1. Introduction

It is well known that in every society, the behavior of some individuals is not in line with the long-term interests of society as a whole [1]. Examples range from the lack of contraceptive use in countries with overpopulation, excessive production of hazardous waste and even careless driving. In this context, the importance of social marketing arises, and it can be defined as the use of marketing tools to promote planned social change [2]. However, the assessment of effectiveness of social marketing programs still presents a great challenge [3, 4]. This chapter aims to help readers understand some of the dimensions that can be used to assess the

© 2016 The Author(s). Licensee InTech. This chapter is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and eproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. © 2018 The Author(s). Licensee IntechOpen. This chapter is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

effectiveness of a given health program—in this case, the Pink October at the Brazilian Federal Senate. Additionally, although there is literature to corroborate the idea of social marketing as the use of marketing theory, skills and practices to achieve social change, especially through the use of online social media, we believe this should be treated simply as marketing on social media. We focus on this at the end of this chapter, with a practical approach on how this concept is used by the Brazilian legislative house. To start with, we shall go over the main concepts of social marketing and its internal use in institutions, especially regarding the employees and their families.

2.2. Understanding social marketing, internal marketing and branding

connected to the two previous concepts.

2.2.1. Social marketing

Lindsteadt and Gearon [9, 10].

dishonesty and issues of intrusiveness [14].

for instance, the evaluation issue [18].

For a better understanding of the term endobranding or internal branding, it is important to conduct a brief review of the internal marketing and branding concepts in order to see that branding, in this case, can be both a marketing tool—the so-called "internal branding"—and also an applicable tool in the internal communication of social marketing campaigns [7, 37, 38]. It is worthwhile, as well, to go through the definition of social marketing and how it is

Social Marketing and Health Communication: A Case Study at the Brazilian Federal Senate

http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.78126

59

A well-established definition of social marketing, is "[…] the use of marketing principles and techniques to influence a target audience to voluntarily accept, reject, modify or abandon a behavior for the benefit of individuals, groups or society as a whole" [8]. For Wilkie and Moore, social marketing originally developed itself as an area that would focus on "the work of nonprofitable groups and government agencies that dealt with effective intervention in areas of social problems," especially in public health programs as seen in Ling, Franklin,

This perspective of social marketing as a tool to encourage planned social change has been successfully used in different programs [11]. Nevertheless, although social marketing aimed at greater social welfare, the agents of such social change (governments, institutions, public policy makers) face complex ethical challenges [12, 13]. For Brenkert, the point goes beyond the moral issues faced by other forms of marketing such as accusations of manipulation and

The implementation of social marketing initiatives implies several challenges, as seen by Kotler and Lee, such as asking citizens to give up a pleasure (such as having to bathe more quickly), to be in a situation of eventual discomfort (such as wearing a seatbelt on buses and cars), resisting peer pressure (not starting to smoke), embarrassing situations (prostate examination), coping with sensitive situations (testing for AIDS),—challenges that may be added to asking citizens to reflect on issues that, at first, are difficult to grasp of are far from their immediate reality, such as the conservation of the oceans, among many others [15, 16]. For example, Peters et al. have demonstrated the low effectiveness of private sector initiatives in sexual and reproductive health campaigns in emerging countries for a number of difficulties [17]. Concerning health communication itself, Haider also enumerates several difficulties to face,

Hastings advocates that social marketing can take advantage of both external relationships among the stakeholders, and internal relationships such as the "domestic partnerships" of employees and functional departments of the organization [19]. In this context, we would have something that could be called a "social endomarketing" that could benefit from generic branding strategies, as referenced earlier. As the saying goes, "There is no better means of promoting another person's change of heart than allowing our own heart to be changed."

(C. Terry Warner) [20]. In social marketing, that assumption remains true.

The case study involved literature review, analysis of internal and external media articles and focused interviews with the organizers and partners to create a short overview of the initiative and its future potential improvements.
