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The purpose of this paper is to demonstrate how macro-social marketing can contribute to the United Nations 2030 sustainable development’s goal of reducing non-communicable diseases and promoting and well-being by addressing the wicked problem of obesity.

A comprehensive, population-based intervention developed as a call-to-action movement to address obesity city-wide in Brazil was conducted and analyzed according to a macro-social marketing perspective, combined with the total process planning model (TPP).

The intervention was successful in effecting systemic change by targeting multi-level audiences to trigger active participation and interaction of multiple sectors at the macro, meso and micro levels; fostering the related positive behaviors of physical activity and healthful eating; and using a complementary range of intervening tools including events, mass media and social digital media.

Using a holistic view that combines macro-social marketing with the TPP, this paper offers factual evidence on how to connect research and action meaningfully to address obesity by engaging, connecting and/or partnering with multiple stakeholders in an effort to promote a healthful lifestyle and well-being.

The purpose of this paper is to show how macro‐social marketing and social engineering can be integrated and to illustrate their use by governments as part of a positive social engineering intervention with examples from the Canadian anti‐smoking campaign.

This is a conceptual paper that uses the case of the Canadian anti‐smoking campaign to show that macro‐social marketing, as part of a wider systems approach, is a positive social engineering intervention.

The use of macro‐social marketing by governments is most effective when it is coupled with other interventions such as regulations, legislation, taxation, community mobilization, research, funding and education. When a government takes a systems approach to societal change, such as with the Canadian anti‐smoking campaign, this is positive use of social engineering.

The social marketer can understand their role within the system and appreciate that they are potentially part of precipitating circumstances that make society susceptible to change. Social marketers further have a role in creating societal motivation to change, as well as promoting social flexibility, creating desirable images of change, attitudinal change and developing individual's skills, which contribute to macro‐level change.

Social marketers need to understand the structural and environmental factors contributing to the problem behavior and focus on the implementers and controllers of society‐wide strategic interventions.

Eliminating all factors which enable problem behaviors creates an environmental context where it is easy for consumers to change behavior and maintain that change.

The value of this paper is in extending the literature on macro‐social marketing by governments and identifying the broader strategy they may be undertaking using positive social engineering. It is also in showing how marketers may use this information.

Social marketers set out to undertake interventions that benefit society. However, at times, there can be inadvertent, unintended consequences of these interventions that can be seen as unethical. Such ethical issues can arise from the context, process, method and outcomes of interventions and often bring to the fore the “social fairness” of social marketing. Given that social marketing is aimed at societal benefit, the authors believe that the issue of social fairness is an important one in the context of ethical social marketing. With that in mind, the purpose of this paper is to provide a discussion of the application of a normative ethical framework, labelled the integrative justice model (IJM) (Santos and Laczniak, 2009), to social marketing. This amounts to a macro-social marketing ethical framework.

Conceptual broadening of a normative ethical framework.

The authors hold that the IJM provides several helpful normative guidelines for improving the “social fairness” of social marketing. As such, the presented normative framework of macro-social marketing ethics provides useful guidelines for future development of social marketing codes of ethics.

The macro-social marketing ethics framework provides practical guidelines for social marketers to assess ethical issues in social marketing.

The macro-social marketing ethics framework answers the call of Carter, Mayes, Eagle and Dahl (2017) for development of ethical frameworks for social marketers. It provides a reconciliation of multiple normative frameworks to give a set of guidelines for social marketers that are clear and non-contradictory.

This paper aims to explore how the socio-ecological model can be expanded to address wicked problems that are perpetuated by marketing systems through examining the ways the external environment can be targeted.

The authors used an extended socio-ecological model to provide a framework for social marketers to combat climate change through the food system in the external environment.

The socio-ecological model is extended to examine how social marketers can influence the micro and macro environment through targeting the physical structure, economic, political and socio-cultural environment of desirable (sustainable) and undesirable (unsustainable) food products.

The authors highlight that social marketers should focus on the various ways the external environment at multiple levels can be targeted to produce systemic change.

This paper broadens the current macro-social marketing knowledge by providing a framework to analyse where and how change can be affected at the various levels of society.

Social marketing has gained widespread recognition as a means of motivating behaviour change in individuals for societal good. Many opinions have been shared regarding its potential to affect society or systems-wide change, leading to the macro-or systems social marketing (SSM) concepts and ideas. This paper aims to critically appraise the SSM literature, identify key features and highlight gaps for future research.

A search was conducted of peer-reviewed SSM articles published from 2000 to March 2018 inclusive. A number of online databases were mined, including but not limited to Google, Google Scholar, Scopus, PubMed, Cochrane and Medline. Key social marketing outlets (Social Marketing Quarterly and Journal of Social Marketing) were browsed manually. In total, 28 SSM articles were identified.

SSM adopts a dynamic systems thinking approach; it is an orientation, not a theory or model; it is multi-method; and it recognises that intervention can occur on multiple levels. Yet, greater attention should be given to the complexities of the systems context and the power structures and relations that exist between stakeholders. Significant issues also include stakeholder voice and participation, the use and reporting of theories and models, the measurement of long-term intervention outcomes and the undesirable impacts of SSM.

This paper identifies issues that need to be addressed if social marketing is to become a more system-oriented means to positively influence societal change. Implications for theoretical and practical development of the social marketing field are provided.

This paper aims to provide guidelines for upstream social marketing strategy on to whom, how and when social marketers can undertake upstream social marketing.

This article is a conceptual piece using academic literature to justify and conceptualise an approach to communicating with and influencing upstream actors.

Specifically, it looks at the characteristics of policymakers targeted, then targeting methods, with a special focus on the use of media advocacy. Finally, a process of government decision-making is presented to explain message timing and content.

Specific criteria to judge time of decision-making and implementation guidelines are provided for social marketers.

In the case of complex social problems, such as obesity and environmental degradation, structural change is needed to provide people with the ability to change (Andreasen, 2006). Strategic social marketing has identified upstream social marketing as a method to influence structural change through policymakers (French and Gordon, 2015); however, literature in the area tends to be descriptive and there are no clear guidelines to its implementation (Dibb, 2014). This article seeks to provide those guidelines.

The paper aims to elucidate the potential of a socio-cultural approach to social marketing. Drawing on a practice-theoretical understanding of change, the paper discusses how a socio-cultural approach can inform social marketing and enhance the possibilities of the field to address complex, multifaceted issues that require changes beyond the individual.

While the paper is conceptual in nature, it uses an illustrative example of food waste as the basis for an investigation of what a socio-cultural approach, rooted in practice-theoretical understanding of change, means for social marketing.

The paper is conceptual in nature but highlights new opportunities for social marketing connected to a socio-cultural approach foregrounding practice changes. The paper introduces potential roles that social marketers can adopt to initiate and support practice changes in the context of food waste.

The paper emphasises the importance of focussing on the socio-culture and practices connected to the issue in question, both when scoping for insight and when developing the ways to address it.

By integrating a practice-theoretical understanding of change, social marketing and food waste literature, the paper offers novel insights about the potential of adopting a socio-cultural approach to social marketing. The paper discusses a socio-cultural approach to social marketing in context, emphasising the roles social marketers can play in practice changes.

This paper aims to explore the complexity of the “leaky pipeline” of women in science, technology, engineering and maths (STEM) in the intriguing contexts where there are a high number of STEM graduates but a low number of women working in these fields.

The authors conducted in-depth interviews with eight STEM “leavers” and eight “persisters” in Turkey to understand the multi-level influences on their career paths.

The behavioural ecological model is applied to enrich the understanding of women’s attrition from STEM. The authors found a complex system of actors, relationships and influences that impact the negotiations of women’s felt misfit/love of their STEM career and changing self-actualisation.

The authors highlight that social marketers should consider the complex influences on even the most individualistic-looking decisions to produce systemic change.

This paper deepens the use of the behavioural ecological model in the ways that the layers of motivator and demotivator influences interact with women’s internal negotiations of career choice. The paper integrates classic theories (self-actualisation (Maslow, 1943) and two-factor model (Herzberg et al., 1959)) within systems social marketing.

Profound economic, social, political and environmental problems are cascading across modern civilization in the 21st century. Many of these problems resulted from the prevailing effects of rational economics focused on profit maximization. The purpose of this paper is to reframe the mindsets of scholars, firms and public policy decision-makers through enabling Service Thinking practices.

Marketing, service and allied discipline literature are synthesized, and Raworth's (2018) Doughnut Economics model is adapted to conceptualize and construct the Service Thinking framework.

Service Thinking is defined as a just, mutualistic and human-centered mindset for creating and regenerating service systems that meet the needs of people and the living planet. Service Thinking is enabled by five practices (service empathy, service inclusion, service respect, service integrity and service courage).

Actionable implications are presented for service ecosystem entities to uplift well-being, enhance sustainability and increase prosperity.

Service Thinking practices are shaped by influencing forces (marketing, education and law/policy) and operant service ecosystem resources (motivation–opportunity–ability or MOA), which makes Service Thinking applicable to four economic entities in the service ecosystem: the household, the market, the state and the commons.