Special Topic: Social Marketing

Social marketing adapts the commercial marketing approach to achieve social goals. It recognizes the synergies created by addressing supply and demand using commercial infrastructure, research, packaging, promotion, and sales techniques to make and distribute condoms, and to promote behavior change among target populations. To complement traditional outlets and better reach some specific groups or geographical areas, individuals from specific communities may be recruited and trained to act as sales agents.

Social marketing programs have helped make condoms more accessible and affordable to various segments of the society, including low-income and high-risk groups in many developing countries. In 2000, 1.2 billion condoms were sold at below market prices through social marketing programs in 59 countries. An effective mechanism for condom distribution, social marketing produced dramatic increases in sales by promoting condoms as an HIV prevention strategy. When an effective microbicide is available on the market, experience from condom social marketing will help make it accessible in the developing world.

Social marketing programs do not seek to make profits. They use sales and other revenue (e.g. government or donor subsidies) for reinvestment and to defray distribution and promotion costs. For instance, the Social Marketing Company of Bangladesh partially financed the purchase of a new building through sales revenue, reducing the long-term operational costs of the project.

Social marketing programs tailor their subsidies to their markets’ income levels. In middle-income countries social marketing programs strive to keep prices low enough for the lowest income earners, while maintaining enough net income to fund new inventory, advertising campaigns and general operating expenses. In lower-income countries, such as Ethiopia and Bangladesh, prices have to be more heavily subsidized.

Social marketing programs can act as a bridge between the public and private sectors. Programs are developed in collaboration withgovernments to complement existing services and distribution systems. For example, by providing low-cost condoms outside of the health clinics, they serve consumers who shun systems they perceive as lacking privacy or who are unable to frequent clinics. Social marketing can also increase the overall demand, segmenting markets and paving the way for greater commercial participation. Dependence on government-supplied free condoms can be lessened through costrecovery from those who can afford to pay. DKT-Brazil is a case in point: it sells condoms at full price to some and uses some of the profits to subsidize condom sales to the poor. Aggressive marketing by DKT-Brazil in the early 1990s served to boost demand and sales when the condom market was small, making the Brazilian market more attractive to the private sector.

Sources:
DKT International. 2002. 2000 Contraceptive Social Marketing Statistics. Washington, DC: DKT International.

DKT International. 2002. 2001-2002 Progress Report, Weaving the Social Fabric. Washington,
DC: DKT.

PSI, UNAIDS. 1997. Social Marketing: An Effective Tool in the Global Response to HIV/AIDS. Geneva, Switzerland: UNAIDS.

UNAIDS. 2000. Condom Social Marketing: Selected Case Studies. Geneva, Switzerland:
UNAIDS.

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