The Solution c/o asp18@columbia.edu

March 29th, 2006 • Societal Marketing

So how do we get at what John Mellencamp was concerned about?

A:

Implementation of what marketing guru, Philip Kotler, termed the “societal marketing concept.” The societal marketing concept is defined as businesses organized around the marketing concept in that they are profitable and competitive with the added dimension of societal concern. Examples of this are Ben and Jerry’s (the company formerly known as), the Body Shop, Espirit, Benetton and Johnson & Johnson with its handling of the Tylenol scare. About ten years ago Tylenol was laced with cyanide in eight stores. Johnson & Johnson knew it was only laced in eight stores, but unlike Firestone they immediately recalled the product around the entire planet—losing a quarter of a billion dollars in short term revenues. Today Tylenol is the most successful pain reliever worldwide. The antithesis of the societal marketing concept is Ford Motor Company’s handling of the Pinto. Ford calculated that it would cheaper to put the car on the market and be sued when people died from the dangerous gas tank instead of recalling the car. People ended up dying, the company was sued, and many people lost confidence in Ford. I am interested in seeing more mainstream businesses via changed management, mission statements and policies, become profitable, competitive and societally concerned.

In order to get to the stage where a Monsanto can be societally concerned at an optimal level: concerned about policies that are labor-centric, human rights oriented, civil rights oriented, feminist, and peace oriented, there are number of steps that need to be taken. The first step is the formation of a media company, Ethical and Efficacious Entertainment. E & E will bring the voices of established civil, human, peace, and indigenous rights groups, feminists, tax reformers, labor unions, environmentalists, artists, dissident leaders abroad, the Congressional Black and Progressive Caucuses, media watchdog groups, to TV in the form of entertaining programs funded by sold TV time to progressive advertisers. Essentially, E & E will be a televisual clearinghouse for progressive activists, politicians, academics and business people. One of E & E’s programs resembling the Home Shopping Club, will be called the Company Shopping Club. The program will highlight what’s wrong with various companies and then organize capital into socially concerned leverage buyout funds and other related mechanisms that E and E helps organize to take over the Ford Motor Companies and the Monsantos and change the way they operate via changed mission statements, management and policies enabling them to become societally concerned at an optimal level. E and E’s media work will create added value for society in its own right, but will also contribute substantially to wider implementation of the societal marketing concept-via promotion of the concept in a specific way.