Integrated Marketing Communication for Behavioral Impact in Health and Social Development - Introduction

A continuing global dilemma for health and other social development professionals is finding effective ways to encourage new behaviors and achieve behavioral results.

The challenges can be found in many development sectors: health, agriculture, girls education, labor and the environment. In health alone they include, among others, preventing and controlling a range of communicable and non-communicable diseases; getting children immunized; increasing the practice of family planning; preventing the spread of AIDS; reducing drug abuse; improving diet and nutrition; and encouraging more physical exercise. In addition, there are policy-related behavioral outcomes which are critical such as passage of new legislation or declaring new health policies.

In all of these, achieving behavioral impact is the central goal. This remains a continuing challenge for social development programs.

Many different approaches have been useful in the past, ranging from health education and development support communication to social mobilization. While there have been some successes, there has also been enormous frustration at not being able to achieve more at a faster rate. Social development programs, as a consequence, struggle along - but with modest behavioral impact. In the health field, for example, there is the continuing massive phenomenon of people apparently knowing what they should do for better health but who fail to act according to their best intentions or knowledge.

Conventional "Information-Education-Communication" (IEC) programs in health have been able to increase awareness and knowledge but have not been as successful at achieving behavioral results. It is clear that informing and educating people are not sufficient bases for behavioral responses. Behavioral impact will emerge only with effective communication programs, purposefully directed at behavioral goals, and not directed just at awareness creation, or advocacy or public education.

Integrated marketing communication (IMC) offers a dynamic, proven approach to achieving behavioral results in health and other development programs.

The private sector experience over 100 years in successfully using IMC with consumer behavior (for products both awful and superb) points to an approach applicable to health and social development. IMC begins with the client/consumer and a sharp focus on the behavioral result anticipated, clearly mapped out by practical market research or situation analysis related to the desired behaviors. It requires the integrated application of the disciplines of health education, adult education, mass communication, social and community mobilization, traditional media, marketing (including village-level marketing traditions), advertising, public relations and public advocacy, personal selling and counseling, client/customer relations, and market research to the ultimate goal of achieving behavioral results.

The World Health Organization has successfully applied the IMC approach (referred to in WHO as COMBI - "Communication for Behavioural Impact") in dealing with a broad range of communicable diseases over the past ten years.

Your personal learning outcome: As a participant in a working group you will apply the IMC/COMBI planning method to develop an IMC/COMBI plan for a health or social development field of your choice.