The Institute of Social Marketing Opens its Doors

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Can marketing, the force that has driven our love affair with cigarettes and fast food, really be used to improve public health?  Professor Gerard Hastings, Director of  the University of Stirling and the Open University’s new Institute for Social Marketing, argues that the answer is yes:

“If tobacco companies can use marketing to hook us on cigarettes and fast food companies can market a billion burgers a day, then public health can use it to reverse this tide. Commercial marketers make their profits by influencing our behaviour – by getting us to wear these trainers or eat that chocolate bar.  They do this by understanding us as consumers, rewarding our loyalty and making us feel good about ourselves.  Social marketers can use the same methods to influence, not our consumption, but our health behaviours – what we eat and drink, how much exercise we take and so on.” 

The Institute, which is located at Stirling, officially opened its doors this week. Its ten staff bring twenty-five years of experience of delivering high quality research, consultancy and training in social marketing from their former base at Strathclyde.  Deputy Director Martine Stead said: “The move provides fabulous opportunities to collaborate with world class colleagues at both Stirling and the OU.”

The Institute is currently heading up the evaluation of Blueprint, the UK Government’s biggest ever drugs education programme, which is taking place in schools in three areas of England.  It will also be casting a critical eye on commercial marketing. The team’s previous work on tobacco promotion, for example, has revealed the seductive impact that branding and advertising of cigarettes can have on the young. As Professor Hastings explains: “scrutinising and exposing the activities of the tobacco industry is a crucial part of the fight against smoking related deaths”. 

ISM is also working closely with the Scottish, Westminster and European Parliaments.  Professor Hastings, for example, is part of the Scottish Executive’s National Smoke Free Areas Implementation Group, which will advise Scottish Ministers on the implementation of the proposed ban on smoking in enclosed public places, and is acting as a Special Advisor to the Westminster Health Select Committee during their enquiry into to the pharmaceutical industry.

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