by Dr Samanthika Gallage
In my day to day life, I always hear people say that marketing is all about selling, it is about creating demand, it is about manipulating consumers by corporations to make profits. Do you think the same? Without a doubt marketing is powerful and it has a strong convincing power. Do you think marketing can use this powerful discipline for a greater good in the society?
In 1952, G. D. Wiebe raised the question “Why can’t you sell brotherhood like you sell soap?” What do you think? Do you think we can sell brotherhood like we sell soap? Decades ago a few marketers were inspired by this idea and started seeing marketing in a different light and they chose the term SOCIAL MARKETING to define this novel approach. In a nutshell, it is an approach of using marketing principles for a social transformation.
Kotler et al. (2002, p.394) defined social marketing as “the use of marketing principles and techniques to influence a target audience to voluntarily accept, reject, modify or abandon behaviour for the benefit of individuals, groups or society as a whole”. It has gained much attention from scholars and practitioners over the years. Most of the developed and developing countries have benefited from social marketing interventions in addressing problems such as excessive drinking, smoking, obesity, HIV and other diseases.
There have been various successful social marketing campaigns such as
- “Go sober” to promote alcohol abstinence while raising funds for McMillan cancer support.
- “know your limits campaign” to promote responsible drinking.
- “Headsup” campaign to promote health and well-being among men.
- Change for Life for health prevention
These campaigns have marketing tools and techniques to persuade consumers to make healthy choices and thereby to encourage a social transformation. This sub discipline and faces many challenges due to lack of funding, lack of understanding, contextual issues etc. Yet, there is more room for improvement, new knowledge to fight back with these challenges. It has made a good progress over the last 50 years and there are more social marketing researchers (like me) and practitioners out their trying to use this powerful technique for a greater good of the society.
If you are interested in any research collaborations or projects or even a chat about this concept please do not hesitate to contact me.
Dr Samanthika Gallage 01782 29 4352
If you only have a small marketing budget, social media can seem like an ideal way to promote your product or service. Twenty years ago marketers could only dream of having access to such a huge audience so quickly. However, where does one start?
why use Facebook if you’re primarily targeting a business-to-business audience? (Sometimes, there’s good reason to do so, but you need to know why). Spend time to make sure you know who your intended target audience is and what the key message is that you want to communicate with them. Only then can you identify and choose the communication methods which best fit your message and audience.
Know how to create synergy – try to use the same or similar content more than once if you can. So, if you write a blog or post something on LinkedIn, can you direct people to it via Twitter? Could you use the copy for some promotional material or a newsletter? When you put something on YouTube, how can you maximise its use? It’s pretty obvious, but not everyone does it. Encourage customers and staff to send in stories which you can promote. I’ve found that people get a buzz from seeing something they’ve submitted being used or published and it creates a virtuous circle and they submit more material….
There’s an Autumn nip in the air, the Great British Bake Off has begun and the annual McMillan World’s Biggest Coffee Morning is just around the corner. Kenwood mixers are whirling into action in kitchens across the UK.
something in common. I wouldn’t go as far as to say that all lecturers are good bakers (far from it!), but there is something vaguely familiar about the nurturing, caring principles of baking and lecturing; the desire for a good outcome and the commitment to working hard to achieve this.
The same balance needs to be considered within the course that a student selects. The onus is on academics to create a balanced mix of exciting learning content, activities, guest lecturers, trips and course materials to ensure that students learn exactly what they need to know. Miss out a vital ingredient and students will struggle to achieve success in their assessments.
5. Live Streaming Explodes
