Reaffirming the Neutrality of the Social Marketing Tool Kit: Social Marketing as a Hammer,and Social Marketers as Hired Guns

Abstract

Social marketing has been a discipline founded on the open and robust exchange of ideas regarding the nature of social change, the adaptation and adoption of commercial marketing, and the ethics of influencing behavior for beneficial outcomes. As a practical discipline, with a strong theoretical and philosophical framework, it also relies on the open communication between academic and practitioner to ensure those researching and those implementing are speaking the same social marketing language. In early 2006, the international social marketing mailing list (SOC-MKT) was subject to a short, albeit critical, debate on the ethics and nature of social marketing, the social marketing tool kit, and the role of social marketers. This article reports on the summary and implications of the debate among academics, practitioners, and founders of the social marketing discipline.