The Canadian angle on social marketing.

"When the world is running down, you make the best of what's still around" -The Police, 1980

Hard to believe that pop lyrics from the 80's would be prophetic. Nevertheless, we live in times of fear, financial chaos, unseen enemies, burgeoning information flows and so many other social ills. Our consumer society has created a need for more of everything new.

Even if we can't afford it.

What we can afford to do is to reflect on what we actually need, and how we can go about making it occur. Indeed, we need to make the best of what we have and then build on that to build a better future.

Social marketing is the application of all those well-honed commercial marketing techniques--convincing us of what we think we need to purchase--to a more socially beneficial purpose. Social marketing engages its audience to change their actions for the better of all.

Stop smoking.
Don't drink and drive.
Turn off the lights.
Avoid trans-fats.
Use bednets to prevent malaria.
Use a condom to prevent disease transmission.

These are are all social marketing messages. They don't endorse a product or a brand, they endorse an action--an action that helps everyone.

The field of social marketing is not new. Social visionaries in Canada and the UK have been pioneers. Remember Participaction back in the 1970's?

Oddly enough, I've been looking for good commentary on Social Marketing in Canada and most of the interesting posts I've seen have been from the US. For example, I highly recommend the blog written by R. Craig Lefebvre at http://www.socialmarketing.blogs.com/.

So that's why I have started this blog. This is a uniquely Canadian perspective on social marketing ideas, campaigns, and challenges. I once read that the purpose of a blogger is to help edit, organize and cull the information on a given subject. This is my goal: to edit the chaos of information to generate discussions on encouraging actions that result in social change.