Social marketing: looking sideways

Social marketing has been used for over 40 years to facilitate change across a wide range of behaviours, including (but not limited to) responsible alcohol consumption, reduction in the prevalence of smoking and illicit drugs, improved diet and increased physical activity (Gordon et al., 2006). Social marketing is a framework that centrally draws on its commercial marketing roots to address social issues. In October 2013 the International Social Marketing Association (ISMA), European Social Marketing Association (ESMA) and the Australian Association of Social Marketing (AASM) adopted a consensus definition of social marketing stating that “social marketing seeks to develop and integrate marketing concepts with other approaches to influence behaviours that benefit individuals and communities for the greater social good” (2013). This definition places an emphasis on the integration of marketing with other approaches. This special session will address the important role that social marketing can play in orchestrating the efforts of different behaviour change disciplines in improving the quality of life for individuals and their communities. We propose to examine the challenges and benefits of integrating various behaviour change approaches by looking sideways into education, telematics, religion and law