Integrated marketing communication at the South African National Blood Service: an evaluation of its social marketing campaigns

Abstract

Integrated marketing communication (IMC) is a concept which has been explored in commercial contexts by numerous studies. Numerous scholars in the literature highlight the benefits of adopting an IMC approach which creates message consistency, amongst others. However, there is still limited literature on the adoption and use of IMC in the context of non-profit organisations involved in social marketing campaigns to support their behavioural change messages. Insight into the adoption and use of an IMC approach could be useful to non-profit organisations involved in social marketing as it could increase the success of behavioural change messages. This study aims to explore the use of IMC by one non-profit organisation within a social marketing context. By doing so the study proposes and refines IMC criteria for social marketing to support behavioural change messages and thus contributes to the existing body of knowledge on using IMC in social marketing. The study uses a single case study approach which includes using three data collection methods to collect data from the South Africa National Blood Service (SANBS) to evaluate its social marketing campaigns according to proposed IMC criteria for social marketing. Based on the findings revised IMC criteria which are more tailor-made for social marketing to support behavioural change messages are proposed. It became evident that non-profit organisations need to be sensitive to the complexities of communicating messages aimed at behavioural change. A proper understanding and application of more tailor-made IMC criteria for social marketing can thus benefit non-profit organisations to effectively communicate behavioural change messages through their social marketing campaigns