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An introduction to social marketing

How to use marketing to change people’s behaviour and attitudes for the good


If marketing can encourage us to adopt bad habits, it can also persuade us to give them up.

We all know marketing can be a double-edged sword, as obesity statistics show.

But it can do good. And one form of marketing - social marketing - is increasingly being enlisted to tackle some of our most severe social problems.

There’s hardly an area now where it hasn’t brought about positive change. It uses the principles and techniques of traditional marketing so as to bring about good and not just commercial gain. It sets out to improve people’s lives by promoting healthy, positive behaviour.

It’s been used in many areas. Dealing with offenders, changing health habits, road safety, binge drinking, sexually transmitted diseases, recycling, reducing the prison population, being more active, reducing obesity, stopping smoking and getting people more involved in their communities. All have been influenced, sometimes with dramatic success.

Like traditional marketing social marketing puts the consumer at the centre. It listens to them and tries to understand their point of view so it can meet their needs and influence their behaviour.

It’s also similar in that it identifies important subgroups in the population so it doesn’t address everyone with the same messages. 

However, social marketing has a much more difficult task than traditional marketing. It involves changing deep-rooted things like binge drinking or anti social behavior - often with very limited resources.

While for traditional marketing the goal is profit, for the social marketer it is more ambitious, but less tangible - to improve people’s lives.

At its heart is research to understand the needs and views of people, be they residents, patients or service users. Such research helps you understand what drives people and their communities so you can develop campaigns and plans to reflect their interests. And most significantly you can promote behaviour that people can really achieve.

Part of the marketing process is influencing the behaviour of policy makers and influential groups like the media or law makers.

Social marketing also differs from commercial marketing because there are some important ethical issues involved, such as who decides what behaviour you need anyway?

These are some of the many reasons why we have asked the UK’s top social marketer to put together an entirely new one day workshop.

The course builds on his recently published book Social Marketing, Why Should the Devil have all the Best Tunes. Your tutor will cover five key topics:

Your tutor

Professor Gerard Hastings is Director of the Institute for Social Marketing and the Cancer Research UK Centre for Tobacco Control Research at Stirling and the Open University. 

In recent years Gerard has acted as a Temporary Advisor to the World Health Organisation on tobacco and alcohol marketing as well as blinding trachoma, and a Special Advisor to the House of Commons Health Select Committee during their enquiries into the tobacco and food industries. 

What delegates say about this trainer

"The course made me think about the importance of research, understanding context, target market and ethical responsibility."
Andrea Smith,  Youth Information Team Manager, Wigan Leisure and Culture Trust

"Good information on segmentation, focus groups."
Ian Morris, Communications Manager, Bristol City Council



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