A former executive director introduces the concept of "social marketing," an approach that helps shelters accomplish their goals by listening to the customer.

© Joe Azar

If there is one challenge that faces nearly every employee and volunteer who works in an animal shelter, it's the never-ending series of questions, demands, expectations, and complaints posed by the public: "Why can't you find him a new home?" "What do you mean you won't pick up the stray cat under my car?" "You're never open when I can come." "All of your adoption dogs are mutts." "Keep the cat indoors?! That's cruel." "The shelter is too depressing." "Why do I have to license my dog?" "You make it harder to adopt a dog than to adopt a child." "You can't expect me to have a cat in the house and not declaw it!" "You would rather kill that dog than give him to me."

You've heard these comments before. And, if you're like most people, you've learned to tune them out. "Uncaring public." "Insensitive people." "They just don't understand." "They should be more responsible." "They should care more." "They should be willing and able to do more for animals."

But what would happen if you didn't tune them out? What if, instead of dismissing people's comments as cold or uncaring, you took an even closer look at their words? If you were able to get even a glimpse of the reasons people act the way they do—the reasons their actions conflict with your hopes and expectations—perhaps you'd be better able to change their actions. It may require plenty of change on your agency's part as well, but if listening to the public would help you gain people's cooperation, it would certainly be worth your time.

A New Approach

Doing just that—carefully listening to those whose behavior you are trying to influence—is a key part of a strategy called "social marketing," a groundbreaking planning and management approach that's gaining popularity among organizations committed to social change.

When most people hear the word "marketing," they think of selling; the word itself conjures images of slick Madison Avenue advertising campaigns designed to lure people into purchasing things they don't want or need. Yet whatever our opinion of marketing, it's clearly a powerful mechanism for influencing people's behavior. Ask anyone who has taken a child through the checkout stand of the local grocery store or stood in line to buy the latest Beanie Baby.

Marketers aren't expected to sell a product that has been created without their input, however. Marketing is, in fact, a broad planning and management process, and the advertisements we associate with marketing are only some of the tools of the trade. To be successful, marketers must assess public attitudes and behaviors; develop products or services that appeal to the public's desires; package, promote, and distribute the products or services; and monitor the results. Savvy marketers then use those results to update their products and begin the entire process again.

Rather than promoting commercial products or services, social marketers apply these same marketing strategies to "sell" socially responsible behaviors or ideas. First introduced in the early 1970s, social marketing grew out of the realization that certain techniques used to influence society's purchasing behavior might also be used to encourage other behaviors, specifically, those that improve a person's health or welfare, or the welfare of society.

International health agencies such as the World Health Organization were among the first to use social marketing, prompting unvaccinated people in developing countries to visit health clinics for timely immunizations. In recent years, social marketing has gained acceptance among leaders of other social change organizations including environmental protection groups, international development agencies (similar to the United States Peace Corps), and domestic health programs such as those promoting AIDS awareness.

If animal shelters emerge as the next group to adapt this revolutionary approach, the benefits for their local communities may even eclipse those achieved by other social change organizations. The approach can work wonders for shelters that work tirelessly to increase return-to-owner rates, but find licensing and microchip campaigns less effective than they'd hoped. Social marketing can help agencies that already prevent hundreds of litters from ever being born, but that still find each spring greets them with dozens of puppies and kittens. Even nonsheltering groups that promote the ideals of responsible pet ownership can learn how to tailor their messages and disperse them more effectively with the tenets of social marketing as their guide.

Taking A Closer Look

You might think such a powerful tool would require an investment of time and resources beyond your reach. But before you balk at the notion of adding one more project to your "to do"list, note that social marketing isn't an additional activity or program; it's simply an alternative approach to planning and shaping the work you're already doing.

While it may be more time-consuming initially, social marketing will eventually save time and money and prevent wasted effort by helping you plan programs and activities in the most cost-effective way. By surveying potential customers up front, you can devote resources to the most relevant issues. By pretesting programs, you can fix potential problems before their impact is widespread. And by targeting your strategies to the most appropriate audience, you can eliminate the expense of trying to reach those with little potential for change.

According to Alan Andreasen, a Georgetown University professor and author of Marketing Social Change, seven key features distinguish social marketing from the traditional approaches used by advocacy organizations:

1. All strategies begin with the customer. Most cause-oriented organizations have difficulty applying this key tenet of the social marketing approach, which requires thinking from the customer's perspective. That‘s because people who care deeply for a cause often have trouble understanding why others think and behave differently than they do. Most people judge the actions of others through the filter of their own experiences, and assume that people whose actions contradict their values must be ignorant or uncaring, when, in fact, others may simply have a different and equally valid set of values.

After all, if you drive a car to work rather than use public transportation, it doesn't necessarily mean that you don't care about the environment. Your schedule may not allow bus or subway travel, or you may simply need a large vehicle to transport your family and pets. Just as it would be incorrect for environmentalists to condemn your actions, it's unwise for animal-protection workers to make assumptions about a pet owner's motivations. Everyone has his own criteria for making these personal decisions. The social marketer recognizes this fact, and then attempts to understand people's reasoning to gain their involvement.

"The assumption is ... that customers have very good reasons for doing what they are doing,"says Andreasen. "The marketer's challenge is to figure out how to adjust the marketing program to respond to these reasons. The customer ... always ... drives the program, not vice versa."

Social marketers neither speculate about why people do or do not practice the desired behavior, nor guess at their motivations. Instead, they take the easy way out: they just ask. Nonjudgmental surveys, focus groups, and even personal interviews can reveal the underlying issues while also showing people that their needs and opinions are valued.

If a program fails to bring about the desired results, the social marketer doesn't blame the public for being ignorant or insensitive. Rather, she takes a closer look at why the program or activity failed to address the target consumer's needs or prompt a change in behavior, then adjusts the program accordingly. Although some might argue that it's unacceptable to "excuse" public apathy, the social marketing approach actually empowers the agency seeking change. After all, the social marketer has the ability to alter the public's behavior. Figure out what motivates the public, and success is sure to follow.

A number of animal-protection organizations have taken this step and challenged their assumptions about what people think by performing surveys and asking their customers and the general public for feedback. (See Research Leads to New Developments.) Others are already "putting the customer first" by making shelter hours convenient for people who work; taking animals to public places for outreach adoptions; telling concerned people about the fate of the stray animals they've delivered to the shelter; and selling licenses through veterinary offices. The key is to ask the target audience what would make the desired behavior more appealing or easy to practice, then design your programs or strategies accordingly.

© Joe Azar

2. Consumer behavior is the bottom line. Most animal shelters' education and public-awareness efforts presume that if people know the facts, they will act responsibly. Social marketers, however, believe it is not enough for people to know what they should do and why they should do it. "Unlike educators, who may be satisfied that messages were distributed and received and that people have apparently learned some facts, social marketers argue that learning facts is only important if it leads to a desired behavioral outcome," says Andreasen.

For example, if the goal of a program is to prompt people to identify their pets through licensing, social marketers won't consider any program successful until a targeted number of pets actually wear license tags. Even if thousands of leaflets have been distributed, even if polls show that most people know about the licensing law and even if more than the targeted number of tags have been sold, the licensing program won't be a success until owners actually place tags on their animals. After all, tags that sit at the bottom of kitchen drawers won't protect pets.

Although it's relatively easy to change people's knowledge, social marketers focus on the end product—behavior—because it's the most important part of the equation, and because changing people's knowledge doesn't always change their behavior. According to Philip Kotler, author of Marketing for Nonprofit Organizations, people faced with information that conflicts with their view of the world often try to avoid it, rationalize it away, or compartmentalize it so that it doesn't force them to question their values.

Health education efforts are prime examples of how providing information and even changing values often fails to change people's behaviors. Though the health risks posed by cigarettes are well-publicized, many people continue to smoke in spite of the warnings. And though extensive public-awareness campaigns have increased the high social value placed on fitness today, the rates of obesity in our society are higher than ever. Clearly then, most of us value our health, yet many of us continue to pursue activities inconsistent with our knowledge.

One could continue attempts to harp on those values until people do pursue healthier lifestyles, but it's more effective and more efficient to appeal to different values. As taxes on cigarettes increase, smoking declines because people value money. And people who develop an interest in a certain sport such as cycling or soccer may lose weight incidentally—not because they value exercise, but because they enjoy the activities.

Shelters that can introduce programs that appeal to these different competing values will be more effective than shelters that continue to stress the need to adopt specific values. Take licensing compliance, for example: Rather than insisting people value the idea of licensing in and of itself, a shelter may lobby for greater fines for those who don't comply or offer a "Free ride home" to stray animals wearing a license, appealing to everyone's desire to follow the law, hold onto money, and get complimentary services.

Of course, changes that involve a one-time action, such as participating in an event and spaying a pet are more readily accomplished than are ongoing behavior changes (for example, keeping the cat indoors). The challenge for the marketer is not only to make people believe the action is a good idea, but also to make it easy or appealing in spite of other factors. To do this, the social marketer must help people unlearn old behaviors (opening the door to let the cat out at night) and help them sustain the change over time (even when the cat starts clawing at the door or acting out).

Since social marketing is concerned with changing behavior, organizations must first translate their goals into a handful of simple actions they would like to see people practice. That sounds easy enough until you start to look at all the options: Spay or neuter your pet. Keep your cat indoors. License and identify your pet. Adopt from a shelter or take in a stray. Train your pet to be a good citizen. Vaccinate your pet. Keep your dog on a leash or under control. Keep your pet for a lifetime.

Given this long list of desired behaviors, the challenge for the social marketer is to prioritize: The familiar slogan "KISS: Keep It Simple, Stupid" is the key to defining the goal of a social marketing campaign. The more narrow the behavioral objective, the more focused your campaign can become and the easier it will be for your target audience to understand what you want done. Complex messages such as "Be a responsible pet owner" leave too much to interpretation and can frustrate people who aren't certain of the meaning. Requests such as "Leash your dog" or "Keep your cat indoors" refine your message in clearer terms and provide people with a simple direction they can follow.

3. Market research is essential. "Social marketers are almost fanatical about conducting research, even if this research is something as simple as a number of carefully planned conversations with customers," says Andreasen. "Because they know that customers control outcomes, they know that they must understand where customers are coming from before they decide just what to try to sell."

The first step is to research the problems in your community and people's attitudes, knowledge, needs, and behaviors related to those problems. The process can be expensive and time-consuming, but not nearly as expensive as launching poorly designed programs that produce no results or, worse, set an organization back. Private consultants can develop and implement all sorts of sophisticated research projects, but as Andreasen says in Marketing Social Change, "One need not spend an inordinate amount of money on this kind of research and it need not be excessively sophisticated." Animal shelters about to plunge into research should consider these suggestions:

© Joe Azar

• Begin your research by analyzing the species, age, gender, and condition of the homeless animals coming into shelters in your community. Look closely at the reasons animals end up at your shelter and consider the demographics of the people surrendering or abandoning them. Computer software packages in use at shelters of all sizes reveal trends that would have been difficult to quantify even a few years ago. (See the May-June 1997 issue of ASM for more information on computer software packages.)
• Interview small groups of existing or potential customers; observe staff-customer interactions in the shelter; survey members, clients, or outside groups; and ask relevant questions of shelter visitors to gather helpful information. If your staff regularly speaks before community groups, ask audience members to complete a brief questionnaire before or after the talk, or ask for feedback at the end of the presentation.
• If broad-scale community surveys are beyond your budget, identify where the greatest problems are coming from, and target small groups within those areas.
• Visit public libraries, local government offices, and planning departments to gather demographic information about your target audience. Take advantage of census data available on the Internet as well. If you can find out what percentage of your community lives in multi-family rental housing versus single-family homes, you'll be better able to plan an adoption program.
• Take a look at research being done in the field of animal protection on both a national and regional level. While it's important to be careful when applying the findings from one community to another, information gathered in other parts of the country can provide some good insights. ASM frequently reports on the findings of local studies and provides regular updates on the work of groups such as the National Council on Pet Population Study and Policy, which examines a broad range of factors involving shelters and the people who use their services.
• Consult with professors from local colleges, whose students are often required to conduct social science research and may be willing to help your organization perform larger surveys. Other print and electronic resources can provide advice for conducting research of your own. (See the list of resources at the end of this article.)

Once you've assessed the problems in your community, the next step is to define a single problem and specific behaviors you would like to change. You can begin by referring to your own organization's statistics. For example, which poses a bigger problem in your shelter: cats or dogs? Is there one area in your community that's home to the most unvaccinated, unlicensed animals? Are most dogs relinquished to your shelter because of behavior problems that could be solved with a few training classes? Is your biggest adoption challenge finding appropriate homes for older dogs? It's important to look beyond your perceptions and actually track the numbers objectively, because in many instances it may seem as though puppies and kittens are surrendered in the greatest numbers, when in fact a statistical analysis shows that a majority of animals relinquished are adolescent animals with behavioral problems.

Answers to questions such as these will not only help you establish goals when beginning a program, but also help measure the results of the program once it's complete. Obviously, if one of your goals is to increase the number of licensed dogs in the community, you'll need to know how many there are before you start, then take another look after the program has been in place for a while. If you're planning a campaign to encourage people to sterilize their pets, you'll need to track the percentage of licensed animals who are sterilized and the percentage of surrendered animals who are sterilized. If you're only tracking the number of surgeries performed or the number of unwanted litters coming through the front door, you may be seeing the tip of the iceberg. It is important to make sure people are participating in the program you've established, but the real goal is to reduce the number of unwanted animals in the community; if that number doesn't fall appreciably, the program may need to be reconsidered, revamped, or supplemented.

Animal shelters that practice social marketing effectively never stop learning from the public and using that information to craft new solutions. By constantly testing your assumptions against the attitudes and opinions of the target audience, your organization will always remain in step. Pretest program ideas on small groups of people, then monitor the results and change the program before launching it community-wide; fail to do so and you may lose time, money, and credibility. For ongoing programs, you'll need to constantly establish and monitor "benchmarks," such as the number of licenses sold or the number of spay/neuter surgeries completed. The results of projects with a definite end point, such as one-week discounts on license tags, should be tallied so you'll know whether to duplicate the programs in future years, alter them in some way, or go back to the drawing board.

4. Programs must be cost-effective. Most animal-protection organizations already know that funds and other resources used to develop and offer a program must be spent wisely. No one benefits if money, staff time, and volunteer hours are invested in a program that has unclear objectives or is poorly conceived. Other less tangible resources are equally important: Political support; favors from local businesses and donors; media attention; and the cooperation of community professionals such as veterinarians and advertisers must all be used wisely and effectively. Clearly, agencies that truly want to bring about social change must take a good, hard look at their programs and eliminate ineffective or unnecessary components. That may mean changing or abandoning long-time programs that aren't accomplishing anything measurable, even if they're popular among staff, volunteers, and members of the public.

5. Markets are carefully segmented. Viewing your audience as simply one large group called "the public" is not only ineffective, it's overwhelming. Just as commercial marketers direct their messages to the most likely or most desirable consumers, so do social marketers.

Look at the difference between a cereal designed for children and one produced for adults. With the possible exception of sugar content and colors, the ingredients aren't dramatically different. Yet the packaging and naming of the product (Captain Crunch or Lucky Charms), the place it is marketed (from Saturday morning cartoons to its location on "child-level"shelves of the grocery store) and the promotional message (fun and tastes good) are dramatically different than the marketing mix for Special K or Total.

Depending on the "product" or responsible behavior being promoted, marketers may segment each group according to simple criteria such as age or gender, or by common behaviors or characteristics. Animal shelters can also group people according to common beliefs, communication channels, problems, or even misconceptions about animals, then target programs to the needs and interests of the individual groups.

For example, surveys conducted in both Northern California and Massachusetts showed that cat owners view cost as a significant factor when deciding whether to spay or neuter their pets. But among dog owners, cost isn't even one of the top ten concerns. Clearly, humane organizations in these areas should tailor "low-cost" spay/neuter programs primarily to cat owners.

The California survey also showed that a large percentage of dog owners who left their animals intact planned to breed the animals. A program that offers discounted sterilization isn't likely to motivate these people, since cost is not a factor in their decision. People in this group may be more likely to respond to advice from their veterinarian regarding the health benefits of sterilization or input from a responsible breeder on the difficulties, expense, and unpredictability involved in raising a litter of puppies and placing them in permanent homes.

One of the easiest and most efficient ways to divide the population into segments is to look at the simple demographics of animal homelessness in your community. Does one section of the community produce most of the unwanted animals brought to your shelter? Is the problem in one area disproportionate to the percentage of the human population living there? Are the reasons dogs are surrendered different from the reasons cats are surrendered? Does your program need to target everyone or only pet owners? Segmenting allows you to target your message more effectively to the common needs or interests of a smaller group of people and focus your efforts where they will have the greatest impact.

6. Interventions involve the "Four P's": Product, Price, Place, and Promotion. It doesn't take a master's degree in business administration to understand that people will only spend money on a product if they receive something of perceived value in return. In marketing, the concept is called "exchange theory." If your shelter wants people to "buy into" a behavior, you'll need to attach a perceived value to the desired behavior. And that means paying close attention to four key elements that influence consumers' buying behavior: product, price, place, and promotion. Whether the product being "sold"is cereal or the use of an ID tag, these factors all play a role.

Product—Designing a product that makes it easy or appealing to adopt a new behavior is key to successful social marketing. In the case of animal care and control agencies, "product" is synonymous with "program" or "service." Your organization can encourage the desired behavior by making the product less costly, associating it with something that the consumer already values, or demonstrating how it can solve a problem or meet a need.

For example, by taking shelter animals to community sites for adoption (the product), humane groups make it more convenient to adopt an animal (the target behavior). Subsidized spay/neuter programs (the product) are designed to make it less costly to sterilize family pets (the target behavior). By playing up the health and behavior advantages of spaying or neutering a pet rather than simply detailing the tragedy of pet overpopulation, shelters can show how the service provides something valuable for a bargain price.

According to the marketing firm Weinreich Communications, a product won't prompt action unless people believe that a problem or need truly exists and that your product is a viable solution. For instance, people who don't see overpopulation as a problem won't be interested in a subsidized sterilization program. And such programs don't address the needs of people who recognize the surplus pet problem but don't consider the cost of sterilization surgery an obstacle. Similarly, if people don't believe there is a problem with lost, unidentified pets in the community or if they fail to connect licensing with identification, they won't view licensing as a valuable "product" for protecting their pets. Simply put, humane organizations must design programs that draw a clear connection between the product and the problem as it's perceived by the target audience.

Price—In social marketing, price refers to more than just the monetary cost. It includes whatever investment the consumer must make to use your "product" or to act in the way you would like. Costs that involve money and convenience are the easiest to recognize and often the easiest to address. Free or discounted sterilization programs, subsidized adoption fees, and low-cost vaccination clinics have been part of shelter programs for decades. More recently, shelters have introduced weekend and evening hours, adoption outreach programs, and mobile spay/neuter or vaccination clinics to make humane or responsible behavior more convenient.

But sometimes responsible behavior comes with its own costs, such as an investment of time or effort; embarrassment; conflict with peers; or conflict with one's own values. For instance, if a woman wants to have the family dog spayed but her partner wants to breed the dog so that a puppy will remain after the mother dies, the cost of the target behavior could be family conflict. And if a teenager's peers regularly boast of how "bad"or mean their dogs are, the young owner who enrolls his animal in training classes could "pay" when faced with the disapproval of his friends.

Although it is difficult to address some of these more personal costs, animal shelters and other organizations can help mediate social pressure or value conflicts by enlisting the support or endorsement of community leaders, peer role models, sports figures, and others. Incentives such as amnesty periods for licensing, complimentary behavioral counseling for adopters, and testimonials from satisfied customers all help to address real or perceived costs.

Unfortunately, shelters themselves often unknowingly contribute to the costs of responsible behavior. For instance, if people visit a shelter to surrender a stray animal or a pet they can no longer keep, and are met with hostile attitudes or suspicious questions, they may find the emotional cost of returning to the shelter too high the next time they find a stray or want to adopt a new pet.

If you try to get inside the head of someone who's surrendering an animal, you may find it's not the most comfortable place to be. Still, it will become more clear to you that the person on the other side of the counter is making a responsible choice, one that is already emotionally costly regardless of what greets him at the shelter. It may be difficult to speak with a pet owner who didn't make a greater effort to keep a pet, but it's important to recognize the person chose the shelter over other options such as abandoning a pet or giving the animal to a complete stranger.

Providing positive reinforcement is as important to human behavior as it is to training pets. It's even a good idea to reinforce responsible behavior that doesn't fully meet your expectations. Thanking the person who surrenders a pet when he can find no other recourse will reduce the emotional cost of the experience and leave the customer more likely to accept your other messages.

Place—According to Weinreich Communications, "place" describes the way the product reaches the consumer. For tangible products such as licenses and microchips, place may simply be the point of sale: over-the-counter, by mail, or through veterinarians' offices. For intangible products such as programs designed to keep pets safe at home, place is not limited to a physical location but includes all the channels that provide consumers access to the program.

These channels may include conversations with those who visit the animal shelter, messages delivered via mass media outlets, and even contact with individuals or groups that already have the trust of the consumer, such as veterinary hospitals, special-interest groups, local animal-related businesses, and other community agencies. People in search of information usually consult friends or experts in the field, so if you can get your messages into the hands of these trusted sources, you'll have more opportunities to influence your target audience. The more you know about the needs, interests, and associations of your target audience, the easier it will be to find the best "place" to deliver your product.

Promotion—Promotion is the ingredient that most people think of when the word "marketing"is mentioned. According to Weinreich Communications, promotion involves the "integrated use of advertising, public relations, promotions, media advocacy, personal selling, and entertainment vehicles"to create and sustain demand for a product.

Marketers use promotion to help consumers make the connection between a product and a perceived problem or need. Promotion entails not only the message your shelter is delivering, but also decisions about where and how to communicate that message.

© Joe Azar

A quick review of animal-protection publications or a stroll through conference exhibit halls reveals that animal care and control agencies have no shortage of creative talent in communicating their messages. Professional advertising agencies and humane organizations have developed plenty of clever ads with upbeat, motivating themes and just as many hard-hitting pieces that tug at the heartstrings.

But before you reprint another organization's advertisement, make sure it addresses a problem in your community. For instance, if your shelter seldom sees unwanted puppies delivered to its door, a powerful advertisement asking the consumer which animal he would choose to euthanize would lack credibility and only cause anger. And even the most clever ad on the importance of pet licensing won't work unless people know how and where to obtain a license.

Remember, too, that there are many ways to convey your message. Depending on its focus and intended audience, targeted media may be much more effective than daily newspapers or television news. Community "shopper"papers, newsletters targeted at specific groups, foreign language newspapers, radio programs, billboards in heavy traffic areas, web sites, and Internet bulletin boards are all potential vehicles that may help convey your promotional message. As with any aspect of social marketing, knowing how your target customers receive information should be central to your decision on how to deliver it. Just as "place" involves the use of role models and respected figures, successful promotion also relies on enlisting the target consumer's friends and community leaders to deliver the proper message.

7. Competition is always recognized. Who is your competition? Some would say it's the humane society on the other side of town, the closest animal control agency, or other nonprofit organizations competing for foundation dollars. Most of us think of competitors as organizations that offer similar services, or groups that oppose our efforts to pass legislation. But the kind of competition that concerns social marketers is whatever competes with the behaviors you're promoting. In other words, what options are available to people who don't choose the desired behavior?

If your goal is to get people to spay or neuter their pets, the competition might be: (1) breeding pets intentionally; (2) allowing unaltered pets to roam and breed accidentally; (3) keeping pets intact but safely confined at home; (4) spaying or neutering pets after one litter, or when the animals are older; or (5) doing nothing.

Consequently, the product (a spay or neuter surgery) must be packaged and promoted so that it appears more appealing or compelling than any of the other options, including the easiest option: doing nothing. Animal care and control agencies often spend too much time convincing people that the desired behavior is the best action to take, when in reality many people already agree but simply lack the sense of urgency required to change.

The Massachusetts and California surveys mentioned earlier revealed that many people knew of the benefits of sterilizing their pets and intended to do so, but simply "hadn't gotten around to it." Your organization can compete with inactivity by offering "sales" or limited-time discounts for surgeries, reduced licensing and impoundment fees for sterilized pets, or special promotions with local merchants.

Everything Has Its Limits

Like any other approach to creating social change, social marketing won't work in all situations. Because its intent is to influence voluntary behavior, the approach is likely to fail if used to promote behavior that directly conflicts with the target group's values. It's also likely to fail if used to promote behavior change around an issue that people simply don't see as a problem; for example, a pet owner may insist that because her cat is microchipped and never goes outdoors, there is no need for her to buy a license.

Social marketing efforts will only be successful if the audience understands the expected behavior and has the resources necessary to act. You can encourage frustrated dog owners to enroll in training classes, but if there is no class offered in the community, or only limited availability, the "solution" is an empty one.

Even worse, attempts to play on people's emotions without offering a clear way to solve the root problem may frustrate consumers and even backfire. For example, open-admission shelters that undertake powerful publicity campaigns about the tragedy of euthanasia without providing consumers with practical and specific solutions may incur only anger and outrage over the practice of euthanasia.

Of course, if your approach focuses on the consumer from the beginning, these conflicts or deficiencies should be revealed before a new program is implemented. The social marketing approach recognizes that effective programs are not independent of service delivery, law enforcement, or other activities; rather they shape these other factors.

Even the smallest organization can practice social marketing in some form, even if it is only, as Andreasen says, to adopt a "marketing mind-set": a respect for the views of the target audience and a desire to know and understand more about the public you serve. Such a mind-set will keep you focused on asking questions of consumers, shaping your programs to meet their needs, and enlisting their help as you work to help animals.

Kathy Savesky, former executive director of the Peninsula Humane Society in San Mateo, California, has 20  years of experience in the field of animal protection.