The keys to building success in social marketing – collaboration and mutual learning

Editor-in-Chief, Ann-Marie Kennedy

Why does social marketing exist? The answer to this existential question is, in summary, to bring about pro-social behaviour change, using marketing techniques and understanding, with a target audience at the core. Creating a value exchange that leads to voluntary behaviour change is the bread and butter of our discipline. We are fortunate that our discipline has many passionate advocates and providers – within government and NGOs, along with university based academics, and non-university based researchers and experts. It is often the case that we might all work in parallel on the same behaviour change goals, using our training in customer insights and marketing research, design, and implementation to plan, create, deliver, and evaluate interventions. Yet it is an immense pity when we keep working in parallel, and are not able to share our mutual learnings, for the betterment of people. Such sharing can only drive forward our mutual causes.

This virtual special issue aims to drive future sharing of learnings, which is also a key driver of the Journal of Social Marketing. We wish to be a place where both university based and non-university based social marketers (dubbed practitioners) can share and learn from one another. The articles included in this VSI provide us with somewhat of a roadmap to allow for this mutual growth. The first – Why can’t we be friends? Bridging the academic/practitioner gap in social marketing, by Liz Foote, Phill Sherring, and Sharyn Rundle-Thiele – discusses the academic/practitioner gap in social marketing and provides recommendations on closing the gap and working together.

The second – Conceptualising reflexivity within critical discourse of social marketing, by Rachael Millard, and M. Bilal Akbar – provides another avenue for sharing and mutual learning, that of critical reflection, especially on failure, where one might arguably learn the most.

The third article – Partnering for UN SDG #17: a social marketing partnership model to scale up and accelerate change, by Sinead Duane, Christine Domegan, and Brendan Bunting – proposes and tests a Social Marketing Partnership Model to strengthen trust and relationship commitment so we might work together.

Sinead Duane, lead author of the above paper notes, ‘The complex issues we seek to address today cannot be resolved without partnerships and collaborative thinking across multiple sectors of society simultaneously. By deepening our understanding how to develop and maintain partnership relationships in different contexts we are working towards improving their effectiveness and impact in the future.’

The final article – Two converging paths: behavioural sciences and social marketing for better policies, by François J. Dessart, René van Bavel – provides a commentary on the convergence of our sister discipline – the Behavioural sciences – with social marketing, broadening the scope of our potential partnerships. It highlights how the two can work together for mutual benefit and goal achievement.

The hope is that this VSI can lead to further sharing of all of our work and insights within the Journal of Social Marketing, so that we might all drive forward pro-social behaviour change, together.

Articles included:

Foote, L., Sherring, P. and Rundle-Thiele, S. (2024), "Why can’t we be friends? Bridging the academic/practitioner gap in social marketing", Journal of Social Marketing, Vol. 14 No. 1, pp. 26-51. https://doi.org/10.1108/JSOCM-09-2023-0232

Millard, R. and Akbar, M.B. (2024), "Conceptualising reflexivity within critical discourse of social marketing", Journal of Social Marketing, Vol. 14 No. 1, pp. 73-94. https://doi.org/10.1108/JSOCM-11-2022-0234

Duane, S., Domegan, C. and Bunting, B. (2021), "Partnering for UN SDG #17: a social marketing partnership model to scale up and accelerate change", Journal of Social Marketing, Vol. 12 No. 1, pp. 49-75. https://doi.org/10.1108/JSOCM-10-2020-0200

Dessart, F.J. and van Bavel, R. (2017), "Two converging paths: behavioural sciences and social marketing for better policies", Journal of Social Marketing, Vol. 7 No. 4, pp. 355-365. https://doi.org/10.1108/JSOCM-04-2017-0027