pilotfish, mentioned in his presentation yesterday. “But today”, he said, “You are the creative genius”. You can not blame it on somebody else.
Nick sees creativity from a different point of view. He likes what Steve Jobs says about creativity. That it is like “connecting dots”. Steve Jobs also stated in this speech at Stanford University “Believing that the dots will connect down the road, will give you the confidence to follow your heart, even when it leads you off the well worn path and that will make all the difference“.

So by connecting different fields of study, various industries and disciplines it is able to create new things. Jobs did it many times: connecting art (design) and state of the art electronics in Mac is just one example among others. But what Nick mentioned as well is, that today the education system is forcing us to make decisions. Do you want to study economics or art, social or political science? I myself chose two fields of study Chinese (language & culture) and business management, but would also have liked to learn more about web design and nurture my artistic nature. So is education actually constraining creativity?

The gist of the presentation was that creativity is not magic.
There are simple tools, which help to be more creative:

- listen
- be curious
- ask questions
- make connections
- observe

Now you might think: “well, that’s nothing new”, but do you really behave this way in life? Aren’t you sometimes finding yourself thinking of something else while the person in front of you is talking? Or do you feel too shy to ask a question, because you think it might sound stupid? I do admit all that, I also try to work on myself to reduce those occasions.

But what comes with creativity? It doesn’t mean that you just have to be creative to be successful. The presentation also stated, that you need to have other characteristics to use your creativity in a beneficial way:

- commercial sense
- strong morals

You need to know how to sell yourself and your ideas in a way that is creating additional value and is not harmful to society. Here you might excuse my rather intangible writing, but I am sure you can grasp my meaning.

Another premise for connecting the dots, when it comes to Nick Vasiljevic, is that you not only have a deep expertise, but also broad knowledge: T-shaped people. They are also often called Versatilists. Naturally, when you know more about different areas you can connect more dots.

All together it was a very inspiring presentation for me, so that I had to share these insights with you on my website.

By not only being an expert in one field, but also having interest and knowledge in others, you can be creative by connecting the dots via curiosity and attentiveness to the world around you to create value being both commercial and ethical.