This week has been a blur of things that needed my attention. Subsequently, I have been a bit of a procrastinator on writing this post. It’s not that I don’t care about the issue. Its just that I wanted to make sure I had the time to write a proper post.

Last week I chimed in on the discussion (key posts: here, here, here, here, and here– be sure to read the comments too) in the blogosphere on JupiterResearch usurping the term “Social Marketing” to describe a new business line that focuses on giving advice about marketing thru consumer generated content, such as, blogs, podcasts, myspace, and other emerging social media tools.

After thinking about it and realizing that Fard Johnmar was right “Clarity is King”, I wrote Nedra at Spare Change a short e-mail as I was headed out the door for Labor Day festivities suggesting that a chart be crafted to illuminate others about the differences between the two versions of “social marketing”. And while I was frolicking on Labor Day break, Nedra was hard at work crafting this chart and creating quite a lively discussion about the differences between the two versions of social marketing.

Here are my thoughts on the whole issue:

When one looks at the big picture, most would agree that the practice and discipline of marketing is changing because of the emergence of blogs, myspace and other social media tools. This fundamental change or expansion of how products, services and brands are promoted is more about method (aka using Web 2.0 technologies) rather than philosophy and theories that provide the foundation for the discipline of marketing. I am convinced that corporate marketers and those marketing for the adoption of healthy behaviors or for a cause will be more successful if they make efforts to understand and capitalize on influence of social media tools.

To date, the term Social Marketing has been adequate to describe the branch of the discipline of Marketing that is concerned with changing health behaviors and promoting change to address specific social concerns and ailments. This, in my view, was because we lacked the tools and resources to create global and profound changes. The most successful campaigns have been those that utilized expensive TV commercial marketing during prime time– The Crying Native American Man for stopping littering still resonates with me. Not every cause has the resources to undertake this sort of campaign to change behavior and there are places in the world that people did not have TVs or electricity. Eventhough not everyone has a computer and some still do not have a steady supply of electricity, the affordability and penetration of these enabling Web 2.0 technologies make them widely accessible and used by a huge group of people. So much so, not participating is beginning to signal the death knell for certain nonprofits and causes.

Some have argued that the traditional notion of Social Marketing has lost its umph because the emergence of social media has muddied the semantic waters. To a certain extent, I agree. Others trivialize Social Marketing because, to date, its successes have come in under the radar when compared with the long touted product campaigns of Nike and Apple. With the emergence of the CDC’s National Center for Health Marketing and the organized push they are about to embark upon to meet the goals of HealthyPeople 2010, things are about to change for the better.

However, if my thoughts are right– which they may not be and everyone is welcome to help me refine them through civil discussion— all marketers are going to be utilizing the new technologies and social media platforms. Perhaps it is then wise if we all work diligently to be more clear about what we say we do.

I think the brave, thoughtful, introspection efforts of Nedra, Craig and others are a good step in that direction. Too bad silence has fallen over the camp of the other Social Marketing.

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