برندهای خوب: بینش در ارزش ویژه برند های اجتماعی Brands that do good: insight into social brand equity

Introduction Brands have played a leading role in well-known social marketing campaigns. Komen Race for the Cure, Oxfam with its mantra ‘‘The power of people against poverty’’, American Cancer Society, ‘‘the official sponsor of birthdays’’, The Sierra Club ‘‘explore, enjoy and protect the planet’’ and UNICEF works globally for the ‘‘rights of every child’’ are examples of global, well-known social brands. Branding has played a pivotal role in three effective social marketing campaigns from the USA, namely The Heart Truth campaign that sought to raise heart disease awareness and prevention among women (Long et al. 2008); the VERBTM campaign that was designed to increase physical activity among children aged 9–13 years (Price et al. 2009); and the TRUTHSM campaign that pitted itself against tobacco manufacturers as a non-smoking lifestyle brand for teenagers (Evans et al. 2002). Brands also played a role in social marketing campaigns in other parts of the world. Sisimpur, an adaptation of Sesame Street in Bangladesh, is designed to meet the needs of three- to six-year-olds with objectives that include promoting good nutrition, safety and hygiene. In Africa, three branded HIV/AIDS prevention social marketing campaigns were designed to reach adolescents and young adults: Trust in Kenya, Salama in Tanzania and LoveLife in South Africa (Evans 2008). For the purposes of our study, we define social brands as representing a cluster of functional, emotional and behavioural benefits that supports a social issue. In social marketing, brands help individuals to indicate to themselves and others that they identify with a specific behaviour (Kirby 2001) and in doing so, it may speed up the exchange process, with more immediate benefits and positive reinforcement (Lefebvre 2013). Brands also serve to build relationships (Wood 2008), and create emotional connections between the issue and the individual (McDivitt 2003). Brands are not simply a logo or tagline, but represent what a behaviour, programme and sponsor mean to people (Lefebvre 2011). Brands also act as reminders and catalysts to perform specific actions, engage in a social movement or change behaviours, and help campaigns gain visibility and raise awareness of issues (McDivitt 2003). Possibly most importantly, a branded world is the world that modern individuals relate to and know (Wood 2008), and while there may be ethical concerns about the consumerist nature of brands, there is also an opportunity to convert this familiarity into positive behaviour change (McDivitt 2003). Further, given Wymer’s (2011) argument that social marketers must move beyond the limitations offered by the individual and look more broadly, the social brand may serve to create the community that moves the focus of social marketing campaigns from the individual to the general. Beyond these roles, there is a more strategic role for a brand in a social marketing campaign. Branding represents an investment (DeChernatony and Dall’Olmo Riley 1998; Yoo et al. 2000), and when the brand carries sufficient value, it can be regarded as a determinant of success (Samad et al. 2010) and be used to motivate for continued donor funding or co-branding in societal campaigns. On a practical level, brands transcend the constraints of literacy (Lefebvre 2011), a real factor to consider for many social marketing programmes.