Social Marketing Professional Organization: Ensuring a Future for Social Marketing

I am part of a movement to create a global membership organization for people and organizations which use social marketing to make the world a better place to live.  I want YOU to be a part of that movement, too!  (A reminder here, I am talking the one, true, original social marketing: use of commercial marketing research, planning and intervention processes to identify and lower barriers to behaviors that lead to individual and community well-being--not talking about message, nor PSAs nor social media.)

What are the benefits of a social marketing professional organization?

• A way to strengthen ties with colleagues, whether they are across town, or across
  the ocean
• No longer being the only person in your organization who understands the social marketing process, and how it can support positive behaviors
• Promoting an understanding of social marketing to funders, government planners, partner organizations, your own boss--decision-makers whose "yes" you need
• A nexus for collecting and sharing ideas, successes, failures; for translating research into practice, and for identifying needs from the field that could benefit from research
• Advocacy for social marketing, a la Kotler and Zaltman (1971), to correct mis-use of the concept, and to represent it in every discussion about policy, funding, or
  social ills
• Perhaps even way cool tchotchkes that brand social marketing, like t-shirts, wristbands, notepads and portfolios!

Your can be a part of this movement! You can sign a charter petition, showing your support for creation of a global membership organization by going to http://fusomar.epetitions.net.  We will use the charter to demonstrate to funders, governments, and others that social marketing is alive and well and has deep roots, when we ask for their support.

So...pick up your pen--I mean your keyboard--and sign now!

Comments

[Alex, aka SocialButterfly]

Mike, Thanks for posting about this. It moves my spirit to know that so many others are realizing this vision...thanks to social marketeers like you!