My discussion on social marketing and social change with Don Akchin, a principal of Nonprofit Marketing 360, was published this week on the MKCREATIVE blog (#INTERVIEW: Craig Lefebvre, Designer of Public Health & Social Change Programs, Discusses Social Marketing - you will have to scroll down the page to find it). We cover the history of this blog, why it’s a great time to be a social marketer, the confusion of social marketing with social media marketing, and the next frontiers for social marketing. He ended with this observation.
MKC: You seem to be making a good case for thinking about problems from a marketing perspective, even if you’re not a social marketer.
CRAIG: I think the marketing approach can bring a systematic perspective for thinking about how we start to solve some of these problems that we see set up for ourselves, and can help us work through that process. That’s certainly why many of us got involved in social marketing. I started off wondering how do you reduce heart disease risk factors in an entire community? Not sitting in a patient education clinic! You have to think about changes at scale, and that’s what marketers and marketing as a discipline is really all about. People who are looking to change society or change their corner of their neighborhood can find a lot of inspiration in what marketing has to offer.
If you’re new to the ideas, or want a refresher, try these for starters:
The Change We Need: New Ways of Thinking About Social Issues
Making Change Happen: The Marketing Approach
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