Seminar to focus on social marketing’s potential to influence individual change

Mar 02, 2007

The Centre for Social Marketing Research and the Sydney Business School have joined forces to present a seminar in Sydney featuring two overseas speakers on Monday 5 March focusing on social marketing’s potential to influence individual change.

The Director of International Operations for the University of Wollongong’s Faculty of Commerce, Dr Gary Noble, said the seminar tied in with the Faculty of Commerce’s goal of leading social innovation.

The two speakers will be Professor Gerard Hastings from the United Kingdom and Iain Potter from New Zealand.

Professor Hastings is a visiting professor with UOW’s Centre for Social Marketing and a recognised world expert in social marketing acting as adviser to the UK House of Commons and the World Health Organisation.

Iain Potter is Chief Executive Officer of the Health Sponsorship Council of New Zealand and has responsibility for all of the New Zealand Government’s major health promotion campaigns.

The seminar is based on a similar seminar they both did for senior United Kingdom government officials last year and was influential in the UK government now adopting social marketing as the preferred method of health promotion.

Dr Noble said there had been a positive response from senior managers attending the seminar from such areas as the Federal Department of Health and Ageing, the Cancer Council and NSW Health.

Social marketers look at human behaviour and why people make the choices that they do. Just as marketing has traditionally focused on the marketplace and individual consumption, social marketers seek to turn existing strategy and apply it in reverse.

For example, as the tobacco industry heavily markets to encourage people to smoke, so too can ‘social marketers’ take the same marketing principles (understanding the consumer, relationship and strategic marketing) for the reverse objective.

Venue: Sydney Business School, Level 14, 175 Liverpool Street, Sydney

Date and time: 2-5pm, Monday 5 March

Further information about this seminar can be obtained from Dr Gary Noble on (02) 4221 5994 or 0414 418326 (m).

For more information, contact:

media@uow.edu.au
University of Wollongong
Ph: (02) 4221 5942; fax (02) 4221 3128