As the debate on the creation of a National Social Marketing Association continues, future social marketing and SM-related students/practitioners should check out FLiP (Future Leaders in Philanthropy). It is another online community that offers many great resources and connections for those exploring philanthropic related fields. According to the its homepage, FLiP’s mission statement includes:
We are the future leaders in philanthropy. By working together, we will further our careers, serve our organizations’ mission, and change the world. FLiP is dedicated to creating a community and a network where other future leaders can meet, learn, exchange ideas, and contribute to each other’s success.
They offer interviews with young professionals in a variety of social change/philanthropy related careers. They offers resources for further education, career guides, views from fellow interns, opportunities to network, online presence on Facebook, MySpace and AOL and much more.
This community is great for making connections with those who have related interests and goals. In the meantime, there is a Massachusetts Social Marketing Association. However, a national social marketing association is still in progress. Nedra Weinreich, on her blog Spare Change, offers a better history about the creation of a professional social marketing society. Weinreich also offers her views on the status of such an organization. The big debate seems to rest on whether or not the SM Association should be underneath the AMA (American Marketing Association) or be its own separate identity.
As this blog has hinted at, I believe this relates to the ‘identity crisis’ that all of strategic communications is facing, whether commercial or not, in seeking universally accepted definitions. How do you draw the lines between what is and what is not advertising, marketing, dare I say journalism, corporate social responsibility, word of mouth marketing, social marketing, viral marketing, sponsorship, etc. I have my own ideas, of course. But, I’m more curious about learning what others think about this topic.
- Should social marketing have its own professional organization?
- How would you decide who could and could not join?
- Should it me under the AMA? If so, then should word-of-mouth-marketing also be under the AMA instead of having its own organization?
- Etc. There are much more questions than answers about this topic. Feel free to leave your own questions as comments.
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Although relatively new to the growing discourse that more or less concerns ‘social marketing,’ I do have an opinion. I’ll just blurt it out and see what happens. Here’s what I think: I think that one of the problems that social marketing has lies in the very term itself.
And, yes, I know its lineage and its close family ties to commercial marketing theory and approaches, but still–it’s the word “marketing” that’s the problem here.
Specifically, it’s the unavoidable (at this point in our lexical loopings) connotations that this word–marketing–carries when it is used as we intend it when we speak of social marketing.
Maketers, advertisers, communicators–yes, some of the most creative minds around–take pride, if not satisfaction, from the fact that their work is just that–CREATIVE, or in my world, MEDIATIVE.
And, yet, in social marketing we work with what is fundamentally right, utterly good, truthful, sound, positive, healthy, unassailable, and, most importantly, does not require mediation. You get the point? No marketing needed here, folks. Just education. Translation? And communication? So what is social marketing but a redundancy?
I’m not sure, but I do wonder about it.