Every Company Needs a Good Map

Roger, Thanks for mentioning my post about The Digital Transformation . I look forward to reading your book.

While Web 2.0 is very interesting concept, calling it social marketing is a mis-application of that term. A better term might be"social media" or "consumer generated content."

Social marketing is a concept first explicated by Philip Kotler & Gerald Zaltman, Kellogg School of Management, Northwestern University, in 1971, to describe the application of commercial marketing principles to health, social and quality of life issues. (Cf. Kotler, P. and Zaltman, G. (1971) "Social marketing: An approach to planned social change. J of Marketing. Vol. 35, pp. 3-12.)

Social marketing has been used around the globe by government and non-profit organizations to impact issues of societal well-being as diverse as breastfeeding, recycling and encouraging savings account. Not a flash in the pan phenomenon, there are numerous college curricula; six-plus textbooks; an international listserve with over 1,000 members; a dedicated journal; three major US or international conferences; at least six major US firms; centers in Scotland, Canada, Poland and Australia; governmental centers in the UK and the US; a national excellence collaborative in the US, all dealing with social marketing.

For more information you can visit the following web sites, among others: www.social-marketing.com; www.social-marketing.org; www.nsmcentre.org.uk.

Mike,
Thank you for your comments. Apparently I made a poor choice of words but I'm not sure that I was all that far off. Maybe it was slip that needed to be made. Web 2.0 is more commonly thought of as "consumer driven media". One may consider citizen journalists a flash in the pan but I believe that many of them are trying to change social issues. Take the many Work-at-home Moms blogs. They are certainly trying to change social, health, and quality of life issues. Many businesses believe they are pushing positive social, health, or quality of life changes. So now does that disqualify me from using the term as it applies to them?

BTW - this might not be the first time a well defined term has been hijacked by a different application over time. Evolution means a change in gene frequency to genetics and molecular biology but most people think it means the transformation of man from apes.

I think I would very much enjoy it you would like to discuss the possibility of Web 2.0 being Social Marketing.