Social marketing for the public good: lessons and practical examples from Pracademia in Spain and Latin America.

The role of social marketing in the Latin world rests unclear, as it has not formed a body itself and it is not recognised by governmental nor civil society organisations, at least not fully. Nevertheless, changes are happening. Diverse organisations are beginning to ask for help from social marketing academics to counterattack against industrial pandemic, generated by some unethical industries, such as the tobacco, alcohol, gambling or food firms.

Examples are presented from the work developed to generate evidence of the effects of the tobacco industry not accomplishing national regulations in Colombia, Mexico and Spain, as well as a case from the food industry in Argentina, profiting from an absolute lack of regulation.

Unluckily, the role is still seen as generating just technical reports or helping for advertising campaigns, but not valuing market research as the industry does. This next step must be done in order to offer governments and civil society full marketing potential to add value to the public good.

Juan M. Rey-Pino, associate professor of marketing research and management at the Universidad de Granada (Spain). BA in Psychology, Ph.D. in business and economics, developed his career in the social marketing domain, as well as qualitative market research. He has published in different international journals and participated in handbooks with practical cases. His research covers plain packaging of tobacco products, perceptions of nicotine intake products and healthy food branding among children and adolescents.

This is one of a series of seminars in the Whitaker Ideas Forum. Professor Rey-Pino will be representing the Applied Systems Thinking Cluster.

The Whitaker Ideas Forum is a weekly seminar, running Wednesday’s throughout the semester from 1:00pm-2:00pm in CA110. It provides the opportunity for members of the Institute to showcase their research. The result are presentations that highlight the diversity of the research being undertaken, while allowing for an opportunity to engage in discussions and, sometimes, collaboration with attendees. Below, you will find a list of this semester’s seminars, please click the title for more information on that seminar.