U.K. Looks to Social Marketing to Improve the Impact of Government Health Campaigns

If the U.K. government is to achieve the challenging health goals outlined in its 2004 White Paper, ‘Choosing Health’, it needs to make important changes to the way it conducts health promotion. Current methods, such as simply distributing information and encouraging people to lead a healthy lifestyle, are simply not delivering the behavior changes that are needed. The result is a financial burden on the National Health Service (NHS) of £187 billion.

On June 26, 2006, the U.K. Department of Health, revealed how it is proposing to address this pressing issue with the launch of, ‘It’s our health!” [summary of the report]. Conducted by the National Consumer Council (NCC), it is being billed as a ‘blueprint for how social marketing can dramatically improve the impact of government health campaigns.’

The purpose of the review was to explore options for improving the impact and effectiveness of health promotion, with a particular focus on examining the contribution social marketing could make on a national and local level. Highlighting the significant successes of social marketing approaches to public health campaigns in comparable countries such as Canada and Australia, the reportargues that the government needs to adopt a more consumer centric approach to its future health promotion efforts, placing people at the heart of future public health campaigns and focusing efforts on evoking positive behavior changes. It also calls for more partnerships with related NGOs and private sector organizations.

In presenting the case for social marketing, the report cautions against a ‘superficial adoption’ of social marketing principles on to existing programs. Simply using the language of social marketing without applying its disciplines will have little impact, the authors argue.
The report also highlights the current lack of existing social marketing skills and understanding in the U.K., emphasizing that work will have to be done to dispel some of myths and confusion that currently surround social marketing. This argument is further developed in later sections of the report, which address the need for capacity and capability building in this discipline among health care professionals.

Ultimately, the report argues that social marketing should be used to underpin the development and implementation of all government attempts to promote positive health behavior and proposes that the recommendations outlined in the report be used as a framework for the first ever National Social Marketing Strategy for Health.

In addition to presenting the findings of the review and related recommendations, the summary report includes a number of useful definitions and explanations of social marketing. The opening pages include a Starter for 10, a comprehensive but easily accessible thumbnail sketch of the principles of social marketing. Further elaboration of these points, including case studies to illustrate each key concept, are included in Appendix A, along with a brief history of the approach; models of strategic and operational approaches to social marketing; and an adapted social marketing benchmark criteria, adapted from the original developed by Andreasen (2001).

More information about the process will be appearing in the Fall issue of Social Marketing Quarterly.

National Social Marketing Centre [web link]