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Social marketing scholars have posited that influencing policy makers, regulators, managers and educators can help address societal problems “upstream”. Applying “upstream social marketing”, these groups can be treated as target audiences, and through use of marketing techniques, advocacy, stakeholder engagement, and informing evidence based policy making, their behaviour can be influenced to engender pro-social outcomes, for example through policy change. However, examples and guidance on how upstream social marketing can be effectively employed to successfully alter the structural environment is lacking. This article aims to unlock the potential of upstream social marketing by examining how it can be systematically employed.

The article examines the development of the upstream social marketing concept in the extant literature, and presents some guiding principles, before analysing the case study of minimum unit pricing of alcohol in Scotland. The failure to comprehensively employ upstream social marketing in this case is compared with the successful use of upstream social marketing in tobacco control.

The article suggests that heretofore, upstream social marketing has not always been systematically applied using social marketing principles. Guidance on upstream social marketing is presented, and thoughts on the trajectory of the concept for the future are offered.

The paper identifies guidelines for unlocking the potential of upstream social marketing, and suggests areas in which future research and writings are required to help develop the concept.

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 research aims to describe the foundation of healthcare organizations’ past and present sustainability endeavors; describe the direction of a health-care organizations’ sustainable development; reveal and characterize what determines the foundation and direction in a public health-care sector; and provide some insights into social marketing for sustainability endeavors.

Based on a semi-inductive approach, judgmental sampling was applied to select relevant health-care organizations. Informants were identified according to their knowledge of their organizations’ sustainability initiatives.

Offer insights into the foundation of sustainability endeavors and the direction of sustainable development for upstream social marketing in the studied public sector. The social marketing perspective is a common factor of relevance for the studied public hospitals.

The foundations of sustainability endeavors undertaken across the studied health-care organizations have not so far been homogenous. The direction of sustainable development has also varied across the studied public healthcare organizations and there is a need to move beyond individuals and shift from a micro to a macro/structural environment of sustainable development, so as to observe the effectiveness of any social marketing intervention.

This study highlights the importance of applying an upstream social marketing approach and programs, as part of a social marketing strategy, to promote and stimulate sustainable change in health-care organizations.

Contrary to the common sense predominating in many societies nowadays regarding sustainability endeavors and sustainable development, we conclude that neither the foundation of such endeavors nor the direction of sustainable development has progressed adequately in the studied public healthcare sector. As social marketing is intended to benefit society and foster social change, the macro level of intervention of the upstream approach clearly reveals its usefulness in the public health area.

Reveals two axes based on a social marketing approach. One is of micro and macro determinants characterizing the direction of sustainable development in a public sector. Another is of homogeneous and heterogeneous foundations of sustainability endeavors.

The reason for this paper is to better understand why many social marketing campaigns produce poor results and to propose a model to guide social marketing strategic planning to improve program outcomes.

This is a conceptual paper which discusses a new social marketing model to remove upstream causes of target social problems.

It appears that social marketing planning may be limited by over‐reliance on commercial marketing tactics and an over‐emphasis on individual behavior change. Finding upstream sources of social problems is a first step. However, social marketers must be willing to employ tactics to ameliorate structural, upstream causes of social problems.

The social marketing field needs to further its developmental progress by reducing its use of commercial marketing concepts and increasing its use of concepts from other fields like public health, political science, and social movements.

Practicing social marketers can improve their outcomes if they identify upstream causes of social problems and find ways to reduce their harmful effects.

There are major social implications because removing upstream sources of social problems will invoke opposition from powerful interests. A new array of complexity is involved in using activism as a tactic, which may be needed. Conflicts will have to be dealt with and responded to effectively.

The value of this paper is to enhance awareness of the self‐imposed limitations on social marketing strategies and to propose a means of removing these limitations and improving the ability to improve social well‐being.

This paper aims to review the latest management developments across the globe and pinpoint practical implications from cutting-edge research and case studies.

This briefing is prepared by an independent writer who adds their own impartial comments and places the articles in context.

Upstream social marketing is the best method of enacting change at the highest levels without resorting to violence or civil disobedience. This briefing provides a succinct overview of the current guidelines for successfully implementing upstream social marketing.

The briefing saves busy executives, strategists and researchers hours of reading time by selecting only the very best, most pertinent information and presenting it in a condensed and easy-to-digest format.

This paper aims to argue that resilience – and its underlying socio-ecological perspective – is a critical concept that could serve to integrate different views on, and approaches to, social marketing. The aim is to inspire social marketers to move away from narrow, issue-based interventions targeting individual behaviours and to consider the impact of social ecologies, particularly the contribution resilience research can make to behaviour change.

This is a conceptual paper; socio-ecological models and the resilience concept are discussed and applied to a current “wicked problem” – obesity.

From a socio-ecological perspective, research findings highlight the impact macro, meso and micro forces have on behaviour and the importance of a child’s micro-system and the influence it has on development and life outcomes. Building resilience requires a relationship-building, person-centred, holistic and long-term developmental approach to behaviour change.

This is a conceptual paper that introduces new concepts to the social marketing field. Future research should focus on understanding how to implement a resilience-building approach in practice – including the interrelationships and interactions between individual, family and community resilience – and how resilience can be integrated within systematic, socio-ecological thinking when addressing “wicked problems”.

Rather than blaming and targeting individuals, the goal should be to create an environment that supports parents, families and communities to build resilience at the micro, meso and macro levels. The findings support the argument that social marketers should adopt an upstream approach to develop interventions that make the environment the primary focus. Social marketers should collaborate with, and learn from, social workers, psychologists and educationalist to further their understanding of resilience. This would have a positive, sustainable impact on a whole range of social and health issues, ultimately helping to address the overarching issue of social inequality.

Building resilience amongst individuals, families and communities offer a means to achieve fundamental positive social change and to reduce social, economic and health inequality.

The paper offers a unique perspective on how and why resilience – and its underlying socio-ecological framework – should be applied within the social marketing field.

Community coalitions are an important part of the public milieu and subject to similar external pressures as other publicly funded organizations – including changes in required strategic orientation. Many US government agencies that fund efforts such as community-based social marketing initiatives have shifted their funding agenda from program development to policy development. The Florida Prevention Research Center at the University of South Florida (Tampa, Florida, USA) created community-based prevention marketing (CBPM) for policy development framework to teach community coalitions how to apply social marketing to policy development. This paper aims to explicate the framework’s theory of change.

The research question was: “How does implementing the CBPM for Policy Development framework improve coalition performance over time?” The authors implemented a case study design, with the “case” being a normative community coalition. The study adhered to a well-developed series of steps for system dynamics modeling.

Results from computer model simulations show that gains in community coalition performance depend on a coalition’s initial culture and initial efficiency, and that only the most efficient coalitions’ performance might improve from implementing the CBPM framework.

Practical implications for CBPM’s developers and users are discussed, namely, the importance of managing the early expectations of academic-community partnerships seeking to shift their orientation from downstream (e.g. program development) to upstream social marketing strategies (e.g. policy change).

The purpose of this paper is to discuss a broader societal trend toward the full realization of human potential and the points of convergence with social marketing. The ultimate goal of social marketing is to increase social good. The paper defines social good in a new light and makes the connection to well-being clearer, proposing an agenda for social marketers and highlighting the opportunities for a better positioning of social marketing in the marketplace of ideas.

This conceptual paper presents an overview of concepts and evidence on the drivers of human well-being. It also discusses some important questions at a broader societal level, such as the role of money and income on happiness and well-being. It presents the connections between this body of knowledge and social marketing, including a literature review from both fields.

Eliminating ill-being no longer seems satisfactory from a societal point of view in the current Zeitgeist. Societies have been searching for ways to alleviate illnesses and to increase the well-being of its citizens. Social marketing, as a powerful social technology for behavior change, must be part of this broader movement, achieving a better positioning in the marketplace of ideas. The paper proposes a six-point agenda to reach these goals.

The main theoretical implication is a call for social marketers to see the ultimate goal of the discipline (social good) under a new lens. This requires an update in the conceptual frameworks that orient the discipline. Another implication is the need for better upstream conceptual models in social marketing.

The paper suggest some practical implications, such as the opportunity to expand social marketing to countries that do not use it, the use of well-being drivers as inputs, means and outcomes in social marketing programs, and the role of the discipline in both alleviating poverty and in demarketing efforts.

The paper contributes by taking an outside perspective and a transdisciplinary approach. The fulfillment of human potential demands the attention to different drivers of human behavior and the search for new social solutions. It also requires a clear understanding of the role of factors like money and social connectedness. This paper approaches these questions with answers grounded on the existing evidence while providing some points for the development of social marketing theory and practice.

This paper aims to provide guidance on how midstream social marketing can be used to understand and address wicked problems through adopting a collaborative systems integration approach conceptualised from a macromarketing perspective.

Rothschild’s motivation, opportunity and ability (MOA) framework is applied in this study to understand veterinarians as midstream microactors in the macrosystem of wicked animal welfare issues. Focus group and individual interview data from veterinarians were analysed through the lens of the MOA framework to understand veterinarians’ as midstream microactors within a systems continuum.

The MOA of veterinarians to engage downstream targets – cat owners – in behaviour change are identified. Fresh insights reveal the challenges and barriers to simply focusing on veterinarians as the key microactor required to address the wicked problem of cat overpopulation. Challenges identified include the cost of sterilisation to both owners and veterinary practices, alongside vying beliefs about the capacity of individual veterinarians to persuade owners about the benefits of sterilisation to improve animal welfare. Additionally, insight into veterinarians’ perceptions of upstream strategies to address the problem – in terms of marketing, education and law – expose further complications on where regulation and law enforcement can be integrated in future social marketing strategies to address the cat overpopulation problem.

The application of the MOA framework improves understanding of the concept and practice of midstream social marketing. It provides a practical and strategic tool that social marketers can apply when approaching behaviour change that leverages midstream actors as part of the social change solution.

Research and theorisation in this paper demonstrates an alternative pathway to address wicked problems via a collaborative systems integration approach conceptualised from a macromarketing perspective. Effective long-term change relies on understanding and coordinating a broad macrosystem of interconnected actors along a downstream, midstream and upstream continuum. This starts by understanding the microactions of individual actors within the macrosystem.

The purpose of this paper is to demonstrate how upstream social marketing may benefit from social media citizensourcing and improve understanding of community preferences and attitudes to policy. Using the case of shark management in New South Wales, Australia, this paper aims to understand community attitudes toward shark management policy-making and policymakers.

In February 2017, more than 11,200 comments were sourced from Facebook and Twitter using Netvizz, a data extraction tool. To analyze these comments, the study used an abductive framework using social marketing, wildlife and coexistence and policy literature, to determine context, themes and sub-themes. This was combined with Appraisal, a systemic functional linguistics framework, advocating a social reference for coding and analyzing community attitudes and preference.

Preferences for non-lethal measures over lethal or potentially lethal measures were noted, with new technologies highly favored. The online communities wanted a policy that was respectful of human and marine life and focused on patrolled or popular beaches. The main negative comments made related to perceived knee-jerk reactions and poor communication surrounding decision-making. People held little confidence in politicians’ skills and abilities to solve complex and multi-faceted problems, demanding less top-down decision-making and greater community input into policy formation.

This approach could assist upstream social marketers better understand social and community attitudes and preferences toward policy.

The study demonstrated that listening to community through digital channels can assist upstream social marketing understand community preferences and attitudes to policies and the policy-making process. Using abduction further broadens the perspective of the researchers in assigning meaning to commentary.