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April 25, 2005
A Marketing Plan for Biology: Part 1
For sometime, I've been thinking about what I would do if I awoke one morning to find out I was the Vice President of Marketing for biology. This is more of a nightmare than a sweet dream. Not only is biology a very complex and diverse set of disciplines and knowledge with equally complex and diverse disciples, it, like many sciences, all to often sees no need for marketing. Many scientists are even anti-marketing. They see it as evil. In addition, there is a real sense that any effort will be a steep uphill battle. According to Chris Mooney, Lawrence Krauss of Case Western Reserve University told an AAAS group that the PR battle was lost.
Krauss frankly declared that evolution defenders had already lost the first key battle with the IDers (over public relations) and would now have to dig in for the war.
As an old marketing guy, the battle is never lost but it can be made very hard when the competition is aggressive and the good guys lack a proactive plan.
On the other hand, the Carl Zimmer does a great job in getting the message out and PZ Myer's piece in the Star Tribune is exemplary of what needs to be done on a more regular basis.
I've scattered comments around the blogoshere on the subject from time to time and noted marketing efforts of the creationists on this site and others. But what would I do if I were in charge of increasing the positive share of mind for biology. In other words, what would I do if my job were to increase biology's market share.
Many scientists recoil at the very idea of marketing the fruits of their craft or the craft itself. But the creationists constantly market a product that is without substance and still have captured significant share of mind (market share). They have institutions with no other goal but marketing their position and other institutions that willingly and aggressively provide marketing services. They have the ear and on occasionally the support of politicians as highly placed as the President of the United States. They use up tremendous amounts of the valuable time and energy of scientists in fire fights over school curriculums and other public policy.
I believe that science needs a toolbox of specific actions to combat this marketing effort proactively. Before such a toolbox can be developed, we need to understand the market place, the position of the competition, the available resources, and a whole raft of other things. To be sure, organizations like the National Center for Science Education have begun some of this work and I will draw on it. I am concerned that sometimes those in the heat of battle lose sight of or fail to develop a strategy to win the war. I think we must be reactive in the face of immediate challenges but to reduce the number of such crises we need a proactive strategy. The creationists have one but I'm not sure we do. Some may be uncomfortable with the lingo of marketing: market share, target markets, competition, price, product . . . For this I make no apology. Just as biology and other sciences have their technical language that serves their goals well, so marketing has its technical language that is useful to its ends.
Over the next few weeks, at the rate of one or two a week, I will be laying out a Marketing Plan for Biology. I intend it as nothing more than an exercise. If someone takes me up on it so much the better.
The next post on this subject will be on market environment for evolution and the current market share enjoyed by the competing ideas.
Posted by Duane Smith at April 25, 2005 2:38 PM | Read more on Evolution |
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