Social Marketing Principles

Based on a call from British Prime Minister Tony Blair for information papers on the evolution of the role of the state in promoting social progress, this paper focuses on social marketing.



The author writes about changes that individuals can make in their own health and how these changes contribute to the larger scale public health of a country. She poses the question of how to develop strategies on motivating people to make changes which will benefit them. She notes that part of the social marketing process includes research on daily lives and routines for the purpose of knowing when and how to intervene with information on better choices for health. Through the example of a "Stop Smoking" campaign aimed at a local population, she demonstrates these key principles of social marketing:

• Set clear behaviour change goals.
• Use consumer research.
• Identify key target groups.
• Recruit locally for mixed marketing.
• Offer something in exchange for behaviour changes.

The author then describes the governmental role in capacity building to apply social marketing strategies, including efforts to: build coalitions; review and reconfigure programmes; prioritise and coordinate programmes; and capture and review lessons learned.

In conclusion, Adshead indicates that the ultimate aim of social marketing is to encourage healthy changes among increasingly large segments of the population.