Social marketing 719
Health promoters often see the mass media and
themselves as having conflicting priorities (e.g.
Atkin and Arkin, 1990). However, generating
effective unpaid publicity relies not only on
producing the ‘right’ message or story, but on
tailoring the message or story so that it meets
the priorities and needs of the newspaper, radio
or television station for topical, newsworthy,
human interest material – on ‘thinking like a
journalist’ (Wallack et al., 1999; Meyer, 1990).
In other words, the media are a target
audience in their own right, with their own
needs, expectations and opinions. They can be
segmented just as the end target audience of
young people or the community can – for
example, different press releases may be needed
for tabloid and broadsheet newspapers. Build-
ing up good personal relationships with the
media helps the process, as does making
available well-trained media spokespersons.
Research can also play a crucial role in advanc-
ing policy and generating controversy (e.g.
Wallack, 1990; Hastings et al., 1994a; Carr-Gregg,
1993; Whitehead, 1998; Stead et al., 2002). Again,
effectiveness depends on understanding the
media gatekeepers’ needs and agenda.
Ethical challenges
The special, and often delicate, nature of social
marketing problems necessitates careful con-
sideration of certain moral and ethical dilem-
mas. Social marketers are in the business of
entrenched, taboo or even illegal behaviours,
and their resolution may involve the conflicting
interests of the social marketer, the consumer
and wider society (MacFadyen and Hastings,
2001). Social marketers must decide which
behaviour to address, ultimately prioritizing
certain issues over others, and, implicit in this,
advocating the desirability of certain lifestyles
or habits. Furthermore, reaching an exchange
ultimately involves some form of compromise,
but ‘harm reduction’ approaches are notori-
ously controversial. The design of the social
marketing mix is no less thorny. The temptation
is the use of strong fear-based appeals, but the
over-reliance on threats may be at best ineffec-
tive, at worse disempowering, distressing and
damaging. While powerful and hard-hitting
campaigns can be political successes, the
underlying assumption that consumers are
awkward, fearless and irrational is not con-
structive. Finally, social marketing research,
while absolutely vital to the development of
interventions, can pose its own difficulties.
Researchers need to be sensitive not to raise
fears about health risks, suggest risky behav-
iours are normal or cause embarrassment.
Careful consideration needs to be given to
the consequences, intended or otherwise, of the
development and implementation of social
marketing programmes.Conclusion
Over the last 30 years, social marketing has
established itself as a coherent and valuable
discipline, taking the principles of commercial
marketing and applying them to the resolution
of important social problems. It overlaps with
commercial marketing, creating strong strategic
links between them, but its unique character-
istics mean that the resulting strategies are
frequently implemented in different ways. This
has set up a symbiotic relationship of mutual
respect and learning – it is no accident that
Philip Kotler is a key figure in the evolution of
both fields of endeavour. The inclusion of this
chapter in a core marketing text also underlines
this connection.
Social marketing faces three main chal-
lenges over the next decade. First, it must
continue to develop its theoretical base using
rigorous research combined with marketing’s
magpie-like capacity to steal ideas from every
other social science discipline. Second, it must
establish its credentials more firmly outside the
marketing domain, by successfully tackling real
social problems. Until now, the vast majority of
our effort has focused on health problems, and
these are likely to remain central to the dis-