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program development and delivery. We need to be clear that we are not in the business of selling social marketing as a product or service for its own sake. Rather, we are in the business of helping politicians, policymakers, strategists and practitioners devise more e ective, e cient, relevant and citizen-empow- ering approaches to social improvement. e o er needs to position social marketing as a key part of the solution to many social policy challenges. e mission is to get social marketing principles built into the program in a sustained way rather than to have the words “social marketing” appear in every social policy strategy document.
What This Means for governments and citizens
Citizens want to be part of the process of cre- ating solutions to social challenges. e increasing development of citizen involvement processes by governments is a manifestation of this phenom- ena. Co-production, co-design, and co-delivery are all approaches to tackling social issues that are gaining momentum. Citizens have a responsibility to press for social policy development processes that are transparent, evidence- and insight-based, and have a right to be given access to the budgets
being deployed and the evaluation results of these programs. e engagement of citizens in the selec- tion of priority policy areas, the development and selection of Forms and Types of intervention, the opportunity to assist with intervention implementa- tion and evaluation are all rights that citizens should and are demanding. Figure 3 below sets out how citizen input can assist the policy strategy and oper- ational implementation of social programs. Figure
3 also indicates that social marketing principles can help assist the process of citizen engagement and co-development.
e dive for co-production of solutions to
social challenges means that governments and their executive agencies need to gear their capacity and capability up to enable such a process to ourish. is means developing more social marketing capac- ity and capability within governmental and not for pro t agencies.
Social marketing, through its systematic analysis and intervention development process, necessitates that all of these eight characteristics be addressed and their in uence diminished. It needs to be accepted, however, that to apply all eight social mar- keting consistency criteria (French, 2012) is a big ask in every situation and what is more important is that social policy planners at the very least address
fig. 3: both citizen input and social marketing principles a ect social policy development & delivery
MarketiNg for social chaNge
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