Nominate the Greatest Hits of Social Marketing

What articles on social marketing would you recommend every faculty member, student or practitioner read? In the next 3 or 4 days please give the question some thought and email your ideas to me or (preferably) post them in the comment section of this post for everyone else to see.

It is not a rhetorical question… I am serving as the Editor of a major four (4) volume set on Social Marketing to be published by SAGE. The volumes will consist of previously published papers on all aspects of social marketing - from theoretical papers to research studies, in developed and developing country settings, and from environmental programs to public health, financial literacy and injury prevention. I am thinking about the project as curating the 'greatest hits' of social marketing - the most often cited, inspiring, trail-blazing and exemplars of practice and research. And I'd like your help to be sure I don't overlook important papers. Here is the recent SAGE 5-volume set on Health Communication as an example.

This is not a voting or popularity contest. The idea is to generate as many options as possible. Once I have put the complete list together (by the end of this week, December 30th), I will need to pare it down to a total of 1,600 pages by removing redundancies and articles that report on different aspects of the same project, assuring areas get attention (but not dominate), and illustrating the diversity of social marketing approaches and applications. In collaboration with SAGE editors, we will also have constraints as to what appears in the Volumes due to the fees some journals/publishers may charge for permissions to reprint (we have a limited amount of money allocated to paying these costs), inability to access high quality copies of original papers or artwork and who knows what other unforeseen circumstances that might pop-up. Here are some examples of articles I'm thinking about that go beyond the usual suspects:

• Bloom, P.N. & Novelli, W.D. (1981). Problems and challenges in social marketing. Journal of Marketing; 45: 79-88.
• Hastings, G. & Saren, M. (2003). The critical contribution of social marketing: Theory and application. Marketing Theory; 3: 305-322.
• Dearing, J.W., Rogers, E.W., Meyer, G., Casey, M.K., Rao, N., Campo, S. & Henderson, G.M. (1996). Social marketing and diffusion-based strategies for communicating with unique populations: HIV prevention in San Francisco. Journal of Health Communication; 1: 343-363.
• Lowry, R.J., Billett, A., Buchanan, C. & Whiston, S. (2009). Increasing breastfeeding and reducing smoking in pregnancy: a social marketing success improving life chances for children. Perspectives in Public Health; 129(6): 277-280. 
• Donovan, R.J., James, R., Jalleh, G. & Sidebottom, C. (2006). Implementing mental health promotion: The Act-Belong-Commit mentally healthy WA campaign in Western Australia. International Journal of Mental Health Promotion; 8(1): 33-42.
• Bertrand, M., Mullainathan, S. & Shafir, E. (2006).  Behavioral economics and marketing in aid of decision making among the poor. Journal of Public Policy and Marketing; 25:8-23.
• Nathan, R., Masanja, H., Mshindra, H., Schellenberg, J.A., de Savigny, D., Lengeler, C., Tanner, M. & Victora, C.G. (2004). Mosquito nets and the poor: Can social marketing redress inequalities in access? Tropical Medicine & International Health; 9(10): 1121-1126.
• Stephenson, R., Tsui, A.O., Sulzbach, S., Bardsley, P., Bekele, G., Giday, T., Ahmed, R., Gopalkrishnan, G. & Feyesitan, B. (2004). Reproductive health in today’s world: franchising reproductive health services. Health Services Research; 39: 2053-2080.
• Peattie, K. & Peattie, S. (2009). Social marketing: A pathway to consumption reduction? Journal of Business Research; 62: 260-268.
• Altman, J.A. & Petkus, E. (1994). Toward a stakeholder-based policy process: An application of the social marketing perspective to environmental policy development. Policy Sciences; 27:37-51. 
• Flocks, J., Clarke,L., Albrecht, S., Bryant, C., Monghan, P. & Blake, H. (2001). Implementing a community-based social marketing project to improve agricultural worker health.   Environmental Health Perspectives; 109 (Supplement 3); 461-468.

So what are your social marketing favorites (no books; articles that appeared in peer-reviewed articles have precedent or a chapter with a good explanation of why you think it is important)? Think about it between now and Friday and send your suggestions in by December 30th, 6PM EDT (more than one submission per entry is OK). Please include the full citation (reference) as I have done them in the above list so I can easily locate them. And to make it interesting, for the first 5 people who submit an article that stumps me (a good suggestion that is not already on my list of 85 titles as of today), I'll send you a free copy of On Social Marketing and Social Change: Selected Readings. Any submission that results in that article appearing in the Volumes will also have your name listed as a contributor in the Acknowledgments section of the set.

I can't wait to see what you come up with!

Comments

[Craig]

Thanks for all of your suggestions Aarti! Your list spanned a lot of the social marketing waterfront, which I am glad see. The Zaltman article was not on my list. If you have a copy of it, please send it to me along with your mailing address for your free copy of the book. You can use the email link on the right hand column.

[D]

Hello again Dr. Craig,
I came across 2 other articles that are worth mentioning (if you hadn't done so already in your list and may like to consider adding them):

1) Cismaru M., Lavack A. M., Hadjistavropoulos H., and Dorsch K D. 2008. Understanding
Health Behavior: An Integrated Model for Social Marketers. Social Marketing
Quarterly, 14 (2), 2-32.

2) Brenkert G. G. 2002. Ethical Challenges of Social Marketing. Journal of Public Policy &
Marketing, 21 (1), 14-25.

[D]

Hi Craig,
This is a continuation of my earlier comment. The following are other articles that I referred to during my studies:

4) Svenkerud P. J. and Singhal A. 1998. Enhancing the Effectiveness of HIV/AIDS Prevention Programs Targeted to Unique Population Groups in Thailand: Lessons Learned from Applying Concepts of Diffusion of Innovation and Social Marketing. Journal of Health Communication, 3, 193-216.

5) Zaltman, G. 1970. Marketing Inferences in the Behavioral Sciences. The Journal of Marketing, 34(3), 27-32.

6) Samuels S. E. 1993. Project LEAN: Lessons Learned from a National Social Marketing
Campaign. Public Health Reports, 108 (1), 45-53.

7) Plautz A., and Meekers D., 2007. Evaluation of the reach and impact of the 100% Jeune youth social marketing program in Cameroon: findings from three cross-sectional surveys. Reproductive Health, 4(1).

The above-mentioned articles were very useful to me, and I thought it would add to your list in some manner.

Regards,
Aarti

[D]

Hello Craig,
I've been following your blog for sometime now. I'm a lifetime student of social marketing and felt the need to comment on this blog entry. I think the following articles have been quite helpful to me during my studies:
1) Neiger B. L., Thackeray R., Barnes M. D., and McKenzie J. F 2003. Positioning Social Marketing as a Planning Process for Health Education. American Journal of Health Studies, 18 (2/3), 75-81.

2) Gordon R., McDermott L., Stead M., and Angus K. 2006. The effectiveness of social
marketing interventions for health improvement: What’s the evidence? Journal of
the Royal Institute of Public Health, 120, 1133-1139.

3) Stead M., Hastings G., and McDermott L. 2007. The meaning, effectiveness and future of
social marketing. Obesity Reviews, 8 (1), 189-193.

There are a couple of other articles that I wish to add to this list.Perhaps in my next comment..

Hope this helps for the meantime

[Draxford]

http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/15245000903144999