What is Social Marketing
Social Marketing is a planned process for influencing change. Social
Marketing is a modified term of conventional Product and Service
Marketing. With its components of marketing and consumer research,
advertising and promotion (including positioning, segmentation,
creative strategy, message design and testing, media strategy
and planning, and effective tracking), Social Marketing can play
a central role in topics like health, environment, and other
important issues.
In its most general sense, Social Marketing is a new way of thinking
about some very old human endeavours. As long as there have been
social systems, there have been attempts to inform, persuade, influence,
motivate, to gain acceptance for new adherents to certain sets
of ideas, to promote causes and to win over particular groups,
to reinforce behaviour or to change it -- whether by favour, argument
or force. Social Marketing has deep roots in religion, in politics,
in education, and even, to a degree, in military strategy. It also
has intellectual roots in disciplines such as psychology, sociology,
political science, communication theory and anthropology. Its practical
roots stem from disciplines such as advertising, public relations
and market research, as well as to the work and experience of social
activists, advocacy groups and community organizers.
As Philip Kotler points out in his book Social Marketing - Strategies
for Changing Public Behaviour, campaigns for social change are
not a new phenomenon. They have been waged from time immemorial.
In Ancient Greece and Rome, campaigns were launched to free slaves.
In England during the Industrial Revolution, campaigns were mounted
to abolish debtor prisons, grant voting rights to women, and to
do away with child labour. Notable social reform campaigns in nineteenth-century
America included the abolition, temperance, prohibition and suffragette
movements, as well as a consumer movement to have governments regulate
the quality of foods and drugs.
In recent times, campaigns have been launched in areas such as
health promotion (e.g., anti-smoking, safety, drug abuse, drinking
and driving, HIV/AIDS, nutrition, physical activity, immunization,
breast cancer screening, mental health, breast feeding, family
planning), environment (e.g., safer water, clean air, energy conservation,
preservation of national parks and forests), education (e.g., literacy,
stay in school ), economy (e.g., boost job skills and training,
attract investors, revitalize older cities), and other issues like
family violence, human rights, and racism. Social Marketing combines
the best elements of the traditional approaches to social change
in an integrated planning and action framework, and utilizes advances
in communication technology and marketing skills. It uses marketing
techniques to generate discussion and promote information, attitudes,
values and behaviours. By doing so, it helps to create a climate
conducive to social and behavioural change.
|