Session 9: Social marketing
Social marketing goes beyond mere campaign advertisements. This session will define social marketing, covering its evolution from commercial marketing and addressing its scope and common misconceptions. You will learn how commercial marketing concepts are applied to influence behavior change and explore the ethical considerations associated with promoting social good. By the end, you will have a clearer understanding of social marketing's meaning, application of marketing principles, and how it employs various theoretical models to address social issues, while also expanding your awareness in this sector.
Learning outcomes
After studying Session 9, you should be able to:
reflect on definitions of social marketing in order to recognise its objectives and applications
apply marketing concepts to social marketing contexts
analyse social marketing campaigns
apply ethical guidelines to a social marketing campaign.
1. Understanding the meaning of social marketing
Social marketing applies marketing concepts to influence behaviour for individual, community and social good. Its purpose is not commercial profit but beneficial social change, such as improving health, safety, wellbeing, environmental sustainability or social equity. It is broader than advertising and broader than communication: it involves research, segmentation, value propositions, intervention design, partnerships, implementation and evaluation.
Social marketing starts from the idea that behaviour is shaped by motivations, barriers, social norms, identity, relationships, environments and systems. Effective social marketing therefore does not simply tell people what to do. It investigates why current behaviour makes sense to the audience, what competing pressures sustain it, and what value must be offered to make change realistic.
1.1. The development of social marketing
Social marketing developed from commercial marketing but adapted its tools for social purposes. Over time it has expanded beyond public health into areas such as road safety, environmental behaviour, gambling, alcohol, tobacco, nutrition, mental health and social inclusion.
Its scope has also widened. Earlier social marketing often focused on individual behaviour, but modern social marketing recognises that behaviour is embedded in wider systems. It may therefore target individuals, communities, organisations, markets, media, policy and regulation. This reflects the move from simply persuading people to change towards reshaping the conditions that make change possible.
1.2. Defining social marketing: the core principle
The core principle of social marketing is the facilitation of personal and social good. Social marketing seeks to influence behaviour in ways that benefit individuals and communities. It integrates marketing concepts with theory, research, audience insight, partnership working and ethical practice.
A social marketing programme should be effective, equitable and sustainable. “Effective” means it produces real behavioural or social outcomes. “Equitable” means it does not only help easy-to-reach groups while leaving disadvantaged groups behind. “Sustainable” means it aims for durable change rather than temporary compliance.
1.3. Defining social marketing: a twin approach
Social marketing has two connected aspects. First, it borrows from commercial marketing to promote socially beneficial behaviour. Commercial marketing has become powerful because it understands consumers, creates value propositions and designs offerings around people’s motivations. Social marketing uses similar principles to encourage behaviours such as safe driving, vaccination, healthy eating, reduced smoking or sustainable consumption.
Secondly, social marketing critically examines the harmful effects of commercial marketing. Tobacco, alcohol, ultra-processed food and fast-fashion marketing can encourage behaviours that damage health, communities or the environment. Social marketing therefore both learns from commercial marketing and challenges its negative social consequences.
This is why marketing can be described as “an old enemy and a new friend”. It has contributed to harmful consumption patterns, but its tools can also be redirected towards public benefit. Modern social marketing emphasises grassroots empowerment and collective action: people should be engaged as participants in change, not treated as passive recipients of expert instruction.
1.4. Common misconceptions about social marketing
Social marketing is often confused with social media marketing, but social media is only a possible channel. Social marketing is defined by its aim of behaviour change for social good, not by the platform used.
It is also often reduced to social advertising. Advertising can support a social marketing programme, but social marketing may also involve services, policies, incentives, sanctions, environmental changes, community mobilisation and partnership work.
A third misconception is that social marketing is necessarily manipulative. Ethical social marketing should be transparent, evidence-based and respectful. It seeks to understand and influence behaviour, but it should do so in ways that align with the values, needs and welfare of the target audience.
1.5. Terminology in social marketing
Social marketing adapts commercial marketing language. “Exchange” means the audience must receive something they value in return for changing behaviour. The benefit may be health, safety, confidence, social approval, convenience, identity, emotional reassurance or community wellbeing. The “price” is not only money but the total cost of change: time, effort, embarrassment, loss of pleasure, inconvenience, cultural conflict, physical difficulty or social pressure.
The “product” is the behaviour, idea, service or support being offered. In the healthy screen-time campaign, the product is a balanced digital life for children, supported by advice for parents. The exchange goal is that parents gain healthier family routines and children benefit from limits that support offline activity. The price is the effort of setting boundaries, managing resistance and changing habits. The place is the family context where screen use happens, supported by online advice from Internet Matters. Promotion is the advert’s message that children need help knowing “when to turn on and when to turn off”. People include parents as gatekeepers and children as adopters. Competition includes the appeal of devices, parental convenience, peer norms and the habit-forming nature of online entertainment.
2. The six core concepts of social marketing
Social marketing is built around six linked concepts: explicit social goals; citizen orientation and focus; value propositions delivered through an intervention mix; evidence-informed segmentation; competition, barrier and asset analysis; and critical thinking, reflexivity and ethical practice. These concepts prevent social marketing from becoming a vague awareness campaign. They require a disciplined process of understanding behaviour, designing relevant interventions and evaluating consequences.
2.1. Setting of explicit social goals
A social marketing programme needs clear goals because behaviour change must be specified before it can be designed or evaluated. Goals may relate to awareness, understanding, attitudes, intentions, participation or direct behaviour change. They may include one broad strategic goal and several specific behavioural objectives.
The THINK! road safety programme illustrates this. Its broad aim was to reduce deaths and serious injuries on roads, while individual campaigns targeted specific behaviours such as drink driving, speeding or mobile phone use. Clear goals help determine the audience, message, intervention mix, measurement criteria and evaluation strategy.
2.2. Citizen orientation and focus
Citizen orientation means beginning with the lives and perspectives of the people whose behaviour is being addressed. Social marketers need to understand the audience’s motivations, constraints, values, fears, routines, identities and social pressures. This requires scoping research and audience involvement rather than relying on expert assumptions.
The THINK! campaign used desk research, social research, stakeholder brainstorming, focus groups and pre-testing. This matters because behaviour-change messages can fail if they feel unrealistic, patronising or irrelevant. Citizen focus improves the fit between the intervention and the audience’s lived reality.
2.3. Value propositions delivery via the Social Marketing Intervention Mix
A value proposition explains why the desired behaviour is worth adopting. It must connect the social goal to what the audience values. Value propositions can be delivered through a Social Marketing Intervention Mix, which may include services, products, education, communication, environmental design, systems, policy, incentives, sanctions and partnership activity.
THINK! used a broad intervention mix: enforcement through law, penalties, police presence and cameras; education through communications and road-safety campaigns; and engineering through vehicle and road improvements. This shows that social marketing is not only about persuading individuals. It can also reshape the practical and institutional environment around behaviour.
2.4. Theory, insight, data and evidence informed audience segmentation
Segmentation divides audiences into meaningful groups so interventions can be tailored. In social marketing, useful segmentation is not limited to age, gender or demographics. It should be informed by behaviour, attitudes, motivations, beliefs, social pressures, readiness to change and barriers.
The THINK! “Moment of Doubt” campaign targeted men aged 17–27 and focused on the decision point before having a second drink. It used cognitive dissonance by highlighting the conflict between the short-term appeal of drinking and the consequences of drink driving, such as losing a licence, job, relationship or reputation. THINK! also drew on social norms theory by positioning dangerous road behaviours as socially unacceptable. Theory therefore helps explain why a message might work and which psychological mechanism it targets.
2.5. Competition, barrier and asset analysis
Competition in social marketing means anything that supports the current behaviour or obstructs the desired one. It may include habits, convenience, pleasure, peer approval, commercial marketing, cultural norms, lack of confidence, lack of access, cost or environmental constraints.
Barrier analysis identifies what makes change difficult. Asset analysis identifies resources that can support change, such as trusted organisations, community leaders, physical spaces, networks, brands, services or policy levers. THINK! faced barriers such as engrained driving habits, fatigue, congested roads and competing messages, but it developed a strong umbrella brand that unified different road-safety campaigns and prompted road users to think harder about their decisions.
2.6. Critical thinking, reflexivity and ethical practice
Social marketing should be systematic and systemic. A systematic approach involves research, planning, implementation, monitoring and evaluation. A systemic approach recognises that behaviour exists within wider social, economic, cultural, political and environmental systems.
Reflexivity means adapting as evidence, feedback and context change. THINK! reviewed its campaigns over time and shifted from more commanding messages towards more explanatory and supportive ones, such as “It’s 30 for a reason” and “Look out for each other”. Ethical practice requires social marketers to consider acceptability, transparency, equity, unintended consequences and whether the intervention genuinely serves the audience’s interests.
3. Up-, mid- and downstream social marketing
Social marketing can operate at three levels. Downstream social marketing targets individuals. Midstream social marketing targets communities and influential groups around individuals. Upstream social marketing targets policy, regulation, organisations, markets, media and wider systems.
This distinction matters because many behaviours are not just individual choices. They are shaped by affordability, availability, infrastructure, social norms, family expectations, commercial activity, law and culture. Effective social marketing often needs coordinated action across all three levels.
3.1. Upstream social marketing
Upstream social marketing works at the level of policy and systems. It aims to change the conditions that shape behaviour before individual choice occurs. The UK salt reduction strategy is an example: public health bodies set salt targets, worked with industry to reformulate food and used the threat of legislation to encourage compliance.
Upstream approaches are particularly important where harmful behaviours are strongly influenced by commercial practices, regulation, structural inequality or product environments. They shift attention from asking individuals to make better choices towards making healthier or safer choices easier and more normal.
3.2. Midstream social marketing
Midstream social marketing works through groups and organisations that influence individuals. These may include families, peers, teachers, doctors, community leaders, religious leaders, sports groups, charities or local authorities.
The Act-Belong-Commit mental health campaign illustrates this level. It used community groups, local government and state-wide organisations to encourage participation in activities linked to mental wellbeing. Midstream work matters because people often respond more strongly to trusted social networks than to distant official messages.
3.3. Downstream social marketing
Downstream social marketing targets individuals directly. The Agita São Paulo campaign aimed to increase physical activity by raising knowledge and encouraging participation. However, even downstream campaigns must consider the wider determinants of behaviour.
Physical activity, for example, depends not only on personal goals and self-efficacy but also on family support, peer norms, local facilities, transport, safety, cultural expectations and socioeconomic conditions. Social Cognitive Theory captures this by treating behaviour as the result of interaction between personal factors and environmental factors.
3.4. Up-, down- or midstream?
Many social problems are “wicked problems”: complex, persistent issues with no simple single cause or solution. Examples include obesity, climate change, antibiotic resistance and fast fashion. These require networked and multi-level responses.
Fast fashion can be addressed upstream through regulation on labour rights, pollution and corporate accountability. It can be addressed midstream through designers, suppliers and retailers adopting sustainable materials, fairer labour practices and longer-lasting design. It can be addressed downstream by encouraging consumers to buy fewer clothes, choose second-hand clothing, repair garments and extend product life. The key point is that individual behaviour change is unlikely to be sufficient unless systems and communities also change.
4. Behaviour change
Behaviour change is the central concern of social marketing. Awareness alone is not enough. People may understand a risk but continue the behaviour because it is pleasurable, convenient, socially valued, habitual, identity-forming or structurally difficult to avoid. Social marketing must therefore identify what the existing behaviour provides and design an alternative that offers value.
4.1. Types of behaviour change
Behaviour change can take several forms. Abstinence means not starting an undesirable behaviour, such as smoking or drug use. Initiation means starting a desired behaviour, such as vaccination or testing. Substitution means replacing one behaviour with another, such as choosing a non-alcoholic drink when driving. Maintenance means sustaining a behaviour, such as adhering to treatment. Increase means doing more of a beneficial behaviour, such as eating more fruit and vegetables. Reduction means doing less of a harmful behaviour, such as speeding or binge drinking. Cessation means stopping an existing behaviour, such as smoking.
The graffiti vandalism example shows the importance of understanding value. Young people were not simply lacking information; graffiti offered risk, thrill, identity and status. Parkour worked as a substitution behaviour because it offered similar valued elements in a legal and socially acceptable way.
4.2. Behaviour change campaigns in action
The RNLI “Float to Live” campaign promotes a counter-intuitive survival behaviour. In cold water, instinct may cause people to panic, thrash or immediately swim. The campaign teaches them to fight that instinct, lean back, extend arms and legs, float gently and regain control of breathing. This is both initiation of a new behaviour and substitution of panic with controlled floating.
The creative execution is effective because the instructions are simple, sequential and memorable. The advert’s sparse wording reduces cognitive load in an emergency. The BBC Breakfast feature added further value through public relations: it gave the campaign national reach, showed a live demonstration in normal clothes, explained cold water shock, established RNLI credibility and reinforced the message that floating for the first minute or two can keep the airway clear and preserve trapped air in clothing for buoyancy.
4.3. Long-lasting behaviour change
Social marketing often aims to change lifestyles rather than produce one-off actions. Long-term behaviour change is more valuable because many social problems involve repeated habits.
The Office of Road Safety’s “Enjoy the Ride” campaign reframed speeding as part of a wider rushed and unhealthy lifestyle. It contrasted stress, adrenaline, poor sleep, cravings and illness with the calm and pleasure of slowing down. Its substitution behaviour was not merely “drive slower” but “live and drive at a calmer pace”. The campaign used imagery, sound, colour and narration to make slow driving feel desirable rather than restrictive.
Relationship marketing supports long-term change by building trust, credibility and repeated engagement. The salt-reduction social cooking projects show this: religious leaders and community cooks in Hindu temples, Sikh gurdwaras and Muslim settings became trusted routes for changing food preparation and household salt or saturated fat habits.
Stages of Change theory presents behaviour change as a process: precontemplation, contemplation, preparation, action, maintenance and termination. It helps social marketers tailor interventions to readiness. People in early stages may need awareness and benefits; people in later stages may need support to manage costs, relapse and maintenance. Although criticised because not all change is linear and some people quit instantly, the theory remains useful because it shows that behaviour change often happens through stages rather than in one leap.
4.4. Changing behaviour among hard-to-reach audiences
Hard-to-reach audiences may be difficult to identify, access or engage. They may distrust formal research, lack confidence, feel judged, or struggle to articulate their experiences in interviews, surveys or focus groups. Sensitive topics such as smoking, alcohol, nutrition or parenting can produce guilt and defensiveness.
Participatory methods can improve insight. Asking people to take photographs of what matters to them lets them shape the discussion, builds rapport and allows researchers to understand their wider lives before addressing sensitive behaviours. This avoids treating the behaviour as an isolated problem and helps reveal how barriers such as cost, stigma, identity and daily pressures shape choices.
The Wheels, Skills and Thrills project shows tailored practice. Young disadvantaged male drivers were unlikely to respond to traditional safety messages or fear appeals. The project avoided the word “safety”, appealed to driving skill and status, used trusted local recruitment, offered karting incentives, and encouraged self-reflection without directly challenging the drivers’ belief that they were competent. The intervention worked with the audience’s values rather than against them.
4.5. The role of branding in behaviour change
Branding creates identity, recognition and emotional meaning. In social marketing, a brand can make a behaviour-change programme more credible, memorable and attractive to a target audience.
Wheels, Skills and Thrills used branding that matched its audience’s interest in driving skill, status and excitement. The truth® campaign used branding to appeal to young people’s desire for independence and resistance to manipulation. Instead of simply warning young people not to smoke or vape, it exposed tobacco industry tactics and positioned refusal as informed, self-directed and socially meaningful. Strong branding can therefore reposition the desired behaviour so that it fits the audience’s identity.
4.6. Involving participants in behaviour change processes: value co-creation
Value co-creation means involving people directly in social change. It has three forms. Value co-discovery involves researching with people to understand problems, meanings and forms of value. Value co-design involves jointly designing messages, products, services or interventions. Value co-delivery involves participants helping shape or deliver the intervention to others.
The school attendance example shows why co-creation matters. A top-down campaign telling parents to “get a grip” failed because it was patronising and ignored real barriers. Co-design with parents produced more relevant solutions, such as cartoon-style illness guidance and end-of-term videos showing that school also creates memories and friendships.
The alcohol support service example shows co-creation in service design. Young people helped determine the location, atmosphere, staffing, branding and credibility of a late-night safe space. Their feedback showed that a church building was acceptable if religious messaging was absent, and NHS branding increased trust.
The nutrition examples show co-creation in product and campaign development. In Ethiopia, women tested egg powder in their own kitchens, revealing how it worked with local dishes such as shiro and injera-based meals. In Malawi, campaign concepts encouraging egg consumption were tested with pregnant women, lactating women and mothers of young children for comprehension, relevance, impact, distinctiveness, dissonance and improvement.
The NHS Fife tobacco example distinguishes the three forms clearly. The girls’ football team generating anti-tobacco ideas is co-discovery. Designing logos, slogans, banners and leaflets is co-design. Wearing the logo, displaying banners and handing out leaflets at matches is co-delivery.
Co-creation is valuable but difficult. It requires planning, accessible venues, participant expenses, refreshments, careful facilitation and willingness from clients to accept audience input. It should not start with an empty page; social marketers need initial concepts based on insight, then must allow the audience to challenge and refine them. Co-created interventions should still be pre-tested or piloted because co-creation does not guarantee a perfect solution.
5. Ethical issues in social marketing
Social marketing aims at social good, but it still raises ethical questions because it investigates people’s lives, identifies behaviours for change and designs ways to influence them. Ethical social marketing must consider who defines the problem, whose interests are served, whether the intervention is proportionate, whether it is transparent, and whether it could unintentionally harm people.
Ethics and equity are closely linked. If campaigns focus only on easy-to-reach groups because they are cheaper and quicker to influence, disadvantaged groups may receive fewer benefits and inequalities may worsen.
5.1. Choosing which social issues to address
Choosing a social issue involves value judgements about what counts as social good. A campaign may appear beneficial, but there may be disagreement about whose welfare matters, what behaviour should change, and who has authority to decide.
A broad social consensus can help, but it may still marginalise disadvantaged groups if their interests are overlooked. Government or funder priorities may also reflect politics, bias or prejudice. Ethical social marketing therefore requires criteria that protect individual and social welfare, especially for groups with less power.
5.2. Voluntary versus involuntary behaviour change
Behaviour change can range from voluntary information provision to compulsory intervention. The Nuffield intervention ladder moves from doing nothing, to providing information, enabling choice, changing defaults, using incentives, using disincentives, restricting choice and eliminating choice.
Doing nothing is not neutral because it still involves a judgement about what conditions people should face. The stewardship model argues that the state has responsibilities to create conditions for healthy lives, protect vulnerable people and reduce health inequalities. However, stronger interventions need stronger justification because they limit autonomy. Coercion, incentives and punishments may also fail to sustain long-term change if behaviour reverts once the external pressure disappears.
5.3. The potential for unintended consequences
Social marketing can unintentionally stigmatise, blame victims, provoke avoidance or normalise harmful behaviour. Campaigns about smoking, obesity, gambling or alcohol may present problems as individual failure while ignoring social, economic and environmental causes. Fear appeals may lead people to deny, avoid or suppress the message. Some campaigns may imply that harmful behaviour is common and therefore normal.
The Kiwi Lives problem gambling campaign tried to avoid these risks by using real people’s stories, featuring diverse groups, framing gambling harm as something that can affect anyone, and encouraging collective responsibility. It avoided singling out Māori or Pacific communities despite disproportionate harm, while still encouraging public discussion that de-normalised harmful gambling.
5.4. Ethical guidance
Practical ethical guidance requires social marketers to ensure interventions align with the values and interests of those whose behaviour is being addressed. There should be a political or social mandate for the change, not merely a practitioner’s personal preference. Social marketers should be open and transparent about the intervention’s aims, objectives, risks, outcomes and possible unintended consequences.
The iSMA ethical principles include respect and sensitivity, social justice and fairness, openness and transparency, avoidance of conflicts of interest, duty of care and nonmaleficence, and serving the public interest.
Kennedy and Santos provide two practical guidelines. First, social marketers should co-discover, co-design and co-deliver value with stakeholders, engaging them authentically and representing genuine interests, especially those of disadvantaged groups. Secondly, they should commit to long-term behaviour change and relationship management while taking a systems perspective. A systems perspective means recognising that changing behaviour may affect cultural, political, social and natural environments and should therefore be monitored beyond the immediate campaign outcome.
LO Summary
LO 1: reflect on definitions of social marketing in order to recognise its objectives and applications
Social marketing applies marketing concepts to behaviour change for individual, community and social good.
Social marketing is not social media marketing; social media is only a possible channel.
Social marketing is not social advertising; advertising is only one possible tool.
The core principle is the facilitation of personal and social good.
Effective social marketing changes behaviour, not just awareness.
Equitable social marketing avoids helping only easy-to-reach groups.
Sustainable social marketing aims for durable behavioural or systemic change.
The twin approach uses marketing for social good and critiques harmful commercial marketing.
Commercial marketing can harm health through tobacco, alcohol, unhealthy food or overconsumption promotion.
Commercial marketing also shows how audience insight can influence behaviour.
Grassroots empowerment means change is developed with people rather than imposed on them.
Collective action means social problems often require coordinated change across systems.
Upstream social marketing targets policy, regulation, business, media and systems.
Midstream social marketing targets communities, professionals, families and influential groups.
Downstream social marketing targets individual behaviour directly.
Wicked problems are complex social problems requiring multi-level solutions.
Fast fashion needs upstream regulation, midstream industry change and downstream consumer change.
LO 2: apply marketing concepts to social marketing contexts
Exchange means people receive valued benefits for changing behaviour.
Benefits may include health, safety, identity, belonging, confidence or social approval.
Price means the total cost of change, including time, effort, stigma, money or lost pleasure.
Product means the proposed behaviour, idea, service, policy or support.
Place means where the behaviour happens or where support is accessed.
Promotion means communication used to encourage behaviour change.
People means stakeholders, gatekeepers and trusted messengers who support change.
Competition means anything sustaining the current behaviour or blocking the desired behaviour.
A value proposition explains why the desired behaviour is worth adopting.
The Social Marketing Intervention Mix combines communication, services, policy, environments, incentives and sanctions.
THINK! used enforcement, education and engineering to support road safety.
Segmentation divides audiences by behaviour, motivation, barriers or readiness to change.
Cognitive dissonance is discomfort from inconsistency between values and behaviour.
THINK! used cognitive dissonance to challenge the decision to drink-drive.
Social norms theory explains how perceived approval or behaviour of others shapes action.
Stages of Change theory frames change as precontemplation, contemplation, preparation, action, maintenance and termination.
Early-stage audiences need awareness and perceived benefits.
Later-stage audiences need support with costs, relapse and maintenance.
Relationship marketing builds trust for repeated or maintained behaviour change.
Branding gives social marketing identity, credibility and emotional meaning.
truth® branded non-smoking as informed resistance to tobacco-industry manipulation.
Co-creation involves target audiences directly in social change.
Co-discovery means researching with people to uncover value and barriers.
Co-design means jointly designing messages, services or interventions.
Co-delivery means participants help deliver the intervention.
LO 3: analyse social marketing campaigns
Campaign analysis identifies goal, audience, behaviour, value proposition, barriers, competition, intervention mix and ethics.
The screen-time campaign targets parents as gatekeepers of children’s digital behaviour.
Its behaviour goal is balanced screen use rather than digital abstinence.
Its value proposition links screen limits to healthier routines and family interaction.
Its competition includes device appeal, parental convenience and child resistance.
The RNLI campaign teaches counter-intuitive cold-water survival behaviour.
RNLI floating is initiation because people learn a new emergency response.
RNLI floating is substitution because floating replaces panic, thrashing or immediate swimming.
Simple sequential instructions reduce cognitive load in an emergency.
The BBC Breakfast feature added reach, credibility, demonstration and RNLI brand goodwill.
Enjoy the Ride reframes anti-speeding as a calmer lifestyle.
Its substitution behaviour is relaxed lawful driving instead of rushed competitive driving.
Contrasting imagery, sound and tone make slower driving feel desirable.
Hard-to-reach audiences may distrust formal research or feel judged by sensitive topics.
Participatory methods build rapport by letting audiences shape discussion.
Photo-based research reveals daily life, values and barriers before sensitive behaviours are explored.
Wheels, Skills and Thrills matched young male drivers’ values of skill, status and thrill.
Avoiding “safety” reduced resistance to traditional road-safety messaging.
School-attendance co-design replaced patronising expert messaging with parent-informed solutions.
Egg-powder co-creation tested product fit within Ethiopian food practices.
Malawi egg-campaign testing refined concepts for comprehension, relevance, impact and dissonance.
LO 4: apply ethical guidelines to a social marketing campaign
Ethical social marketing must align with the audience’s values and interests.
A political or social mandate is needed before attempting behaviour change.
Transparency requires clear aims, objectives, risks, outcomes and limits.
Equity requires attention to disadvantaged and hard-to-reach groups.
Targeting only low-hanging fruit can widen inequality.
Social good is contested because groups may define welfare differently.
Doing nothing is not neutral because it accepts existing conditions.
The stewardship model says the state should support healthy conditions and protect vulnerable groups.
The Nuffield intervention ladder ranges from monitoring to eliminating choice.
Stronger restriction of choice requires stronger ethical justification.
Coercion can produce resistance or short-term compliance rather than lasting change.
Unintended consequences include stigma, victim-blaming, fear avoidance and normalising harm.
Stigma occurs when campaigns marginalise people associated with undesirable behaviour.
Victim-blaming ignores structural barriers behind behaviour.
Fear appeals can fail when audiences deny, avoid or suppress the message.
Kiwi Lives reduced stigma by showing gambling harm can affect anyone.
The iSMA principles include respect, fairness, transparency, duty of care and public interest.
Kennedy and Santos require co-discovery, co-design and co-delivery with stakeholders.
Kennedy and Santos require long-term relationship management and a systems perspective.
A systems perspective monitors cultural, political, social and environmental effects beyond immediate behaviour.