Social Marketing

Social marketing was "born" as a discipline in the 1970s, when Philip Kotler and Gerald Zaltman realized that the same marketing principles that were being used to sell products to consumers could be used to "sell" ideas, attitudes and behaviors. Kotler and Andreasen define social marketing as "differing from other areas of marketing only with respect to the objectives of the marketer and his or her organization. Social marketing seeks to influence social behaviors not to benefit the marketer, but to benefit the target audience and the general society."

Pretty much the point of social marketing is behaviour change, action actually doing something about a social issue. When Sean Kidney gave a presentation on social marketing he used a very effective example to bring the point across. He spoke about going green and how people have physically taken proactive actions towards going green such as changing to energy efficient light bulbs to recycling and using hybrid cars.

The most interesting part of his presentation to me was wen he asked us if we had been part of any social marketing campaigns or if we could think of any and all of a sudden being someone that knew and still knows very little about social marketing I realized it was all around me. Anything that is a social issue and has a campaign calling for action is a social marketing. AIDS campaigns, Condom campaigns, Don't Drink and Drive campaigns, Go Green campaigns these are all social issues that we are all a part of.