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Despite social marketing being widely adopted in English-speaking countries, there is limited evidence of it being adopted in German language countries. Alcohol misuse is a social problem that has been the topic of health campaigns globally. The purpose of this paper is to understand the level of knowledge and adoption of social marketing among alcohol misuse prevention campaign planners, to understand current practices in campaigns, and to examine the use adoption of social marketing in such campaigns in Austria, Germany and Switzerland.

Campaigns were identified through bibliographic databases, online search engines, and expert inquiry. A survey was administered to campaign planners to retrieve primary data about campaigns. Data were analyzed using descriptive statistics. Practices were compared to social marketing using Andreasen's six social marketing benchmark criteria.

In total, 31 campaigns were included in the review. Some 55 per cent of planners reported knowing about social marketing and 52 per cent reported using it in the reviewed campaign. Relative to the benchmark criteria, social marketing was rarely adopted, with one campaign attaining all six criteria and eight meeting at least four of them.

The paper is the first to provide an overview of the use of social marketing in alcohol misuse prevention campaigns in German language countries. It generates information on knowledge and adoption of social marketing and contributes to understanding the diffusion of social marketing in a sample of European countries.

The objectives of this study are threefold: to delineate the phenomenon of “You Share, We Donate” (YSWD) campaigns and what distinguishes them from sales-based cause-related marketing; to contrast the effectiveness of YSWD and sales-based cause-related marketing campaigns and provide an explanation for the differences in the effectiveness; to explore boundary conditions of the proposed differences.

Three experiments were conducted to empirically test the differential effect of campaign formats (i.e. YSWD vs sales-based cause-related marketing), the underlying mechanism and structural as well as contextual features moderating the differential effect.

The findings suggest that YSWD messages elicit consumers’ message-sharing intentions more than traditional cause-related marketing messages. The effect is explained by consumers’ sense of empowerment and can be enhanced through donation cap non-specification. The findings further indicate that YSWD campaigns are especially fruitful in low power distance cultures.

This study contributes toward corporate donation campaign literature by focusing on the usage of social media.

From a managerial perspective, this research provides marketers with guidelines on how to choose between the two cause-related marketing campaign formats and how to enhance the effectiveness of YSWD campaigns.

This paper extends cause-related marketing literature by not only introducing the phenomenon of YSWD campaigns to the literature but also exploring strategies to enhance the effectiveness of such campaigns and shedding light on an outcome beyond the sales impact of cause-related marketing campaigns, i.e. an increase of visibility in social media. From a managerial perspective, this research provides marketers with guidelines on how to choose between the two cause-related marketing campaign formats and how to enhance the effectiveness of YSWD campaigns.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the use of social marketing principles in Web 2.0 commercial and social marketing campaigns.

A literature review and online search were conducted to document the types of products and behavior change initiatives being marketed on Web 2.0 platforms. Case studies from commercial and social marketing were critically reviewed to determine whether they exhibited one or more of the principles of social marketing.

Results demonstrated that social marketers can employ the following social marketing principles to successfully design and implement a Web 2.0 campaign: consumer orientation, behavior change, market segmentation and targeting, mixed methods, exchange and competition.

The findings present originality and value to social marketers who want to effectively integrate, expand and apply Web 2.0 channels to meet their behavior change goals.

The purpose of this paper is to demonstrate the political functions of government‐sponsored social marketing campaigns aimed at changing citizens’ behaviour and to argue for the reconsideration of the boundaries between political, public sector and social marketing.

Critical discourse analysis of print advertisements and promotional material of a government‐sponsored social marketing campaign is used.

The paper identifies the discursive ways in which the campaign influences the public's views of social issues and actors and discusses the role of such campaigns in the redefinition of the relationship between the citizen and the state.

The paper contributes to critical perspectives on the wider impact of social marketing activities on democracy by demonstrating the political impact function and effects of campaigns run by governments.

This article aims to propose that increased guidance on the implementation of social marketing principles for sustainability issues can advance both implementation and empirical evaluation. The primary goal of this paper is to ignite further empirical investigation of social marketing for sustainability by first presenting benchmark criteria for one social marketing model – community-based social marketing (CBSM) – and second, applying this framework to the case study of musician Jack Johnson’s “All at Once” (AAO) campaign.

The research design is twofold. First, based on Doug McKenzie-Mohr’s CBSM model, a series of 21 benchmarks for assessing the key components of an effective CBSM initiative was developed. Second, this tool was applied to information gathered from Jack Johnson’s extensive outreach promoting AAO initiatives including reports, videos as well as interviews and in-person meetings with the Jack Johnson team.

Application of the benchmark criteria to the Jack Johnson case study showed that seven out of the 21 benchmarks were integrated into the AAO campaign; seven were partially integrated and seven were not integrated in the program’s design. In particular, the use of commitments, incentives, norms and social diffusion was clearly present as was a final evaluation of the full-scale implementation of the campaign.

The CBSM benchmarks are meant as a starting point to further assess and compare the effectiveness of CBSM initiatives. Further research should be done to explore how criteria should be weighted and which of the 21 principles need to be present in the design and implementation of an effective CBSM program.

The purpose of this paper is to report on research designed to assess the impact of sponsorship financing of social marketing initiatives on the evaluation of those social marketing programs.

The research utilizes an in-depth, multi-method case study of the Canadian Mental Health Association Calgary Region (CMHA-CR) who carried out a social marketing campaign concerning mental health behaviors that was largely financed by sponsors.

The sponsorship of the CMHA-CR social marketing program was complex with a total of 15 stakeholders involved as sponsors, partners and grantors. The research reveals that while there is considerable sharing of objectives among the stakeholders in this sponsorship, not all objectives are shared between sponsors and sponsees, and not all objectives are shared between the public and private sector sponsors of the program.

The research showed that because sponsors and sponsees share in many of the objectives of the social marketing campaign, the evaluation of the social marketing campaign, particularly its ability to achieve the social marketing-specific objectives, is of interest to all the stakeholder parties, and effective social marketing evaluation must also incorporate evaluation of the non-shared objectives of all sponsorship stakeholders.

Increasing social needs, accompanied by reduced government funding and increased competition amongst not-for-profit (NFP) organizations for that funding, are driving NFPs to seek innovative approaches to financing their social programs. The research reports initial findings critical in this environment, as well as raises issues and questions related to future research.

This study aims to contribute to the existing social marketing literature by considering young adults’ views and perceptions about social marketing and social marketing campaigns in the context of alcohol consumption.

Eighteen interviews were conducted with young adults aged 25-30 years in Australia and the USA. Biographical interviews were used to collect information on individuals’ drinking histories and how their attitudes towards social marketing campaigns have formed during their lives.

Four main themes emerge in the study, namely, ethicality (freedom of choice), expensiveness, exaggeration and effectiveness. These four issues represent the main barriers and challenges for social marketers. Future research needs to explore the relationship between the attitudes of the target audience towards social marketing, and the actual effectiveness of social marketing campaigns.

This is an exploratory study that is limited by its context, sample size and participants’ demographical characteristics.

This study provides empirical evidence behind challenges and barriers facing social marketing identified by Andreasen (2002).

The purpose of this paper is to evaluate the effectiveness of a national alcohol-prevention social marketing campaign in Thailand, investigating specifically the competing forces of the campaign vis-à-vis alcohol advertising.

Based on repeated cross-sectional, nationally representative data from the 2011-2014 Annual Survey of Buddhist Lent Campaign Evaluation (N = 10,133), a generalized ordered logit (partial proportional odds) model is used. The outcome of interest is self-reported alcohol consumption during the campaign period, compared to before. The main explanatory variables include exposure to the campaign and exposure to alcohol advertising.

Results show that exposure to the campaign and exposure to alcohol advertising positively and negatively influence alcohol consumption, respectively. Compared to those with one type of exposure and those without any exposure to alcohol-related messages, drinkers with exposure to both the campaign and alcohol advertising are estimated to have the highest probability of drinking reduction during the campaign period.

The paper highlights the importance of accounting for a countervailing force (in this case, alcohol advertising) in campaign evaluation studies. It also suggests that alcohol-control social marketing be continued and that the government should disseminate alcohol-prevention messages in a balanced manner, ensuring that both costs and benefits of alcohol consumption are well-understood by the intended audience.

Source credibility is a key influencing factor across both commercial and social marketing. It is perhaps even more important for the latter given that the issues under consideration generally have substantial implications for both individual and societal health and well-being. The Act-Belong-Commit campaign is a world-first population-wide application of social marketing in the area of positive mental health promotion. This study aims to focus on the perceived credibility of the Act-Belong-Commit campaign as a source of information about mental health as a predictor of three types of behavioural responses to the campaign: adopting mental health enhancing behaviours; seeking information about mental health and mental health problems; and seeking help for a mental health problem.

A state-wide survey was undertaken of the adult population in an Australian state where the Act-Belong-Commit campaign originated. The survey included measures of the above three behavioural responses to the campaign and measures of respondents’ perceptions of Act-Belong-Commit’s source credibility. Logistic regression analyses were performed to determine whether the three behavioural responses can be predicted based on perceived source credibility. The predictive performance of the model was examined by receiver operating characteristic curve analysis.

Greater perceived source credibility was significantly associated with having done something for their mental health and for having sought information, and an increased likelihood, but not significantly so, of having sought help for a mental health problem.

Despite the acknowledged importance of source credibility, there has been little published research that the authors are aware of that has looked at the impact of such on the effectiveness of social marketing campaigns. To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first published study of the association between source credibility and behavioural response to a social marketing campaign.

This paper aims to describe the comparison of two tools in assessing social marketing campaigns.

Using data collected from the campaign planners of 31 alcohol misuse prevention campaigns, two tools were compared; the Social Marketing Indicator (SMI) and Andreasen’s Benchmark Criteria.

In the case of the benchmarks, 26 per cent of the campaigns fulfilled four or more criteria and no criterion was fulfilled by more than 70 per cent. The main differences between current practices and social marketing are the often-missing segmentation and an explicit exchange. The SMI found a lower degree of resemblance between current practices and social marketing. In this case, the major differences lie in the use of behavioral theory and the absence of an exchange.

The SMI allows a more precise description of an intervention. This represents an advantage, as a campaign’s resemblance to social marketing can be reported by directly pointing out the process steps that make the difference. This is important for understanding the research evidence base in social marketing.

Although the benchmark criteria are based on a conceptual approach, the SMI is built around a core procedure. The SMI can thus help program planners from the onset of a project to make sure they do social marketing as it is defined.

This is the first empirical test comparing a new tool against the well-established, frequently critiqued, Benchmark Criteria, in gauging “social marketing” practice in health campaigns.