Social Marketing

Social Marketing

Social marketing is the systematic application of marketing to achieve specific behavioral goals for a social good.

Social Marketing

Social marketing is the systematic application of marketing, along with other concepts and techniques, to achieve specific behavioral goals for a social good. Social marketing has similar characteristics to marketing orientation but with the added proviso that there will be a curtailment of any harmful activities to society, in either product, production, or selling methods. Social marketing can be applied to promote merit goods – or to make a society avoid demerit goods – and thus to promote society’s well-being as a whole.

For example, this may include asking people not to smoke in public areas, asking them to use seat belts, or prompting them to make them follow speed limits. Social marketing is sometimes seen only as using standard commercial marketing practices to achieve non-commercial goals. This is an oversimplification, as the primary aim of social marketing is social good, while in commercial marketing the aim is primarily financial. Increasingly, social marketing is being described as having “two parents” – a “social parent,” i.e., social sciences and social policy; and a “marketing parent,” i.e., commercial and public sector marketing approaches. Social marketing has, in the last two decades, matured into a much more integrative and inclusive discipline that draws on the full range of social sciences and social policy approaches as well as marketing.

Applications

Health promotion campaigns in the late 1980s began applying social marketing in practice. Notable early developments took place in Australia. These included the Victoria Cancer Council developing its anti-tobacco campaign “Quit” (1988), and “SunSmart” (1988), its campaign against skin cancer. WorkSafe Victoria, a state-run Occupational Health and Safety organization in Australia, has used social marketing as a driver in its attempts to reduce the social and human impact of workplace safety failings. Social marketing theory and practice has been progressed in several countries such as the US, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and the UK, and in the latter a number of key Government policy papers have adopted a strategic social marketing approach.

Green Marketing: Marketing sustainable ideals has come to the forefront of social marketing in recent years.

A variation of social marketing has emerged as a systematic way to foster more sustainable behavior. Referred to as Green Marketing, it concentrates on the marketing of products that are presumed to be environmentally safe. Green marketing incorporates a broad range of activities, including product modification, changes to the production process, packaging changes, as well as modifying advertising. It is a part of the new marketing approaches which do not just refocus, adjust or enhance existing marketing thinking and practice, but seek to challenge those approaches and provide a substantially different perspective.