IS WAL-MART OUR MEDIA VALUES

IS WAL-MART OUR MEDIA VALUES

GATEKEEPER? The growing economic power of retail giant Wal-Mart and other discount

chains has led to concern about their influence on public values and taste. In 2003, Wal-Mart alone accounted for over 50% of the sales of best- selling albums/CDs, over 60% of best-selling DVDs and 40% of the best- selling books. Over one-third of all music sales was through the big chains, with 20% of the total from Wal-Mart alone. Because they sell so many of the best-selling items, Wal-Mart and other chains do not carry a broad assortment, a policy that leaves music, books, or films that have limited or esoteric tastes or are at all controversial left behind. For example, they sell no albums with parental warning labels, a policy that excludes Eminem and most hip-hop artists. They also sell huge amounts of Christian music, videos, and books. The VeggieTales videos of animated vegetables teaching Bible and morality lessons only received widespread exposure after Wal Mart started selling them The publisher

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of the Left Behind series of apocalyptic Christian novels credits Wal- Mart with turning one of its novels into the best-selling book in the country. Country music sells well at Wal-Mart, as do Christian writings and popular books by politically conservative authors. Is this trend a positive development in “controlling smut,” as some have argued, or a disturbing market force steering popular culture in a politically conservative, rural-oriented, evangelically Christian-flavored popular culture? (Kirkpatrick, 2003).

Although theory building in this area has not been extensive, Manrai and Gardner (1992) have developed a model to explain how the differences between social and product advertising predict a consumer’s cognitive, social, and emotional reactions to social advertising. Hornik and Yanovitzsky (2003) argue that a theory of prosocial media effects is essential in designing such campaigns.

Obstacles to Social Marketing

Although selling good health or safety is in many ways not unlike selling soap or automobiles, there are some difficulties that are particularly acute for social marketing. Social and product advertising differ in several important ways, most of which lead to greater obstacles facing public health and other social advertisers, compared to commercial advertisers (M.E. Goldberg, 1995; Manrai & Gardner, 1992).

First, social ideas tend to have a higher degree of both shared benefits and shared responsibilities than products, whose use is entirely an individual choice. For example, some (perhaps most) of the benefits of recycling household waste will be to society, not to the individual. Those individuals may view society as also having much (or most) of the responsibility for the problem. Thus, motivating (selling) the social message will be more difficult than selling a product with benefits to the individual.

Second, the benefits that do exist with social marketing tend to be delayed and/or intangible. Often there is a great physical, or at least psychological, distance between the consumer and the product. Selling toothpaste can stress how much sexier your breath will be for that big date tonight. Selling the idea of quitting smoking has a much less immediate payoff. Teenage smokers think much more about looking cool with their friends this weekend than dying from lung cancer or emphysema in 30 to 40 years. Young, healthy adults do not typically feel much urgency to sign an organ donor card; the need is very distant psychologically. Often in social marketing, the consumer is not all that opposed to the message and may even support it;

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they simply do not feel the immediacy of it and thus are not particularly inclined to make an effort to act on the message.

Third, the social marketing campaign may be very complex, compared to what is typically involved in commercial marketing. Particularly in regard to health, the beliefs, attitudes, and motives for unhealthy practices are deeply rooted and highly emotion laden and thus very resistant to change. For example, trying to convince women to self-examine their breasts for lumps flies against their enormous fear of cancer and the potential damage to one’s sexual self-image by the contemplation of possible breast surgery. Convincing people to wear seatbelts when they have driven for 50 years without doing so is not easy. People are particularly resistant to change if anxieties occur in response to unrealistic but prevalent fears, such as the fear of being declared dead prematurely in order to acquire organs for transplantation (Harris, Jasper, Lee, & Miller, 1991; Shanteau & Harris, 1990). The complexity of the interaction of individual motives for behavior, the social context of that behavior, and the news media coverage and prosocial appeals can be very difficult to conceptually and theoretically unravel (Yanovitzky & Bennett, 1999).

Fourth, social marketing messages frequently face strong opposition, unlike product advertising. This opposition may be social, as in the adolescent peer group that encourages and glamorizes smoking and tanned bodies, or it may be organized and institutional, as when tobacco companies threaten to withdraw advertising from magazines that carry articles about the dangers of smoking. Social marketing campaigns are often poorly funded compared to product advertising, and they often face opposing forces that hold enormous economic and political power. For example, the Tobacco Institute, the oil industry, and the National Rifle Association are tremendously powerful lobbies set to oppose media messages against smoking, alternative energy sources, or handgun controls, respectively. PSAs, whether print or broadcast, often are noticeably poorer in technical quality and appear less frequently than commercial ads because of budget limitations. Although radio and TV stations air a certain number of unpaid PSAs, they generally do so at times when they are least able to profitably sell advertising. We see many PSAs during the late late movie and very few during the Olympics or ER. Thus, specific demographic groups cannot be targeted by PSAs as well as they can by commercial advertising.

Fifth, social marketers often set unrealistically high goals, such as changing the behavior of 50% of the public. Although a commercial ad that affects 1% to 10% of consumers is hugely successful, social marketers often have not fully appreciated that an ad that affects even a very small percentage of a mass audience is a substantial accomplishment. Persons preparing social marketing campaigns are often less thoroughly trained in

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advertising, media, and marketing than are those conducting product ad campaigns.

Finally, social marketing appeals are often aimed at the 15% or so of the population that is least likely to change. These may be the least educated, most traditional, oldest, or most backward segment of the population, precisely the people least likely to stop smoking, start wearing seatbelts, or request medical checkups. Just as political media strategists target adver- tising at the few undecided voters, so might social marketing better target those people most conducive to attitude and behavior change in the intended direction, rather than the group that is least likely to ever change at all.

Considering the Audience

Knowing the audience well and targeting it as specifically as possible is as helpful selling health as it is soap or beer. Targeting a reasonable audience, not the ones least likely to change, and setting realistic goals and targets are useful. Trying to see the issue from the audience’s point of view will make a more convincing message. Frequently social marketers are fervently convinced of the rightness of their message and fail to see how anyone else could view the issue differently. Self-righteousness tends not to be convincing. The attitudes, desires, motivations, and reasonable beliefs of the audience may be used to drive the character of the message. A serious consideration of what kinds of psychological appeals will be the most effective in motivating the particular target audience will be helpful. For example, when targeting adolescents with their strong sense of invulnerability and focus on other people for approval and comparison, forcing them to focus on the message and elaborate its meaning more deeply can be successful in reducing risk-taking behavior (Greene, Krcmar, Rubin, Walters, & Hale, 2002). To focus an appeal on some behavior being stupid if it appears adaptive within the target person’s world (e.g., driving dangerously) or from the framework of their personality (e.g., as a sensation seeker), that appeal is likely to fail (Morgan, Palmgreen, Stephenson, Hoyle, & Lorch, 2003; Nell, 2002; Stephenson, 2003). Perceived realism and relevance to one’s life are also important (Andsager, Austin, & Pinkleton, 2001).

The age of the child in the target group is vitally important to consider when designing the media intervention. For example, in testing antismoking posters, Peracchio and Luna (1998) found that 7 to 8 year olds responded best to a picture of a dirty sock labeled “gross” next to an ashtray full of cigarette butts labeled “really gross.” The 9 to 10-year-olds responded best to pictures of dead insects with a message saying smoking is chemically equivalent to spraying yourself in the face with insecticide, while 11-year-

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olds responded best to a poster of a car’s tailpipe with written copy asking why you would smoke if you wouldn’t suck car exhaust.

Focusing on specific behaviors that the audience may change one small step at a time is often more useful than a general exhortation aimed at changing attitudes. People may know very well that they should stop smoking or start wearing seat belts. What they most need are more specific realistic behaviors that can be used to meet that end. Often, existing motivation may be harnessed and channeled to build confidence in taking appropriate specific actions. Merely exhorting people to stop smoking may

be of limited use. Showing a PSA of a young child smoking and talking about how cool he looks, just like Daddy, might reach the smoking parent more effectively. Telling people that many others are doing the bad behavior may boomerang by legitimatizing the unwanted behavior (see Box 11.7)

BOX 11.7