About Conservation Marketing
What is Conservation Marketing?
We define conservation marketing as ‘the ethical application of marketing strategies concepts and techniques to influence attitudes, perceptions and behaviours of individuals, and ultimately societies, with the objective of advancing conservation goals.’
Now more than ever the field of conservation needs to respond to wicked problems – like climate change – that are driving the degradation of our natural and social worlds. Conservation marketing assumes that conservation behaviors operate in a complex environment that includes multiple competing factors, such as social norms, infrastructural barriers, and personal identity to name a few. The approach of conservation marketing is grounded in understanding one’s target audience in order to create sustainable and meaningful change.
Marketing techniques are often used to sell a commercial product, but conservation marketing applies these same or similar techniques to encourage pro-conservation behavior change. Insights from conservation marketing can help organizations design targeted outreach campaigns and can help practitioners understand how to fundraise for less charismatic species or how to select a celebrity spokesperson for their cause.
Common Definitions
Behavior Change
Behavior change refers to any systematic approach or modification of human behavior. Any effort to change these behaviors is an ambitious one, and one that needs a sophisticated and appropriate set of tools to tackle complex behavioral challenges. Behavioral science is an interdisciplinary field, combining learnings from ethics, economics, philosophy, experimental psychology and other social sciences. Some commonly studied aspects and tools of behavior change include:
- Barriers and Motivators
- Choice Architecture / Nudges
- Norms (Social, Cultural, Gender; Descriptive, Injunctive)
Behavior Change for Conservation
The science of changing behavior for environmental outcomes.
Behavior Change Design (BCD)
The scientific approach to designing for behavior change for product managers, designers, and researchers. Behavioural design is a subcategory of design, which is concerned with how design can shape, or be used to influence human behaviour.
Community Based Social Marketing (CBSM)
The community-based social marketing (CBSM) method is based in social psychology and draws from the idea that sustainable behavior change is most effective when it involves direct contact with people and is carried out at the community level. Much of what we understand about CBSM comes from Doug McKenzie-Mohr’s Fostering Sustainable Behavior: An Introduction to Community-Based Social Marketing. Mohr has pioneered the use of CBSM to promote sustainable behavior change.
Human Centered Design (HCD)
Human-centered design is a creative approach or philosophy to problem solving that empowers an individual or team to design products, services, systems, and experiences that addresses the core needs of those who experience a problem. Human-centered design is all about building a deep empathy with the people that you’re designing for. When done well, human-centered design resonates more deeply with your target audience — ultimately driving engagement and growth.
Science Communication (#scicomm)
Science communication, or ‘sci-comm’ as it is affectionately known, is the practice of informing, educating, and raising awareness of science-related topics. This often refers to communicating to non-specialists, as opposed to expert-to-expert communication associated with formal outlets, like scientific publishing. Sci-comm tools can help scientists communicate complex ideas.
Social and Behavior Change Communication (SBCC)
Previously known as behavior change communication (BCC), social and behavior change communication (SBCC) is an interactive approach that promotes and facilitates changes in knowledge, attitudes, norms, beliefs and behaviors through an interventionary process with individuals, groups or communities. The terms BCC and SBCC are interchangeable, and both refer to a series of activities and strategies that promote healthy patterns of behavior. This in turn provides a supportive environment which will enable people to initiate, sustain and maintain positive and desirable behavior outcomes.*
* Borrowed from Danielle Chekaraou, Public Health Consultant and SBCC Expert
Social Marketing
Social marketing is a professional approach used to develop activities aimed at changing or maintaining people’s behaviour for the benefit of an individual or community as a whole. Combining ideas from commercial marketing and the social sciences, social marketing is a proven tool for influencing behavior and is deeply rooted in public health. Social marketing is often used hand-in-hand with behavioral science and is sometimes referred to as “behavior change marketing.” Social marketing tends to be less rigorous than behavioral science, which has traditionally been more academic.
Social marketing should not be confused with social media marketing. Learn more about the difference between behavioral science and social marketing here.
Conservation Marketing
A subfield of social marketing. The Conservation Marketing and Engagement Working Group defines it as the ethical application of marketing strategies, concepts and techniques to influence attitudes, perceptions and behaviours of individuals, and ultimately societies, with the objective of advancing conservation goals. Conservation marketing should follow a systematic approach, use research not assumptions, to drive the program, consider the social context, keep the focus on the audience(s), use theories and models to guide decisions, involve partners and communities throughout, set realistic objectives and consider cost effectiveness, use mutually reinforcing materials and activities at many levels, choose strategies that are motivational and action-oriented., select media channels for the audience, and ensure quality at every step.
How does Conservation Marketing differ from traditional educational outreach?
Conservation marketing integrates marketing concepts with other approaches to influence behaviors that benefit individuals and communities for the greater social good. Whereas traditional outreach is based on awareness-building, the field of conservation marketing accepts the well-supported belief that knowledge-raising and awareness-building are often not enough to change behavior. In order to move beyond traditional approaches, conservation marketing draws on a multi-disciplinary approach with techniques, such as audience segmentation and choice architecture, to strategically drive focused change.A key insight from conservation marketing is that there is no “general public”. Communicators can maximize impact by segmenting audiences into relatively homogenous subgroups and tailor outreach campaigns to such groups (known as “target audiences”). Effective conservation marketing campaigns also track results and adapt as needed.
Who can utilize Conservation Marketing?
Just about anyone! Conservation Marketing is often used by educators, researchers, community leaders, nonprofit practitioners, and policymakers.
For example, experts in the illegal wildlife trade draw on behavior change methods and frameworks to reduce demand for wildlife and local government officials understand the determinants of their target audience’s behavior to increase household recycling rates. Nonprofits use behavioral science to build better calls to action that inspire people to engage with environmental issues and community leaders draw on behavioral science principles, like group norms, to convince their neighbors to plant native pollinator species. Zookeepers and informal educators use science communication techniques to connect with their audience. Even for-profit companies can use conservation marketing. For example, restaurants can promote plant-rich diets through menu design.
What are some examples of conservation marketing?
There are many examples of conservation marketing in practice. Rare, an environmental organization that focuses on behavior change, has been using the social marketing process to advance conservation for decades. Their Pride campaign model uses a “flagship” species (or mascot) and a suite of other marketing techniques to influence pro-environmental behaviors in communities around the world. This model has been used to promote sustainable fishing practices, to increase the adoption of fuel-efficient stoves, and to reduce the number of people who keep endangered parrots as pets.
Tools of Change is another successful Conservation Marketing organization, who provide information to those who want to push for local policy, sustainable, policy development. Community Based Social Marketing (CBSM) shares similar goals, with the goal of encouraging sustainable behavior.
The Monterey Bay Seafood Watch Program recognizes that often, unsustainable choices are made because people lack access to resources or time. The online tool or pocket sized pamphlets makes it easy for users to quickly identify whether or not their seafood is sustainable and choose accordingly. The Victoria Zoo developed a “When balloons fly seabirds die” or “Balloon Smart. Seabird Safe.” campaign, encouraging people to sign pledges not to use balloons for parties or events. They also include information for balloon alternatives, such as bubbles. This campaign is so successful, that an organization whose symbol is a balloon, actively encourages people not to use balloons at their events anymore.
About Us
What is the history of ConsMark?
In 2014, several of our founding members gathered at the SCB Marine Section’s International Marine Conservation Congress in Glasgow, Scotland. They formed a group to advance the study and practice of using marketing techniques to advance conservation goals. This group became the Conservation Marketing and Engagement Working Group, which was later shortened to ConsMark. In a paper published shortly after this meeting, several of our founding members argued that successful conservation often requires behavior change and that the conservation community needed to embrace marketing techniques to effect change. Since then, the conservation marketing field has grown to include researchers and practitioners from around the world. In 2018, the group hosted its first international conference and the community continues to expand. ConsMark is part of the Society for Conservation Biology (SCB), an international, non-profit membership society that is “facilitating, promoting, and advancing the scientific study and conservation of biological diversity,” although you do not have to be a member of SCB to be involved with ConsMark.
ConsMark Goals:
- Increasingly expose conservation practitioners to the effective use of marketing techniques and tools, as well as their capacity in applying them to their own projects.
- Facilitate research into the effectiveness of marketing in achieving conservation goals as part of this effort.
- Facilitate training in behaviour change, marketing, outreach and engagement, and media relations,
- Establish trans-disciplines collaborations (e.g., with artists, musicians, comedians, film makers, public relations experts, social media experts, and advertising agencies).