Loving marketing and social marketing and changing behavior

Washer and Dryer!
Originally uploaded by grinnellian2001.

(Washer and dryer photo from Flickr by grinnellian2001.)

A few days ago I complained in an email about the DC Department of Environment's laudable initiative to encourage DC residents to purchase energy efficient appliances.

It wasn't that I think that's inherently a bad thing, but buying such appliances from a store in Alexandria, Virginia, and giving Virginia the sales tax revenue didn't set right with me.

There is a big piece of the field of marketing called "social marketing" which is about changing behavior. There are many good texts on the subject, and a lot has been done with this in the health field, such as working to get people to stop smoking and changing other negative health behaviors.

Anyway, since I also do small business development and commercial district revitalization, I would have approached this differently.

The DC Department of the Environment should have joined with the DC Department of Small and Local Business Development and the DC Main Streets program (maybe) and set up direct relationships with the manufacturers of environmentally-efficient appliances, and then we could have a "tent sale" -- a big sale -- why not on the parking lot of the old convention center site -- featuring big sales tents from the various manufacturers, who would have agreed to work in advance with local stores such as Brookland Hardware, Frager's Hardware (Capitol Hill), Logan Hardware, District Hardware, and others to jointly sell the appliances.

Another way to do this would be to set up a "store" just as Maytag has, where people can come out and try the various appliances. (The closest store is in Timonium, outside of Baltimore. Let's recruit such a store to DC. There isn't one in Virginia.)

This could have been done with some of the new condominium buildings being constructed in the city (which are facing a slow down in sales because of the softening market), to further bring people out and in to check out the buildings--and the energy efficient appliances.

We have a ways to go before various government agencies think and implement polices and practices in a coordinated fashion.