ABSTRACT
The concept of social marketing has diffused extensively in the intervening years. Some of the earliest examples of the application of social marketing approaches to public health occurred in low-income countries in the 1960s and 1970s. Advocates of social marketing emphasize the use of a systematic approach to planning and reviewing an intervention. In England in recent years, there has been a relatively rapid increase in social marketing activity directed at a number of public health issues. Social marketing approaches have endured with some success in the developing world, particularly in relation to the promotion of family planning and contraception. The subsequent establishment of the National Social Marketing Centre (NSMC) in 2006 was followed by a series of publications that cumulatively expressed the desire for all public health work to be informed by an understanding of what motivated people and to embed social marketing principles into all health improvement work.
