INTRODUCTION TO SOCIAL MARKETING

Social marketing is an approach used to develop activities aimed at changing or

maintaining people’s behaviour for the benefit of individuals and society as a
whole. 

Combining ideas from commercial marketing and the social sciences, social marketing
is a proven tool for influencing behaviour in a sustainable and cost-effective way.

It helps you to decide:

 Which people to work with

 What behaviour to influence
 How to go about it
 How to measure it

Social marketing is not the same as social media marketing. Find out more.

Approach

Social marketing is a systematic and planned process. It follows six steps

Behaviour 

The goal of social marketing is always to change or maintain how people behave – not
what they think or how aware they are about an issue. If your goal is only to increase
awareness or knowledge, or change attitudes, you are not doing social marketing.

Benefits people and society 

This is the value – perceived or actual – as it is defined by the people who are targeted
by a social marketing intervention. It is not what is assumed to benefit them by the
organisation that is trying to encourage the behaviour change. 

How social marketing helps 

Policy: social marketing helps to ensure policy is based on an understanding of
people’s lives, making policy goals realistic and achievable. Policy example: water
rationing in Jordan

Strategy: social marketing enables you to target your resources cost-effectively, and

select interventions that have the best impact over time. Strategy example:  lung
disease strategy in England

Implementation and delivery: social marketing enables you to develop products,

services and communications that fit people’s needs and motivations.

HISTORY OF SOCIAL MARKETING

1950s

As previously mentioned, the roots of social marketing are attributed to the G. D. Wiebe who asked the
question, “Why can’t you sell brotherhood and rational thinking like you sell soap?” (Wiebe, 1951). He
proposed that marketing could be used to solve social problems and that the more non-profit campaigns
resembled commercial marketing campaigns, the better their prospects for success. Twenty years later,
Wiebe’s early thinking on the application of commercial marketing to social issues was prominently
featured in Kotler and Zaltman’s 1971 article that formally launched the social marketing field.
1960s

Though social marketing was not yet a formal concept in the 1960s, international development
programmes and academic debates set the stage for the birth of the field one decade later. During this
decade, international development agencies conducted family planning activities in developing
countries through the distribution of contraceptive products, where marketing principles played a role in
their dissemination (Andreasen, 2006). Similarly, commercial marketing was applied to health education
campaigns, with some campaigns employing audience segmentation and customer-orientated
approaches (MacFadyen, et al., 1999).

Social advertising, a common mass-media approach to social change, had been employed during this
decade. Lacking marketing concepts, such as segmentation and exchange, social advertising was
considered a precursor to social marketing (Fox & Kotler, 1980). The success of these activities caught
the attention of academics who were debating broadening the application of marketing to other fields
(Andreasen, 2006). The practitioner successes and academic debates in the marketing community led to
the development of social marketing.

During this decade, the cold war triggered the USA military to research decentralized communication
networks that could operate in the face of possible nuclear attacks. This security concern prompted
research and development that would eventually lead to the Internet (Ruthfield, 1995).

1970s

In 1971, the term social marketing was coined in the field’s seminal article, “Social marketing: an
approach to planned social change” (Kotler & Zaltman, 1971). The publication outlined how marketing
practices could be used to address social issues. It defined social marketing by comparing Wiebe’s (1951)
framework to the 4Ps marketing mix.

At the time, Kotler and Zaltman’s (1971) proposal was considered controversial. Some academics
objected, arguing marketing should not be applied to other arenas (Andreasen, 2006). Some argued that
replacing physical products with values would threaten the exchange concept. While others argued
social marketing would be abused as propaganda (MacFadyen, et al., 1999). A review of the first ten
years of social marketing showed that popular criticisms included the charge that social marketing was
not real marketing, but was manipulative, self-serving, and threatened to damage the reputation of
marketing (Fox & Kotler, 1980).
These debates did not stop communicators from applying social marketing principles. The practice was
primarily applied in developing countries, and to a lesser extent in developed nations. Within developing
countries, social marketing campaigns primarily addressed family planning while in America the focus
was on healthy lifestyles linked to heart disease (Fox & Kotler, 1980).

During the 1970s, pro-social marketing academics continued debating the practice and advancing
thinking. Internal criticism focused on the challenges faced when trying to apply commercial marketing
principles to social situations where the concepts did not quite fit (Rothschild, 1979). Additional
ambiguities emerged, as it was not always clear what distinguished social marketing from other social
change practices. Consequently, the ten year review of social marketing discussed practical problems in
applying the field’s concepts while striving to contrast it with other social influence practices (Fox &
Kotler, 1980).

ARPAnet, the precursor to the Internet, was publicly displayed for the first time in the USA at the
International Conference on Computers and Communications in 1972 (Ruthfield, 1995). Another
important technical innovation this decade was the development of computer-based health risk
assessments, which took patient data and provided personal risk assessments (Kreuter, et al., 2000).

1980s

The 1980s has been described as the time when the field searched for an identity among other social
influence practices (Andreasen, 2006). During this decade, the academic debate shifted from the
question “Should marketing be applied to social issues?” to the question “How can marketing be applied
to social issues?” At the same time, the health community began embracing the practice (MacFadyen, et
al., 1999). The first social marketing textbook was distributed in 1989 (Kotler & Roberto, 1989).

1990s

By the 1990s, the field had overcome many of the earlier conceptual ambiguities and started to better
define itself. A major advancement in the field came when researchers clarified social marketing’s niche
as the change of behaviours. This shift helped contrast social marketing against other social influence
practices. The newly defined niche also provided space to integrate other behavioural change fields into
social marketing. Finally, it helped define the field’s limits (Andreasen, 2006). This focus helped to clarify
when social marketing was appropriate to a particular problem, as opposed to other practices.
In this decade, notable contributions to the field included launching the Social Marketing Quarterly
academic journal in 1994. One year later, Andreasen’s (1995) textbook, which integrated stages of
change thinking into the social marketing process, is considered to have made a significant contribution
to advancing the field (Kotler, et al., 2002).

Building on top of the Internet, which was primarily used to network educational and research
institutions, the World Wide Web was invented in 1993. It was developed by Tim Berners-Lee, who was
seeking a solution to decentralized knowledge management problems at the CERN particle accelerator
research centre in Switzerland (Berners-Lee, 2000). Since this time, the web has been fuelling the rapid
expansion of the Internet around the planet.

2000

Since the term social marketing was coined in 1971, the field has grown and diffused across the planet.
Social marketing is now seen as an effective way of improving public health, safety, the environment and
community development (Kotler, et al., 2002).

The field has produced several books, chapters within books, its own academic journal (Social Marketing
Quarterly), and numerous conferences. The first World Social Marketing Conference occurred in 2008.
Then in 2009, an initiative was launched to develop a global social marketing institute. Social marketing
is practiced by numerous United Nations agencies, USA Government agencies, consulting and
communication firms (Andreasen, 2006).

Social marketing is well established in North America and has a long tradition with international
development agencies (Andreasen, 2006). It is slowly penetrating into Europe where, for example, in
2006 the UK Government called for a National Social Marketing Strategy for Health (National Consumer
Council, 2006). One systematic review of social marketing interventions showed the majority of
reported interventions came from North America, with a small number from Australia, the Netherlands,
Finland, and one from Brazil (Stead, et al., 2007).

Although the field is established to some degree, academic debates continue. At the beginning of the
millennium, one major debate included advocates who argued that the field needed to focus on up-
stream change, to influence policy makers, as well as down-stream change, to influence citizens
(Andreasen, 2006). Another debate raged about whether social marketing needed to cut its marketing
roots and develop its own distinctive intellectual basis (Peattie & Peattie, 2003).
The World Wide Web popularized the Internet in the 1990s. However, it was not until around 2005
when social marketing academics began seriously discussing the potential of this new media.
Additionally, the successful 2008 election of USA President Barack Obama drew heavily on grassroots
campaigning linked by social media. This successful Web 2.0 campaign appears to have delivered a
wake-up call to campaigners who had previously disregarded the value of online engagement.