Social marketing is the systematic application of marketing, along with other concepts and techniques, to achieve specific behavioral goals for a social good. Social marketing can be applied to promote merit goods, or to make a society avoid demerit goods and thus promote society's well being as a whole. Examples of social marketing include the use of campaigns to encourage people use seat belts, follow speed limits, or not to smoke in public.
Although "social marketing" is sometimes seen only as using standard commercial marketing practices to achieve non-commercial goals, this is an oversimplification. The primary aim of social marketing is "social good", while in "commercial marketing" the aim is primarily "financial". This does not mean that commercial marketers can not contribute to achievement of social good.
Increasingly, social marketing is being described as having "two parents"—a "social parent", including social science and social policy approaches, and a "marketing parent", including commercial and public sector marketing approaches.
Read more about Social Marketing: Applications, Types, Confusion, History
Famous quotes containing the word social:
“Roughly speaking, any man with energy and enthusiasm ought to be able to bring at least a dozen others round to his opinion in the course of a year no matter how absurd that opinion might be. We see every day in politics, in business, in social life, large masses of people brought to embrace the most revolutionary ideas, sometimes within a few days. It is all a question of getting hold of them in the right way and working on their weak points.”
—Aleister Crowley (1875–1947)