Who do you think you are? An examination of how systems thinking can help social marketing support new identities and more sustainable living patterns Denise M. Conroy a, * , Will Allen b a Department of Marketing, University of Auckland, Auckland, New Zealand b Learning for sustainability, Christchurch, New Zealand article info Keywords: Behavioural change Identity Social marketing Systems theory abstract In an effort to respond to the challenges faced by the environment and society, a plethora of social mar- keting campaigns have been launched to encourage the adoption of sustainable living patterns. We argue that the majority of these campaigns appeal to existing, self-interested or materialistic values that may lead to limited behaviour change. All too often these campaigns leave fundamental systematic environ- mental challenges unchanged, and may even undermine any considerations that people have around the change direction. We suggest that changing behaviour is ultimately about helping society and individuals reframing their identity. A systems theory approach, which acknowledges society as a complex adaptive system, is suggested as providing a useful framework for social marketing campaigns in supporting new identities and increasing sustained behavioural change. Ó 2010 Australian and New Zealand Marketing Academy. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. 1. The focus Today’s environmental and social challenges are increasingly acknowledged as complex, interlinked and characterised by uncer- tainty. Global examples include the high levels of environmental degradation (Jabbour et al., 2009), the food security crisis (CGIAR, 2009), and climate change (Richardson et al., 2009), among others. Accordingly, asking for change to more sustainable living patterns is becoming a central issue in society (Andreasen, 2002). However, when we ask people, or organizations, to change their behaviour, we are asking them to change their identity – and that’s a big ask. The majority of mainstream marketing engages audiences with self-enhancing messages that appeal to identity because they re- flect the materialistic goals that are often fundamental and present in most people’s value system, and sense of self. In contrast, social marketers are charged with seemingly difficult tasks like encour- aging people to reduce consumption. Unsurprisingly perhaps, they often find themselves armed with much lower budgets, messages that are unpalatable, solutions that provide no immediate gratifi- cation, and an audience often unwilling or feeling unable to change their behaviour (Peattie and Peattie, 2003, 2009). Consequently, many social marketing campaigns fail to achieve the desired level of change. In fact, such campaigns may result in members of the target audience experiencing apathy, relativisation, or anxiety. Equally the audience may respond to such campaigns with behav- iours such as ignoring, diversion and blaming others (Norgaard, 2006). Clearly none of these reactions is the ultimate goal, and we suggest that rather than these barriers being the cause of low levels of change, the underlying assumptions of the campaigns themselves is at fault. 2. Systems theory, identity and behaviour The growing emphasis on systems thinking provides models and metaphors that may help us to see the bigger picture, and de- velop campaigns that support creative and transformational change (Senge, 1990; Ackoff et al., 2010). Because we rarely look at the bigger system itself, the majority of our current campaigns tend to focus on problems which are merely symptoms of deeper changes in the direction of society. In this regard, Voros (2005) reminds us of the metaphorical ‘‘ice- berg’’ model of systems thinking (Fig. 1), which depicts problems perceived in the outside world as simply the visible part of a much larger and mostly-hidden ‘‘iceberg’’. ‘‘Patterns and trends’’ are de- picted as submerged just below the water-line, while the underly- ing system ‘‘drivers’’ or system ‘‘structure’’ that reflect the predominant social paradigm are considered an even deeper and unseen part of the iceberg. Systems thinking encourages success in social marketing and other change campaigns by identifying leverage points lying below the water line in the iceberg model of intervention. The approach generally adopted to date has taken the perspective that people are logical, and therefore social marketing messages are essentially about trying to solve problems. We contend that in fact people are 1441-3582/$ - see front matter Ó 2010 Australian and New Zealand Marketing Academy. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.ausmj.2010.06.006 * Corresponding author. E-mail addresses: d.conroy@auckland.ac.nz (D.M. Conroy), willallennz@gmail. com (W. Allen). Australasian Marketing Journal 18 (2010) 195–197 Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Australasian Marketing Journal journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/amj