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