Gangs of Great Britain

The news seems to be more full than ever before about gang culture, with more and more tragic news of young people being killed or seriously injured by gang members.

Here, I believe, is evidence of the impact of a ‘community’ on behaviour. Gangs create a community for young people whose own communities may not offer them the security of membership they need. Within a gang, all the principles of a community are in place – membership, shared values, shared goals, cohesion and a leadership hierarchy.

With this pull, can we really tackle gangs using enforcement alone? Whilst there is no simple answer, there must be some merit in trying to ‘dismember’ this kind of community, and in doing so, offer its members the opportunity to gain the same sense of value elsewhere.

What do you think? Have you tried any strategies that have started to have an effect in your community?

Amanda McDonald

Is community marketing just another name for social marketing?

At the heart of community marketing is understanding. What makes the community tick. What its core purpose is. What binds it together. How the community sees itself. What change it does or doesn’t want. Who or what influences it, and so on.

In the past communities have grown around a natural or man-made feature such as a river crossing, an estuary or road junction. The need to survive and prosper bound them together and communication was by word of mouth.

Such geographical boundaries continued to provide one definition of a community – even as townships grew and fractured into smaller ‘communities’.

Faith, work, race, nationality or ethnicity have also provided labels to identify a group that have been viewed in some way as a community. For example during a recent meeting the term ‘the Polish community’ was used to describe a group that the speaker felt had specific needs in terms of both access to support – and communication issues. It is worth noting that the labels may not always be helpful and the group perceived as community may not share that view. That is – they may not see themselves as a community even if a third party does.

Having started with seeking some clarity about a particular community, how we reach and engage that group becomes the explicit purpose of community marketing. Word of mouth, newsletters, an array of traditional marketing tools and techniques have been used in the past. Today’s communication channels have broadened along with changes in technology and have opened up new possibilities for supporting groups that at one time might not even have been considered a ‘community’. For example, drug users may find themselves talking to each other about the issues they face in accessing appropriate support services within a particular geographic area. They may do this through an online forum. They may or may not see themselves as a community as such but they have started to organize themselves and communicate between themselves very much as an established community would do.

The diverse groups that can be termed communities have a different type of requirement in terms of ‘marketing’. Social marketing has become something of a buzzword in an attempt to formulate a process for changing behaviours targeted at specific groups. Psychologists have proffered differing thoughts about tackling behaviour over the years and social marketing has grown up around some of the advocated theories. Some organisations have been practicing what has since become termed ‘social marketing’ for many years.

The question I pose myself and others is this. “Is social marketing a singular solution for reaching, engaging and driving behavioural change amongst any perceived community group”? 

Graham Mallinson

Consulting people on issues that affect them

I read in Inside Housing recently that councils will be getting even more funding to consult with their communities. The government is keen to see under-represented groups (particularly those within social housing) have a say in what happens in their communities.

The £5 million ‘planning empowerment’ fund will ensure that decision making becomes more consultative throughout. We strongly believe that this is the right approach to take. We know from our own experience, that if you consult people on issues that affect them, they are more likely to offer their support in the long-term.

Amanda McDonald

Whatever happened to Coronation Street?

We recently undertook some research into how ‘so called’ deprived communities operate. We were keen to understand what had happened to the communities of the 1950’s where people left their doors open and children played safely in the streets.

Communities where people invited their neighbours to watch television in their homes if they didn’t own their own TV set and the bulk of the weekly shop took place at the corner shop.

Nowadays, we barely know our neighbours, lock our doors and have our children barely out of our sight. Our shopping is undertaken in vast, faceless supermarkets and we would be hard pushed to recognise the cashier. So where is our community?

The answer, according to our research, is in Britain’s council estates. Only here is community live and well.

Amanda McDonald

What is Community Consult?

Community Consult is a six stage process to engage with communities to create impactful marketing and community interventions.

Firstly, we identify target community groups for a product or service. We then immerse ourselves in their specific needs. The next stage is to introduce a particular brand, issue or service to the groups and seek their opinions on how it can be made more relevant to them.

We then involve the groups in paid research within their communities, or in feeding back on any creative development of marketing materials. Over time, our research team develops an intimate relationship with the groups, allowing us to consult them regularly on different issues, and we integrate the Community Consult findings into our marketing strategy.

This means that any initiatives are informed by the needs of the communities they are designed to reach, and the groups themselves share information with each other and become advocates.

Amanda McDonald