Public Health Branding Applying Marketing for Social Change

Every day we are bombarded with commercial marketing and advertisements for a diverse range of products, services, and lifestyles. The success of these frequently relies on branding, and the positive associations that consumers hold for the brand. Indeed, the strength of an established brand can eclipse an almost identical product, resulting in customer loyalty and a long-term relationship between the consumer and the product.

W Douglas Evans serves as Vice President of RTI's Public Health and Environment Division. Dr Evans has 16 years of experience in prevention research and program evaluation, social marketing and communications research. He has designed numerous large-scale evaluations and intervention research studies and has extensive experience evaluating behaviour change and public education intervention programs designed to communicate science-based information to diverse audiences. He has published extensively on media influences on health risk behaviour, including the effects of social marketing on behaviour change. Dr Evans has published widely in peer-reviewed journals such as the British Medical Journal, American Journal of Preventive Medicine, Health Psychology, Journal of Health Communication, and many others. He has worked extensively in the public health subject areas of tobacco control; nutrition, physical activity, and obesity; and reproductive health. Gerard Hastings is the first UK Professor of Social Marketing and founder/director of the Institute for Social Marketing and Centre for Tobacco Control Research. He researches the applicability of marketing principles such as consumer orientation and relationship building to the solution of health and social problems. He also conducts critical marketing research into the impact of potentially health damaging marketing, such as tobacco advertising and fast food promotion. He teaches and writes on these subjects both in the UK, where he has run Masters and Honours level programmes, and internationally in North America, South East Asia, the Middle East and Europe. He has published over eighty refereed papers in major journals. He is an expert witness in litigation against the tobacco industry, Chairs the Advisory Board of the EC's HELP campaign, and is a regular advisor to the World Health Organisation, and the Scottish, UK and European Parliaments.