24762 Chap.1 Why We Need Marketing for Social Good
Why We Need Marketing for Social Good
Wicked problems first
The opening lecture borrows Rittel and Webber’s phrase “wicked problems” for issues that are multiple, persistent and complex, from pandemics and chronic disease to climate change and inequality.
None has one cause or one owner, and none is fixed by facts alone.
Marketing on both sides
Marketing’s drive for growth and consumption can harm people and the planet; the slides note that only around one percent of what we buy is still being used half a year later.
The same tools can be turned toward social good.
The working definition
The 2013 consensus definition from the international, European and Australian associations treats social marketing as blending marketing ideas with other approaches to shape behaviours that help people and communities.
Where it shows up in assessment
Assessment 1 lets you choose your own social problem, and the brief’s examples, homelessness, racism, obesity, gender inequality, energy hardship, climate change and pandemics, are all wicked problems in the Week 1 sense.
What this chapter covers
- 01
Wicked problems and why they resist simple fixes
- 02
Overconsumption, obsolescence and inequality
- 03
COVID-19 as a behaviour problem
- 04
Who defines social good
- 05
The 2013 consensus definition
- 06
The eleven key components the subject teaches
Worked example · free
Argue that a heatwave plan is a marketing problem
- 1Name the behaviours: drinking water, using a cool room, checking on neighbours and calling for help early.
- 1Name the costs to the person: power bills for cooling, pride about asking for help, and not knowing where cool places are.
- 1Name the wider causes: housing that traps heat and social isolation, which no leaflet changes.
- 1Conclude that the plan must make the behaviours easy, attractive and normal, which is the work social marketing does.
Key terms
- Wicked Problem
- A complex, persistent problem with many interacting causes and no single owner or solution, such as climate change or chronic disease.
- Social Good
- A benefit to people and society that flows from human activity; what it includes, and who defines it, is contested.
- Planned Obsolescence
- Designing products to fail or wear out so that people buy replacements sooner.
Why We Need Marketing for Social Good FAQ
Why does the subject call these issues wicked problems?
The lecture uses Rittel and Webber’s 1973 term for problems that are multiple, persistent and complex. Pandemics, ageing populations, addiction and inequality each have many interacting causes, so a single message or policy cannot solve them, and programmes have to work on several levels at once.
How can marketing cause harm?
Marketing’s focus on growth, more consumption and profit can harm people and the planet. The lecture points to planned and perceived obsolescence, the ‘work, watch, spend’ treadmill, and advertising that sexualises women or portrays men as dominant and aggressive.
Is COVID-19 really a marketing issue?
The lecture argues it is, because controlling the pandemic depended on people adopting specific behaviours: washing hands, being tested, isolating when unwell, keeping distance, wearing masks and getting vaccinated. Each of those behaviours had costs and competition, which is the territory social marketing studies.
What anchors the idea of social good in this subject?
Because social good is contested, the lecture points to the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights, including freedom from discrimination, privacy, democratic processes and an adequate standard of living, as guidance on what counts as a positive outcome.
Is social marketing just marketing for charities?
No. The lecture defines its role as applying marketing ideas, concepts and techniques to achieve social good, not to create profit or shareholder value. Governments, health services, community groups and charities all run social marketing, and the test is the behaviour change it seeks, not the type of organisation running it.
What are the eleven key components of social marketing?
Behaviour and social change for social good, participant orientation, systems thinking, strategy, theory, critical thinking and reflexivity, research and insight, segmentation, targeting and positioning, the intervention mix, planning and designing, and creating value. The subject teaches them in roughly that order across the twelve weeks.
What reading anchors Week 1?
The lecture page points to Chandy and colleagues’ Better Marketing for a Better World, which calls for marketing research to study outcomes beyond company profits, such as poverty, disease, climate change, pollution and human trafficking, framing the subject as part of a wider shift in the discipline.
Assessment move
Pick the social problem you are most likely to use in Assessment 1 this week and start a running file on it. Note why it qualifies as a wicked problem, which behaviours sit at its centre and who is harmed most. Each later chapter adds one lens, so by Week 8 the file holds most of the video’s structure. Write your own two-sentence definition of marketing for social good as well, and keep it for the personal statement.
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