Government Sponsored Marketing

A few posts back we dove into Social Marketing, a strategy that tries to achieve social good by changing behavior. One aspect of this type of marketing that intrigued me was those put on by governments. Marketing is known as a business practice but throughout time propaganda has been present and while it is more focused on falsehoods and attempt to persuade, the lines between the two become to blur.

We have seen propaganda for War Times and Political Parties like the ones below but these all tend to be short term campaigns. A wider perception of political marketing is emerging and it is

a combination of political ideals, parties, or organizations, and those are not mutually exclusive. Political marketing uses marketing strategies to push certain initiatives and promote their effectiveness at the same time. From family planning, health concerns, or gender equality, PSA's are a start to changing society's behaviors.

One of the longest running PSA's include Smokey the Bear and their campaign "Only you can prevent wildfires". This comes from the Ad Council, National Association of State Foresters, and USDA Forest Service. Their site now has a wide variety of content and information available to further push their initiatives.

Taking a look outside the US, population policy in China was highly effective for many years. The one child policy took effect in 1979 until eliminated in 2015.

The campaign aimed at women would emphasize the importance of birth control, marrying late "for the revolution", and promote the science of family planning. With India's population quickly rising at 1.31. billion already, politicians are ready to limit the amount of children per family.

An estimated 400 million births were prevented in China prior to 2011 so this makes thier campaign a sucess right? There are lessons to be learned from China as they face consequences from those years of limiting population despite their initial goal being achieved.

For our last example, we set our eyes on Thailand! A new campaign unveiled by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) and media partners, "No Plastic! Yes, we can!" aims to lower single use plastics. The campaign dropped a video that urged consumers to adopt alternatives to plastic on 300 billboards across Thailand malls, public transportation, and landmarks. The video is seen below and a part of the UNDP's greater goal to support countries in changing consumer behavior and reducing waste.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aOxlRlXS5Mg

This campaign was set to wrap up last month and now the government of Thailand is gearing up for 2020. Thailand will start to phase certain plastics out and ban plastic bags, styrofoam, cups, and straws by 2022. Supant Mongkolsuthree, chairman of the Federation of Thai Industries (FTI) would like to see more investment going towards waste management as the bans target the most harmful manifestations of plastic. These are all positive examples of governements getting involved when it may not always be the case.

With the rise of technology and the internet, this type of messaging and persuading will become more frequent and personalized.