The Overmarketing of Social Marketing

"Development communicators in the Third World identify with education, not with marketing. We think that development communication and social marketing can merge no better than water and oil can mix..."

In this piece, published in 1991 in the Development Communication Report, Alfonso Gumucio-Dagron assesses social marketing as a communication for development strategy, from a developing country perspective. The central question he explores here is this: "Are development communicators in developing countries willing to buy the "social marketing" approach, which has penetrated so fast in many international development programs?" His answer is, "no".

In order to explain why development communicators in regions such as Latin America have not embraced this strategy, Gumucio-Dagron briefly outlines the history of social marketing, which was, he contends, developed, promoted, and marketed by specialists in the United States. A key concern of his is that, in doing so, these specialists did not seek the perspectives of communication for development practitioners in developing countries - effectively making these practitioners "objects" of techniques to promote this strategy. The scenario might have been different, he indicates, if practitioners in Latin America, for example, had been consulted; for instance, those who developed the social marketing strategy would have learned that there is no translation for "social marketing" in this region, and the concept does not cohere with the practical or theoretical work being done there.

Gumucio-Dagron outlines a number of differences between the social marketing approach and the strategy that shapes the communication for development philosophy elsewhere, such as:

• an effort to persuade what effectively is a passive audience (as social marketing does, Gumucio-Dagron argues) vs. an effort to educate, organise, and activate people so that they become active communicators;
• a framework which is vertical vs. horizontal;
• reliance on electronic and mass media vs. use of low-cost, grassroots-based communication tools, but only as a spur for community participation;
• emphasis on campaigns vs. on the process of communication; and
• a focus on individuals, and their behaviour, vs. on the entire community and broader social realities.

The author concludes by articulating what he conceives of as the only way that development communicators from developing countries and those from industrialised countries can, in the future, prevent communication breakdowns such as those that led to the "overmarketing of social marketing": making concerted efforts to learn more about each other's practice and theory. He believes that the experiences of Latin America and other regions with regard to development communication strategies should be acknowledged and exchanged - a process which will require opening up both language and ideological borders.