Background Information
In this marketing campaign strategy the focus would be centered on violence against women, as a form of domestic violence that is currently experience in many countries across the globe. Violence against women is experienced through sex abuse and harassment.
The perpetrators of this crime usually abuse women sexually, having the knowledge of a woman’s private part without her permission. The sex offender uses force and physical might to have sex with a woman who is not willing. The man violently uses force by assaulting and hurling bitter words and insult at the lady.
In many developing countries, women are physically battered at home to yield to the demands of men. They are mainly used as a tool and object to satisfy the men’s bodily demands. In fact, the same problems are also experienced in the developed countries such as Australia.
Most of the domestic violence seen and investigated has shown that rape is used as a tool to administer violence against women. There are some reasons that make the perpetrators use rape to administer humiliation, getting forced information from the women, and also used to reward male soldiers.
One of the reasons that can be attributed to women experiencing sexual abuse and harassment during conflict is that the women are traditionally seen as tools, and sex-objects. They have been seen to transmit this tradition and culture to the other generations.
For this reason, the attack on women is seen to be the right procedure to attack a society. Any attack against women is against the honor of society, due to the fact that they are seen to be the symbol of national unity for any culture and nation (Lee & Kotler 2011, p. 59).
There are many effects and consequences that are brought about by sexual violence against women. These consequences can affect the women for the rest of their lives. There are many reports gathered that show that there are rape cases that were experienced by the women in some areas.
Besides, many rape cases reported were as a result of the military men taking advantage of the helpless women. According to Mullins, such incidences stayed in the scene for a long time due to the fact that that many acts of violence against women are not punished (Mullins 1999, p.39).
There are many investigations that have been conducted to prove that many cases of violence against women are not given much attention by the required authorities. There are various reasons that make the violence against women war that will take a longer time than expected.
One of them is that the victims get threats and reprisals that make them fear of what will happen with them. Besides, there are legislations in “the constitutions prevent any accusation made for any crime that is committed in the war” (Maccoby1998, p.46).
This is a loophole that enables soldiers and perpetrators to get away with this crime easily. This has been the reason why the women offenders continue to commit this crime without any fear of accusation. Many women fear rejection from their husbands and the families.
Traditionally, when they report the cases they fear that they will not get married if they report that they have once been raped in their lives. In addition, women are the subjects of men in many instances, and they fear that they are not supposed to report these cases to them. Therefore, these grave concerns form the basic foundation of this social marketing campaign on domestic violence (Rothschilds 1999, p.32).
The choice of this problem was appropriate one for the study since domestic violence is a common issue that affects families globally. This is a problem that has both the social and economic costs since in the community and many families are destabilized.
In addition, a lot of resources are channeled towards health care management of the domestic violence victims as well as settling court cases on divorce and separation that come as a result of this problem.
In fact, media campaigns have been tried through gender activist movements to sensitize people against domestic violence, but very little has been achieved, thus a “fresh approach to this problem is required” (Rothschilds 1999, p.36). Therefore, social marketing campaign is the best technique for managing this problem.
Campaign Purpose
This main purpose of this social marketing campaign is to make sure that the domestic violence across the world is stopped, especially in the developed countries such as Australia. Such violence has been witnessed to be on the increasing trend across the globe since many cases are pending in law courts.
Therefore, information awareness about gender rights and equality are essential in every community so as to minimize domestic violence that negatively affects the stability of families, and in certain cases, such incidences have led to loss of lives among individuals (Lefebvre 2011, p.58). Therefore, it is important to put in place social marketing campaign strategies to tackle this issue.
This campaign will be evaluated on its achievements. For instance, the campaign’s measurable outcomes can be analyzed in terms of the reduction of rate of gender violence against women, rate of separations or divorces cases that result from domestic violence and death rates among men and women as a result of domestic violence.
Campaign Focus
The main target of this social marketing campaign approach is to harness the existing approaches towards addressing domestic violence. The focus would be centered on thorough planning to make sure that the social marketing approach achieves its intended objective.
This would not involve only taking advantage of the previous marketing strategies, but also making use of the current successful marketing campaigns that have been employed in addressing the issues of domestic violence.
The use of the successful social marketing strategies are essential in the sense that they provide a basis on which successes as well as failures of this research problem can be analyzed.
In addition, this would provide a good ground to have detailed information about the target audience, market segmentation, innovative strategies, and cost effective strategies that can be applied in this social marketing campaign on domestic violence (Hoek & Jones 2011, p.34).
The main focus of this campaign would be on changing some of the customary laws that might encourage gender violence as a form of ‘discipline’ among women. This problem would better be addressed by non-profit organizations whose interest is to make sure that peace and stability are enhanced in the community (Hoek & Jones 2011, p.35).
Situation (SWOT) Analysis
This incorporates the assessment of strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats of this social marketing approach on domestic violence. The internal strengths associated with this campaign are the innovation and creativity in the use of marketing tools.
However, its weaknesses can be realized in the sense that this social marketing tool might need a lot of funding that the organization is not be able of raising to support its activities in the long run.
It is important to note that this campaign has important external opportunities since other social marketing organizations are not strong enough to offer stiff competition, which might lead to “conflicting interests in the areas of operation” (Hoek & Jones 2011, p.35).
However, there are external threats in the sense that online social marketing is currently overtaking the conventional methods of marketing, and once the campaign fails to incorporate the use of internet, it might not effectively deliver its intended objectives (Wymer 2011, p.24).
Target Market
This social marketing campaign targets women because they are the most vulnerable to domestic violence.
Objectives
This marketing campaign focuses on changing men’s behaviours and beliefs in women battering as a form of discipline.
For instance, some customary laws permitted such practices as forms of punishments to women, but these practices are highly discouraged by this campaign that is intended to stop domestic violence against women, and this forms the main goal of the marketing campaign.
However, the target audience might experience some barriers in adopting this intended behavior owing to cultural practices that are deeply rooted in some communities.
Key Benefits
The target audience would definitely benefit from this campaign in the sense that sexual abuse and harassments of women by their male counterparts could be reduced to some extent or even stopped.
Discouraging domestic violence against women would be the key motivation to the targeted group of audience since the women would no longer be sexually abused.
On the other hand, the community would also benefit because of peace and stability experienced in the society that result from lack of violence. This is because domestic violence does not destabilize families alone, but the whole community (Hastings & Angus 2011, p.46).
Analysis of competing behaviours
This can be witnessed in female rights campaign awareness programs that are locally based in the community. Under this program, the women are encouraged to organize for demonstrations against gender violence, and such behaviours are important to them since they are given the opportunity to freely air their grievances against men.
However, these behaviours are associated with both the social and economic costs since they might lead to rejection among women by their male counterparts. In addition, the economic costs are seen in the sense that these demonstrations would require some resources to execute the mission (Belz & Peattie 2009, p. 72).
Positioning statement:
- We want women to actively engage in campaigns against domestic violence.
- We want to see that sexual abuse behaviours are stopped through this social marketing campaign strategy. This would definitely stop other competing forces against domestic violence.
Product design/platform
The core products/services offered under this program are the literature materials on domestic violence and women’s rights awareness.
The actual products would be centered on women’s sexual abuse, and the augmented products would be text information on family instability that comes as a result of divorce and separation incidences (Donovan 2011, p.18).
Price
This social marketing campaign would provide some incentives to the women representatives since they could be given some allowances so as to help in mobilizing other women to join the network.
However, some disincentives could be witnessed in certain cases when the women leaders failed to properly account for the funds allocated to them, and in such instances they are made to payback the money with penalty.
Though, this might appear to be a form of discouragement on their side, it is important for this campaign strategy since all the funds will be properly accounted for and directed to the right purposes (Maccoby 1998, p. 63).
Place
The women will perform the desired behaviours both at home and workplaces. For instance, when a woman is confronted by a man at home, she would try to exercise her fundamental rights of gender equality to discourage any form of violence that might ensue. This would definitely discourage the man to engage in sexual abuse and violence.
The phenomenon of this kind is common at night, especially when both the woman and the man have come from work. Another incident is common in workplaces, especially when women are sexually harassed by their male bosses.
This kind of sexual abuse at workplaces can be in form of sexual harassment, use of sexually implicit language, and spanking. These kinds of sexual abuse of women might lead to violence as well (Hoek & Jones 2011, p.32).
Therefore, when domestic violence on women is being addressed, it is also important to incorporate that of workplace. In fact, there are also certain groups that are in support of this social marketing campaign such as women’s rights movements.
Promotion
The key message communicated to the women is that they should champion for their rights and freedom. Therefore, men should not encourage domestic violence against their female counterparts as means of settling disputes.
This message would be delivered by women rights based organizations, and the sponsors for this campaign would involve the federal and state governments as well as non-governmental organizations (Andreasen & Kotler 2008, p.15).
Moreover, this social marketing campaign approach would make use of creative strategies such as logos and visuals among others. A typical message slogan is shown in the following figure.
Though, this message slogan focuses mainly on the women, it also draws some attention from the male counterparts since they are the perpetrators of domestic violence against women in the society (Andreasen & Kotler 2008, p.14).
This message can be delivered through the internet, making use of social marketing sites such as facebook, LinkedIn, and skill pages among others. Other print and visual media can be used as well in this campaign.
Conclusion
The core objective of this marketing campaign strategy is to facilitate gender rights awareness among women since this is a necessary tool in discouraging domestic violence that is rampant among many families and societies.
In this context, it would be necessary to come up with sound strategies in addressing this problem. In fact, this issue is not family based only since it affects the entire community. This calls for urgent social marketing interventions so as to make sure that the magnitude of domestic violence among women is significantly reduced.
The social costs associated with this problem are witnessed in divorce and separation cases among families or even death. Such family instability also impacts on the wider society because the productivity of human resource is greatly reduced.
In addition, many resources are channeled towards settling of domestic disputes in law courts as well as healthcare management for the victims of the domestic violence. In this campaign, social media would be crucial tools in addressing this fundamental problem. Therefore, internet social sites would be crucial in this social marketing campaign strategy.
References List
Andreasen, R. & Kotler, P., 2008, Strategic Marketing for Nonprofit Organizations, Pearson Education, New Jersey.
Belz, F. & Peattie, K., 2009, Sustainability Marketing: A Global Perspective, Wiley Publishers, West Sussex.
Donovan, R., 2011, “Social Marketing’s Myth understandings”, Journal of Social Marketing, vol.1 no.1, pp.8-16.
Hastings, G. & Angus, K., 2011, “When is Social Marketing Not Social Marketing?” Journal of Social Marketing, vol.1 no.1, pp. 45-53.
Hoek, J. & Jones, S., 2011, “Regulation, Public Health and Social Marketing: A Behaviour Change Trinity”, Journal of Social Marketing, vol. 1 no.1, pp. 32-44.
Lee, R. & Kotler, P., 2011, Social Marketing: Influencing Behaviours for Good, Sage, Thousand Oaks, California.
Lefebvre, C., 2011, “An Integrative Model for Social Marketing”, Journal of Social Marketing, vol.1 no.1, pp. 54-72.
Maccoby, M., 1998, Violence against women: Rape as a tool in war, Simon and Schuster, New York.
Mullins, L., 1999, Domestic Violence. Pitman Publishing, London.
Rothschilds, M., 1999, “Carrots, Sticks, and Promises: A Conceptual Framework for the Management of Public Health and Social Issue Behaviours ”, Journal of Marketing, vol.63 no. 1, pp.24-37.
Wymer, W., 2011, “ Developing More Effective Social Marketing Strategies”, Journal of Social Marketing, vo.1,no.1, pp.17-31.