National Social Marketing Centre

That was a quote today from one of the delegates at a seminar I ran today at the Child Welfare Congress in Helsinki. (I don't mean to show off but I am very excited about being in Helsinki and also I wanted to let people know where the quote came from!)

The quote got me thinking about social marketing and how many people, once they have been introduced to social marketing, think they know how to do it without any further training or support. Private and public sector organisations wouldn't employ a person who has attend one day's training in marketing as a Marketing Manager, yet many organisations think that a one day social marketing training course qualifies someone to take charge of a behaviour change programme.

For the last five years The NSMC has been working to introduce social marketing to organisations by making it accessible and easy to understand. Perhaps we need to review our approach so people don't think that the skill is in asking the simple questions, but that the skill is in providing the difficult answers! Is it time to start to increase the barriers to people using social marketing rather than reducing them to protect the integrity of the profession. Any thoughts greatly received.