Adopting industry marketing tactics improves health, say experts

Health professionals should borrow marketing ideas from big companies to improve peoples’ health – say Cancer Research UK scientists in today’s (Friday 19 May 2006) British Medical Journal*.

Marketing has always been a force to be reckoned with in public health. In the hands of the tobacco, alcohol and food industries it has a well documented effect on people’s smoking, drinking and dietary behaviour.

But mimicking ‘big business’ tactics – putting the needs of consumers and stakeholders, rather than the product, at the heart of business – has also been shown to be effective in promoting healthy behaviour.

Lead researcher, Cancer Research UK’s Professor Gerard Hastings, of the Institute of Social Marketing at the University of Stirling, said: “Modern marketers produce what they can sell. Listening to the consumer and taking care to understand their point of view makes it easier to influence his or her behaviour. This deceptively simple tactic has revolutionised commerce over the last fifty years.

“Borrowing this ‘consumer orientated’ thinking and finding out why people make the unhealthy choices they currently do – their values and motivations – can help develop tailored initiatives that are more effective at promoting healthy behaviour.”

Known as ‘social marketing’, the concept has been shown to be effective in initiatives for early cancer detection, improving diet and tackling alcohol, tobacco and drug use.

Key to the success of projects using social marketing, is the early and ongoing involvement of health professionals, say the researchers. For example, the West of Scotland cancer awareness project, which successfully targeted low income groups to encourage people with symptoms of mouth or bowel cancer to get checked out by a doctor, would not have been as effective without the contribution of healthcare professionals at all stages from planning to implementation.

The team also suggest that social marketing should aim to take a lead from commercial marketing in developing long-term, mutually beneficial relationships with its consumers. For example, stop smoking services could give successful quitters supermarket-style loyalty cards to persuade friends and family to use the service too, and to be encouraged to think about their other health behaviours.

Australia, New Zealand, Canada and the US have already embedded social marketing facilities within their health services, and the Department of Health and National Consumer Council are about to develop the first National Social Marketing Strategy for Health in England.

Prof Hastings added: “Most people know, for instance, that smoking is dangerous, or that their diet could be improved. They don’t change their behaviour because they perceive some other benefit in it – relaxation perhaps, or a treat.

“The secret for the social marketer is to devise a way of enabling them to get the same benefit more healthily.”

Dr Lesley Walker, director of cancer information at Cancer Research UK, said: “Finding ways to make initiatives that encourage healthy behaviour more relevant to people is incredibly important because we know that half of all cancers could be prevented by changes to lifestyle.

“The success of projects that have used social marketing suggests that, if the concept was adopted across the board, thousands of lives could be saved.”

ENDS

For media enquiries please contact Sophy Gould on 020 7061 8318 or, out-of-hours, the duty press officer on 07050 264 059.