Social Marketing:

Social marketing is the campaign or program planning that is aimed to bring about social changes through commercial marketing. Social marketing is aimed at getting its target group to accept or deny certain behaviors.

Some common examples we see today are advertisements encouraging parents to talk to their children about drug use before the child is tempted to try drugs. These advertisements are generally targeted towards the parents rather than the children. For example the advertisers will first show a parent who is concerned about their child or children getting into drugs. The advertisement will then show a nervous parent approaching the child and then speaking to the child about drugs. The ending meaning of the advertisement is that no matter how nervous a parent may be, talking to their children is going to be worth it in the end. This advertisement is obviously aimed at getting parents to talk to their children and hopefully dramatically reduce the amount of drugs being used by teens - thus it is a behavior change the social marketing is trying to change.

In the example of drug use advertisers have also taken a different approach by simply showing through advertisements the negatives that can come by a parent not talking to their child. The advertisement will take a different route, rather than showing a parent who is making the effort to talk to their child the advertisement will show a parent who knows, and is possibly even joining in on, the child's drug use. In this way the advertisers are targeting a different group, a group who may not be affected by the parent struggling to talk to their children, but rather showing openly what a parent is doing to it's child by not talking at all. Though the two advertisements are very different, the goal is the same - to change the behavior in parents so as to produce the outcome of talking to their children about drugs. This is a very popular and widely spread social marketing campaign.

Another example of common social marketing is the constant goal to encourage people to stop smoking. Smoking was encouraged a lot back in the early to mid twentieth century before the negative health effects were so widely known. Young people and old people would constantly see in films, and magazines, the rich, the famous, and the beautiful, sporting a cigarette in their mouth. Smoking was encouraged in movies and magazines, and therefore made attractive to the general public. Now that the side effects and the negative of smoking has been made known advertisers are working hard to reverse the damage done and teach people to not smoke for their own health benefits. In this way companies are using social marketing to change the thoughts and behaviors of the public towards smoking.

There are more than health campaigns being used in social marketing, there are many campaigns, even that companies come up with in order to sell a product. A more recent and non-health oriented campaign is a campaign for education. Billboards are popping up across the nation encouraging people to become educated themselves or educate their children. Ideas from great leaders are being used as examples meant to encourage people to follow their own ideas and thoughts and producing products or improving the quality of their life style. This campaign as all the others is meant to change the behavior of the general public, to shine a more positive light not only on education but also on living a more full life as a whole. Living a more full life can include being kinder, showing more charity, saving money, and even spending more quality time with family.

These are some good and uplifting ways in which social marketing is used. There is however negative ways social marketing can be used, for the benefit of selling a product or encouraging certain kinds of entertainment. Whatever way the social marketing is used it is always encouraged to change the behavior and thinking of the general public.

For more information on Social Marketing please see:

www.publicrelationsideas.com
www.101publicrelations.com

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