Fear appeals or ’shock tactics’ have been a staple of social marketing programmes since before the discipline existed. Despite a wealth of research casting doubt on its effectiveness, the approach continues to prove popular amongst commissioners and practitioners. (Over just the last two months the The Hub has been called upon to contributed to a number of radio shows discussing this very issue, in relation to the UK government’s recent binge drinking campaign and the decision to incorporate graphic images onto cigarette packets

The appeal of the shock tactics approach is understandable for a number of reasons: Read more

Poverty represents something of a meta-issue for the social marketing community. So many of the issues that we tackle through our work can be reduce to consequences of poverty. Indeed, the all-pervasive nature of the problem and its nexus of consequences, renders most of our projects provisional, symptomatic treatments of a problem in lieu of a serious answer to the meta-problem of poverty. (See this for Mohammed Yunus on poverty and peace for a demonstration of the malign ‘reach’ of the poverty problem).

In a keynote address at the World Social Marketing Conference, Philip Kotler outlined some initial parameters in which this answer could be formulated and delivered. Read more

Craig Lefebvre’s latest post in response to the World Social Marketing Conference in Brighton calls for the establishment of a global social marketing association, made possible by ever-converging viewpoints amongst practitioners around the world.

Having just returned from the same conference, my observation on the unity of the social marketing community is more abstract, but equally central to the success of our endeavour. Talking with and listening to academics, practitioners and policy makers for the last two days, it struck me that the thread through it all is a genuine and passionate desire to change things for the better.

What’s more, this passion - palpable up and down the halls and corridors of the Brighton Hilton over the last two days - is contagious. As such, we’ve created another ‘magpie’ post - an ongrowing collection of inspirational words from inspirational people which we hope will help keep this fire burning far away from the white heat of the conference hall. Please feel to add to the collection through the comments box. Read more

Heroic political action? Voyueristic telly trash? Ill-informed hypocrisy? Jamie Oliver at it again! Reading press reviews of Jamie Oliver’s new offering, Jamie’s Ministry of Food, you can feel the critics clamouring for a box to put it in - a list of ingredients to define it. One that isn’t close to hand, but captures its significance best for us is “Prime time social marketing case study”. Read more

Google has launched a competition to generate life-saving, apocalypse preventing, smile-raising ideas pioneered by the public at large . The winner - judged as the idea that will help the most people - will receive funding to transform the dream into reality. Open innovation competitions are nothing new, but who better than Google to unlock the power of grass-roots innovation and collective intelligence? Also an encouraging sign that consumer trend towards product/service ‘co-creation’ is being applied to CSR activity.