Anti-Racism and Social Marketing: Paths for Research and Intervention

This conceptual paper is an invitation to reflection and action, and is especially targeted to social marketing researchers and professionals to sensitize and engage in recent efforts to break with the limited and low coverage of investigations and interventions in the field on the topics of racism and anti-racism. Filling this gap is a challenge to be faced by academics and social marketers so that the area can properly connect, understand and contribute to contemporary movements that are challenging society for change. This study aims to explicate and delineate conceptual approximations between the thinking and practices of social marketing and anti-racism to explore the observation of points of dialogue and potential, while the articulation of these approaches can accelerate and strengthen positive social changes. What is anti-racism? What aspects and actions circumscribe and contribute to integrating anti-racism and social marketing knowledge? How can this articulation support the analysis and development of anti-racist social marketing strategies and interventions? This paper contributes to encourage an expansion of mentality, knowledge and behavior related to racial issues and social marketing, and to stimulate ideas that, supported by anti-racism studies and interventions, provide paths that can be continuously adopted in the research, design and implementation of social marketing initiatives. This conceptual article is organized by a literature survey, from sources such as recent meta-analyses, reviews and experimental studies from marketing, communication, education, and social and cognitive psychology, in order to understand the conceptual aspects of racism and anti-racism and their expressions in the contemporary world. Also, there are some case and practice suggestions on how anti-racism and social marketing can be aligned to address racism. The literature explored in this article is published in English and Portuguese. The anti-racism aspects presented in this text cover and provide paths that can be useful and explored in different directions in social marketing research and practice. From this perspective, the shared conceptual organization can also support academics and professionals in the area, unfamiliar with studies on racism and anti-racism expressions, to integrate these concepts in their research, plans and programs of intervention or review in these activities. The reported case and practice suggestions are not analyzed in depth. However, this is a task that should be developed critically and with more attention in future works, considering the developments, metrics, sustainability, backlash effects, and effectiveness or not of recent initiatives. More broadly, it is also pointed out that anti-racist commitments and initiatives of companies’ diversity and inclusion programs, such as those reviewed in the text, should be considered as relevant sources of analysis for social marketing studies.