The United States has one of the world’s worst records for loss of life and property from fire. With two key challenges in mind – making the public aware of the fire service’s function and the fire problem itself – let’s take a quick trip into the story of marketing in our country, how it has become a caricature of itself and why the latest recession presents an opportunity for marketing the fire service. But first, a story so you understand where I am coming from.
When I was about 22 years old, I was working in a wine-and-liquor store by day and studying at night to get my master’s degree in, of all things, the Russian language. I had deferred my dream of becoming a firefighter. An executive from a distributor visited the shop every week. One day, he asked me why I didn’t consider becoming a wine salesman. I looked at him and replied, “Selling? I hate everything about it! Don’t insult me by even suggesting such a thing!”
“Calm down, Ben,” he said, “I just thought I would ask. You may not know it, but marketing makes the world go around. It is how people understand how goods and services can contribute to society’s well being.”
He was only partially right, in my opinion. Commercial marketing has become such a behemoth that it is difficult to break through the clutter of messages. The good news is that the public has had it with superficial values and conspicuous consumption. I recently read an excellent book called Spend Shift: How the Post-Crisis Values Revolution Is Changing How We Buy, Sell and Live by John Gerzema and Michael D’Antonio. The authors note that as a consequence of this recession, people lost not only purchasing power, but trust in institutions, especially big corporations. The driving forces are shifting to interest in deep and positive values like trust, tradition, cooperation and community. What better institution to trust than the fire service, if we manage our marketing – and our image, in particular?
A mini-history of marketing
Let’s look at bit of the history of marketing in the United States to gain a better perspective of the discipline. The “marketing concept,” as it is called, originated at the end of World War II. As a production-driven economy, the country developed the discipline of marketing management to sell the many products coming off production lines to the millions of consumers who needed things to live comfortably and fulfill their vision of the American dream. People needed so many different products, from houses to hairspray, that marketing became more of a sales and distribution system than a communications and service mechanism. The goal was to get products into peoples’ hands. The demand already existed.
Those were heady days for American businesses and the products they made. Over the next 35 years, the American economy changed from production-driven to market-driven, transforming the mechanism of marketing management into a sophisticated discipline. As communications became faster and information more readily available, the market became more sophisticated and aware of new and different needs.
The new definition of the marketing concept became less linear and more comprehensive, involving a wide array of tools to understand the consumer’s needs, get the message across about how it could fulfill those needs and, eventually, sell product. Rather than a company simply providing a product or service that it wanted the consumer to buy, the company had to understand what its potential customers might want first and then provide it, according to those needs.
Within the past 10 years, the sophistication of the consumer has increased again, almost exponentially. Instantaneous communications and even wider availability of information now supports a predominantly service-driven economy. This transformation has created the need for a sophisticated, integrated and comprehensive marketing mechanism serving smaller, more specialized markets. This has major implications for marketing emergency services in that the public service market is the entire market in any jurisdiction.
In public service marketing excellence, pride and care – not profit – are always the motivating factors. We just want to keep living the passion we have for the fire service. We want to perpetuate our service to the public. We inform the public about our service as we protect our communities so that they know what we are doing. When they become educated about what we do and its value, we grow and maintain our support. As we do this, we control our image.
While the general use of marketing management as a tool is to inform the public about what we do, it also educates the public about what they should do to protect themselves. We communicate to educate. This is a major difference between commercial and public service marketing. This is called “social marketing” and its main use is to change behavior. The curtain is rising; we are on stage, time to go to work!
BEN MAY, a Firehouse® contributing editor, has been developing the discipline of marketing management for the fire and emergency services for more than 25 years. He has been a firefighter for Montgomery County, MD, Fire and Rescue and fire commissioner for the Woodinville, WA, Fire and Rescue. He has been a vice president of two international marketing firms over the last 25 years, and now is responsible for business development for the Walt Disney Co., where he created the largest public fire education experience in the world, “Where’s the Fire?”, presented by Liberty Mutual Insurance Co.
