The HSC promotes health and healthy lifestyles to New Zealanders. Social marketing is the key tool we use to do this.

Social marketing applies marketing principles and techniques to social issues. It involves communicating social messages to an audience in a credible way and providing compelling alternatives, with the aim of influencing their thinking and actions.


Using social marketing to achieve social change

Social marketing involves the application of marketing principles and techniques to social issues. It:

	Provides a practical framework for achieving behavioural change in relation to a desired social outcome.
	Involves communicating social messages to a specified audience in an appropriate and credible way, so as to influence their thinking and their actions.
	Is not a rigid, prescriptive method for solving social problems - it is a framework for considering and addressing a problem in its wider context.

Social marketing core principles:

	All strategies begin with the key audience.
	Consumer behaviour is the bottom line.
	Programmes must be cost effective.
	Interventions involve a number of ‘p’s - price, product, place, promotion, people, and publics are examples.
	Market research is essential for designing, pretesting, and evaluating social marketing initiatives.
	It draws on transaction/exchange theory.
	Markets are carefully segmented.
	It acknowledges the competitive environment.

Visit www.socialmarketing.co.nz for more information on HSC’s approach to social marketing.