General Principles

Keep an Audience Perspective

We've talked about keeping an audience perspective throughout the social marketing process. At this stage it is easy to get frustrated and start thinking of the target audience as having poor attitudes or lacking basic knowledge. If you find yourself in this position, it can be helpful to remind yourself of the need for keeping their point of view

"Believing passionately in a product or a program is one of the most endearing traits of social marketers…This zeal becomes dysfunctional when the marketer sees the customer as an adversary, as someone who has the wrong habits or the wrong ideas or is just plain ignorant or unmotivated."
Alan Andreasen, Marketing Social Change p. 42—43

But, using a true audience-focused mindset provides a different perspective:

"The customer is seen as someone with unique perceptions, needs, and wants to which the marketer must adapt…The assumption is made that customers have very good reasons for doing what they are doing. The marketer's challenge is to figure out how to adjust the marketing program to respond to these reasons."
Alan Andreasen, Marketing Social Change, p.49