ESMA was represented at the 4th World Social Marketing Conference in Sydney Australia, 19th – 21st of April. The conference was attended by 350 social marketers from around the world representing 32 countries. The conference consisted of over 100 workshops and seminars and special sessions together with a series of key note presentations and over thirty poster presentations. The Conference also provided great social networking opportunities, both live and virtual.

The keynote speakers included Professor Adrian Bauman speaking about the politics and promotion of public health, Roberto Venturini from the Department of Health State government of Victoria on the application of a system wide responses to public health challenges, Ashfaq Rahman from Bangladesh about the incredible success of the Social Marketing Company in promoting wellbeing in the region, and Jole Bakan on marketing and the social good. All the key note presentations were recorded and will be available from the world conference website within the next week. All the PowerPoint presentations from all the seminars and special sessions will also be made available via the conference website.

ESMA lead a special session for delegates from Europe that resulted in a number of new members joining. ESMA was also represented by Jeff French at an early morning breakfast workshop session focused on a paper published in the latest edition of the Journal of Social Marketing by Rebekah Russell-Bennett and Jeff French that sought to develop further the global social marketing definition supported by ESMA into a set of key social marketing principles, concepts and techniques. This session was attended by over sixty people and resulted in setting up of a small working party to take the thinking forward. A copy of the paper is available from Jeff French at jeff.french@strategic-social-marketing.org.

The next world conference will be taking place in Washington, US, during April 2017, dates will be announced during the autumn of this year.

Jeff
Professor Jeff French PhD, MBA, MSc, DipHE, BA, Cert.Ed.
CEO Strategic Social Marketing