Kathryn Fernholz Minneapolis Oct 3, 2006 6:29 am

Dovetail Partners recently released a report on social marketing that may be of interest to you. Following please find a brief introduction to this report. The report can be downloaded from our website, http://www.dovetailinc.org . This report is sponsored by the Vital Forests/Vital Communities Initiative of the Blandin Foundation.

In May, the Blandin Foundation hosted a workshop entitled "Fostering Sustainable Behavior - An Introduction to Community-Based Social Marketing". The workshop was led by Doug McKenzie-Mohr (http://www.cbsm.com ). The Foundation also had a conference in May, "Family Forest Stewardship: Getting to the Next Million Acres". Mr McKenzie-Mohr was the luncheon speaker at the conference and sparked conversations about applying community-based social marketing to forest stewardship.

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Thank you,
Katie

Kathryn Fernholz
Executive Director
Dovetail Partners
www.dovetailinc.org

An Introduction to Social Marketing: Potential Applications for Forestry Dovetail Report,
September 2006

Human behavior underlies a number of problems, including a number of those related to the environment. From isolated issues such as littering and low rates of recycling to large scale problems involving energy consumption and resource depletion, it is human behavior that must be changed in order to bring about positive change. One of the tools utilized to influence behavior and encourage more responsible behavior is social marketing. Broadly defined, social marketing is the practice of applying traditional, commercial marketing techniques with the goal of influencing the behavior of the target audience. Most commonly, the intent is to achieve a positive social impact. This report provides an introduction to the concept and practices of social marketing and the tools of community-based social marketing. To date, there has been scant use of social marketing for the purpose of influencing forestry-related behaviors, although potential benefits from broader use of this approach are now recognized. Perhaps the greatest opportunity for successfully applying social marketing techniques to forestry may be related to engaging family forest owners in behaviors that support improved forest management. Given that there are a variety of human behaviors impacting the success of sustainable forestry initiatives, social marketing may be an important tool for influencing these behaviors to achieve positive change.

To download the entire report, please visit: http://www.dovetailinc.org/DovetailSocialMktg0906.html
The direct link to the pdf file is: http://www.dovetailinc.org/documents/DovetailSocialMktg0906.pdf