What is Social Marketing?

A process for influencing human behavior on a large scale,
using marketing principles for the purpose of societal benefit rather than commercial profit.

Eat your vegetables.   Pull over to use your cell phone.   Stop smoking.   Talk to your kids about sex.

Each of these actions can benefit an individual or the entire community, but in order to make it happen, people have to change their behavior. And to GET them to change their behavior, you must offer a darned good reason, and then figure out how to make that change easy for them, popular for their group, and FUN (yes, fun is a great motivator). Understanding the barriers to and motivations for changing behavior and helping people move forward is what social marketing is all about.

Social marketing is most often used in public health, safety, and the environment. Find out more about us, then look at our services to see how Upstream can help.