Death and Sales

Marketing permeates our lives - use it for social good.

When a loved one dies, I hit the sales immediately.  Remembering their lives, grieving my loss - all that hurt goes away when I’m getting 30% off.  It’s what my loved ones would want.  Especially if they died violently.

How did that hit you?  What was your emotional reaction?

Revulsion?  Confusion?  I’m pretty sure it wasn’t “Wow!  That’s awesome!  Gosh, I wish a loved one could die violently so I could hit the sales as well!”

For the record, I’m not that abhorrent of a person.  I’ve lost too many loved ones and the very last thing I want to do when a loved one dies is go shopping, discounts or not.  My attitudes and behaviors around death are as complex as yours - grief, rage, joyful memories, painful memories, sadness, relief, a promise to myself to honor a life, a decision to live differently, a commitment to stay the course, a recognition of my own mortality, a deep conviction to protect and cherish those close to me.   

We humans are a morass of complex emotions that percolate through our brains, are influenced by our experiences, and are ultimately expressed through our shifting and adaptable attitudes and behaviors.

Extremely effective marketing has linked sale shopping and Memorial Day in our brains.  Despite the fact that the U.S. has been at war for 226 out of the last 247 years, over a million have died in service to their country, and the whole point of Memorial Day is honoring those who have died in battle for their country, Memorial Day has become about the benefiting the corporate bottom line.  It’s kind of hard to remember the real reason for Memorial Day if you haven’t lost a loved one in war directly and recently.  Put out a flag, buy festive patriotic napkins, and enjoy the day off.  (Emphasis on ‘buy’)

I make the point to demonstrate the incredible power of marketing.  For good and for bad.  Marketing permeates every aspect of our existence because marketing is fundamentally about changing attitudes and behaviors.  Marketing is not just a business idea, it’s harnessing and directing fundamental human nature.

When we think of marketing we think of business.  Yes, businesses have claimed marketing for their own.  Marketing professionals have successfully marketed marketing as key to business success.  Therefore, marketing is in the business curriculum throughout educational system and is a profession within the corporate business world.  When marketing is used in the nonprofit or social change world, it’s used most often to promote an organization or a program.  Marketing is used by political parties to promote ideologies and shift donor and voter behavior.  Marketing is done by religions to increase and retain the faithful. (though rarely called marketing given the corporate connotations)

Perhaps those categorizations made you uncomfortable.  Who wants to think they are so easily influenced, if not outright manipulated?

Marketing, as we currently understand it, is transactional.  But it is so much more.

Changing attitudes and behaviors is something that we humans do instinctively from birth.  From the minute we are born we focus on influencing attitudes and behaviors in order to survive.  We subject our parents to sleep deprivation and a feeling of total helplessness, and just as that parent thinks they can’t go on, the baby cracks that first smile and it’s game on with doing whatever it takes to get another smile, to elicit a laugh, to get your teenager to talk to you, to celebrate your child’s successes and support them during the failures.  Maybe even to greet the next generation.  Whatever it takes to keep our contribution to the human race going.

From infancy we are hardwired to engage with our surroundings in order to survive, and so, from infancy, we practice engaging the attitudes and behaviors of those around us.  We smile, we cry, we reach out, we aim for praise, we act naughty, we stay, we run - we try anything to engage, to ensure attitudes and behaviors of others allow us survive and thrive.

We market instinctively in so many ways.  Making friends on the playground, at school, in the workplace.  Forming teams and coalitions around shared goals.  Companies market themselves to potential employees.  Potential employees market themselves to employers.  Election campaigns are all about marketing ideals and engaging emotion.  Causes market their vision and organization to build support.  As naturally as we breathe, we are constantly engaging the world around us to measure current attitudes, assess how to adapt, and calculate how to get others to change their behavior.

Marketing is simply understanding and directing human nature.  For decades, marketing has been underused and under-valued, languishing in narrow definitions of Memorial Day sales.   

Let me be clear, I have no moral outrage over how you choose to celebrate Memorial Day or any other day of the year.  I point out marketing in this context not to shame or judge anyone who is heading to the sales, but to make a point.  Shame and judgement are routinely used to influence attitudes and behaviors.  Public discourse in the U.S. these days seems to be all about behavior change through shame and judgment.  Even the outrage-for-clicks-and-media-coverage has the ultimate goal of changing attitudes and behaviors. Positively or negatively, it’s all essentially marketing.

We can’t leave one of the most powerful tools available to humanity to change attitudes and behaviors only in the business world.

Social Marketing - harnessing the power of marketing to change behavior for public good - was defined in the 1970’s by Philip Kohler and Gerald Zaltman.  And no, social marketing is NOT social media marketing.  To get an idea of what it is, read this.

One thing I know for sure, until we commit to using the time-honored and effective principles of marketing to change behavior in the social change fields, we will make little to no progress against the behemoth that is corporate marketing.

I challenge you to take a day and observe how many times you engage, either to build a relationship or defend your beliefs.  How many times a day does an organization try to influence your attitudes and behaviors?  How are they doing it?  Positively or negatively?  What do they want you to do?  How do others want you to behave?  How do you engage with your family and friends over dinner plans, picking up laundry, or sharing your thoughts?

How often do you encounter marketing in your daily existence?

Adapting to our environment is how we survive.  Understand how and why we adapt - how others are using our emotions to change our attitudes and behaviors.  Think about how and where you encounter principles of marketing.

And then commit to using marketing to change behaviors for the public good.