What is the role of Digital Marketing in Social Movements?
Hugo César Sanchez Garcia
Providing Neighborhood Nourishment Through Empowerment and Equitable Opportunity Development
Effective Social Marketing
I'd argue that there is no such thing.
Regardless of your social cause, communicating the message of your movement is ultimately important. Whether it's #BlacklivesMatter bringing attention to the systematic oppression of Black People, the #Metoo movement addressing sexual assault, Water is Life with its multi-faceted approach to access to water, Occupy Wall Street holding capitalism and it's players accountable, or #MMIW with its attempt to bring a stop to the violence against Indigenous Women it's crucial that folks hear about what you're trying to accomplish.
Critique
My critique of the application of traditional marketing to these movements is in the shift away from the transformative cause, and instead towards presenting the cause in a way that is palatable and appealing. Why is it that we look to marketing to stop the dehumanization of Black and brown bodies, shifting to prioritize communities instead of people and listen to the voices of the most marginalized??? I've seen too often where a message or cause get's diluted in the process of segmenting, or during an attempt to have it fit a certain "target market". Conversations around #Blacklivesmatter or PRIDE don't look the same when the conversations are in front of different communities (oppressor/oppressed). For marginalized groups to have to change the rhetoric in order for the conversation to move forward ultimately requires the folks from disenfranchised groups to have to appeal to their humanity. That is inherently problematic.
Marketing at its root is and has always been performative. In marketing, there's a focus on manipulating our products/services and putting them in front of the right people, through the correct avenues at the right price. I think you can argue that when we're dealing with products and services that this is fine. However, I don't think it transfers over the same when dealing with issues of inequity, oppression or exploitation. This is not to mention that it's not a good look that that marketing has its root's in business and most social causes are pushing back on the inevitable effects of capitalism. It's naive to expect that social causes will be addressed in a good way using the methods that caused the problem in the first place. As Audre Lorde said, "the master's tools will never dismantle the master's house." That's exactly why I think that while truly radical social movements can look to digital marketing for things like managing a social media account, or sending out email newsletters, movements need to look outside traditional forms of Marketing in order to be truly effective and stay grounded at its message.
Effective Social Marketing
The ways that I've historically seen social causes have effective marketing is through disruptive methods. Boycotts, boycotts, marches, sit ins, blockades are all excellent examples. Disruptive methods on their own can only get as far as the people directly involved, but by using certain tools these methods can have exponential impacts. The effective tools that come to mind when marketing are those that provide a capacity to share live updates of what is happening like Twitter, Facebook Live, Instagram live, etc. Additionally, communication tools like Signal, Facebook groups, group me, etc. provide a platform for activists to organize and share information. I give these a pass because it allows for the communication of movements' authenticity.
My Cause(s)
"There is no such thing as a single-issue struggle because we do not live single-issue lives."
As I was attempting to come up with a cause that I feel passionate about I couldn't narrow it down to a single one. Intersectionality or the"interconnected nature of social categorizations such as race, class, and gender as they apply to a given individual or group, regarded as creating overlapping and interdependent systems of discrimination or disadvantage" is at the forefront of how I look at social causes. In other words, recognizing that most if not all social causes are connected is an important step in establishing solutions needing to be multipronged approaches. For example, It's important to not only focus on issues of gender when race and class are also parts of the problem. This ensures that we don't continue to perpetuate systems of oppression while attempting to solve single cause issues. Occupy Wall Street was cool though. ;)