My fellows from the European Social Marketing Association conferred me the Outstanding Achievement Award for Social Marketing, at the World Social Marketing Conference 2019, in Edinburgh, 4 June. What a surprise!
Thank you my dear fellows. I have dedicated a great part of my academic life to this contribution to people's wellbeing. It was a pleasure and a great honour.
Dr. Nadina Luca, ESMA board member, handed me the trophy, and the Gala Dinner was presented by Mark Beaumont, a Scottish national hero, another great pleasure for me, as I am a true Scotland's lover. As a guest member of the St. Andrew's Society in Lisbon, I even put my kilt for the dinner.
On my thanksgiving speech I have remembered the first time I met Jeff French, at the Keble College's dining room, in Oxford, at the very beginning of the British national policy on social marketing, and since then how I have his support for a great part of my work. I thank him a lot.
For this Conference I have presented a Social Marketing Political Manifesto, trying to draw atention to several actual challenges in this field, and it was also with great pleasure that I have received many words of support from several fellows, including Jeff French and Sally Dibb, in the closing session.
Here is its text:
A Social Marketing Political Manifesto
There are spectres haunting social marketing – spectres that affect human rights and the
human condition. Since Philip Kotler and Gerald Zaltman
published their ever-remembered article, time and life did not stop. Technological innovation and the way it
has been used and misused represents a major threat to human freedom, by
abusively conditioning people's behaviours, and affecting social marketing, and all
behaviour
change fields. Simultaneously, the political environment in which social
marketing was born has changed a lot for the worse. After democracy had a
remarkable global run, the expansion of freedom and democracy in the world has come to
a halt everywhere we can see the rise of populism, the
arrogance of authoritarian regimes, and the rapid growth of rising inequality,
welfare-state cutbacks, greater insecurity for the working and middle classes,
and the spread of economic and social risk. One cannot also forget the waves
and waves of politicians who do not know, do not pay attention, or are even
interested in citizens’ demands and concerns, including the rise of unelected
technocracies. In view of this, social marketing must reaffirm its political
and ideological groundings.
Social
marketing was born in the context of the
fight for civil rights in the US,
and the need
to tackle huge health challenges in the developing world. It was surrounded by the international uproar against
Vietnam War, the student’s uprising that proliferated throughout numerous
developed countries, and
ensuing deep cultural changes that flowed from this.
Its response came from a persistent tradition
of the Twentieth-Century progressive liberalism. Philip Kotler has emphasized
this in his more recent interviews and books, reaffirming the need for social
marketing to stick with its progressive origins.
The
essential proposition is that social marketing’s most intrinsic concepts are
alien to illegitimate authoritarianisms, any reduction in citizens’ rights and
freedoms, and manipulation by governments hostile to the people’s wellbeing. We
are not «hired guns» at the service of any arbitrary power. We are not value
free. There is a political responsibility intrinsic to social marketing that
results from its core concepts.
Since
its beginning social marketing
has been applied in countries with very
distinct political regimes, including non-democratic ones in low, middle
and high income countries. But social marketing is defined by placing a great
deal of emphasis on the dignity to self-determination of the individual, which
presupposes a fundamental respect for freedom fully materialized in democratic
societies. Social marketing therefore is a child of
and instrument of democracy.
Freedom
and democracy are our roots. In any of its forms (nudge,
hug,
smack,
or shove
policies, using The
Exchange Matrix, by Jeff French, 2011), social marketing
must preserve its democratic principles of free citizens’ choice, or democratic
mandated collective action to promote health, social, and environmental
wellbeing. But social marketing is not a «neoliberal experiment». Furthermore,
the so called «neoliberalism», as Noam Chomsky wrote (1999), is not new and is
not liberal. Their basic assumptions are far from those that have animated the
liberal tradition since the Enlightment. «Neoliberalism» is a mix of illiberal
libertarianism and conservatism that seeks to undermine collective state
directed action, with consequential increases in social inequality.
In
those countries, as the UK, that developed national policies on social
marketing in public health, our field was not a «neoliberal experiment». It was a contribution of academics and public
officers based on the 1946 World Health Organization’s recommendations, in
which WHO proposed that health should be considered and promoted in all its
socio-economical dimensions, involving,
and engaging individuals, environmental
factors, and social
conditions.
The
use of social marketing as part of this process can above all contribute to
ensuring that social policy and attempts to improve the human condition are
based on a sound understanding of citizens, their lives, and the communities
they are part of. Social marketing also seeks collectively to ensure that
people agree when individual freedoms should be curtailed for the collective
good. Social marketing was, and is a systematic tool for promoting public and
social freedom, and social good, founded on true concerns about human wellbeing
and respect for citizens. For
a' that an' a' that, so be it.
Edinburgh,
June 3, 2019
Carlos
Oliveira Santos
Ph.D,
Institute
for Public
and
Social Policy
Lisbon
University
Institute,
Portugal
Carlos
Oliveira Santos
can
be contacted at costerra1953@gmail.com
This
Manifesto was presented and discussed
at
the World Social Marketing Conference 2019,
Edinburgh,
UK
Acknowledgements:
Jeff
French,
Lynne
Eagle,
Marco
Morato, Giuseppe Fattori