UKZN Helps Advance Social Marketing for Sustainable Development

BY: .

The inaugural conference of the newly-formed African Social Marketing Association (AfSMA) held at Wits University in Johannesburg was co-chaired by its President, UKZN’s Professor Debbie Vigar-Ellis.

AfSMA is a new affiliate of the long-established International Social Marketing Association (iSMA) which promotes social marketing as a framework to solve social problems and markets the use of social marketing approaches to address social challenges.

The conference brought together more than 100 academics, practitioners and social policy makers from Africa and other countries to explore the immense potential of social marketing, social enterprise, innovation, and behaviour change practices in addressing pressing social, health, economic, security and environmental challenges.

‘The conference theme was The Future is Fusion and thus the aim was to get different groups - social marketers, social and behaviour change agents, academics, practitioners, and social policymakers from Africa and other continents to fuse the variety of work being done and document it for showcasing,’ said Vigar-Ellis.

Insightful and interactive sessions were held with the presentations by experts in the field on double-blind peer-reviewed case studies, projects and research findings that revealed that the field of social marketing has gained significant attention in recent years as a powerful tool for addressing major health, environmental and social issues.

The presentations during the conference also highlighted that social marketing extends beyond traditional marketing strategies, encompassing a comprehensive approach that includes upstream activities aimed at creating an enabling environment for behaviour change that benefits society as a whole in cost-effective ways. Vigar-Ellis said funders for these social marketing campaigns often demanded evaluation reports to assess the return on investment.

Stressing the importance of evaluating and documenting the effectiveness of social marketing initiatives to demonstrate their impact and justify the allocation of resources, she said: ‘Running impactful social marketing campaigns can be resource-intensive, thus funders require evaluation reports to assess their return on investment which also leads to practitioners exploring cost-effective and innovative strategies.’

Seven of Vigar-Ellis’s master’s and PhD students and graduates had their papers accepted for presentation at the conference.

Words: Samukelisiwe Cele

Photograph: Supplied