‘Marketing! Do something about carbon emission’

Q: We’re an NGO advocating not only carbon emission control but its elimination. We believe the key is in getting car owners to start replacing their gasoline-run cars with electric cars. We know this can’t be done overnight. How about over the next three to five years? Can’t marketing help?  We’ve seen marketing make consumers buy products they don’t even need (like shades) or products that they know are bad for them (like cigarettes). Why can’t marketing sell electric cars to replace gasoline cars?

A: We’ll answer your challenge to marketing using the “social marketing” framework.  By doing this, we’re not saying that this is the only way Marketing can respond to you. There are other ways, but we’ve chosen the social marketing path and you’ll see why if you read on.

What you and your NGO are after is essentially for car owners to change their buying and owning behavior of cars. You want them to stop buying

gas-run cars and instead start buying and driving electric cars.

Now, social marketing is the science of “changing public behavior.”  This is our reason for taking the social marketing route in responding to your challenge.

To learn more about social marketing, see the senior MRx-er’s 1989 best-selling book (co-authored with Philip Kotler), Social Marketing: Strategies for Changing Public Behavior published by Macmillan, New York.

To effect the behavior change you’re after, social marketing says it’s a contest of consumer values. Let’s assume first that car manufacturers would have made the price of electric cars matched that of gas-run cars. Given the evolving technology, this is quite a reasonable assumption.  This simplifies the issue because we’re now talking about the costs of driving the car via electricity (i.e., via car battery) versus via gasoline.

Now, it’s known that per kilometer traveled the energy from the car battery will cost much less than that from gasoline.

So what’s the contest of consumer values? It’s this: “Are the benefits to the car owner in driving a gas-run car perceived to be greater than, equal to, or less than the benefits to that same car owner promised by driving an electric car?”  If greater than, he won’t change behavior. If equal to or less than, he will change behavior.

Here are the promised benefits from driving an electric car:

(1) You get known to be “eco-friendly.”

(2) You drive a clean energy car.

(3)  You drive a car that’s efficient in its fuel consumption. (4)  You’re doing something about carbon emission control.

(5) You’re into recycling and energy conservation.

What about the perceived and felt benefits of driving a gas-run car versus an electric car?  Listen to how one of our executive development program attendees defined the situation in favor of gas-run cars with the “convenience” it offers:

“I think electric cars are good.  But I’m a sales manager.  I drive to work every day, and I go around accompanying one or two of my sales reps visiting clients. That’s everyday too, and most of the time we’re

driving.  Using an electric car in this kind of job means we have to recharge every so often, maybe once or twice during the day.  That’s not the real problem.  It’s the recharging time. It takes so long.  If recharging will take only as long as it takes to fill up at the gas station, I’d immediately go for an electric car.  Why not?”

Here’s another view from another execdev attendee who talks about another kind of convenience:

“During weekends, I like taking the kids to the beach.

Vacation time is either up north or down south and really far away from Manila. When it’s a four- or five- or ten-hour drive, my wife and I take turns.  So how far can a fully charged battery of an electric car last?  I read somewhere about 100 to 150 kilometers. Then when fully discharged, you’ll have to have it fully charged overnight or for eight hours.  The time of the electric car has not come yet … not for me and my family.  If electric cars can offer a prepaid card for their electric battery, then and only will I say that it finally has arrived.

In the U.S., you can subscribe to electric power on a prepaid and postpaid basis. So why not for the electric power in electric cars?”

This is about the benefit of extended use in driving a gas-run car versus an electric car.  It’s another variant of the convenience benefit.  But the preceding and this present one are both benefits to the consumer that are here-and-now.

The promised benefits of the electric car are future ones, at a distance in time.

Where’s the solution?  Basically, it’s making the electric car’s distant benefits at least match the gas-run car’s here-and-now benefits.  That’s hinted at in our first quotation that said: If recharging will take only as long as it takes to fill up at the gas station, I’d immediately go for an electric car…”

And in our second quotation when our execdev attendee said: “If electric cars can offer (something like) a prepaid card for their electric battery …”

Fortunately, this solution is already with us or rather in Israel where Shai Agassi, an Israeli entrepreneur founded Better Place Inc. which developed the needed model and infrastructure.

The system built battery switching stations operating like car washes. A traveler drives in his car in a switching station where his depleted battery is removed.  Next, a fully charged one is installed in less than it takes to fill a gas tank. The battery is then charged at night when electricity costs are low.

Trivia!  Isn’t this just the kind of campaign idea that Mr. Mar Roxas needs for his presidential goal? Can you imagine how much potential voting points he is to gain when he does something like this on the polluting buses even just in Metro Manila?

Anyway, there’s your practical and doable answer from social marketing.

Keep your questions coming. Send them to us at [email protected] or [email protected]. God bless!