Social marketing for health and family planning: Building on tradition and popular culture in Niger

Writer Stuart Adams
Peer reviewed by Charlotte Frances Cole and Tim Manchester
An approach by KfW Entwicklungsbank (Development Bank, KfW), jointly published by KfW Entwicklungsbank and Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ) GmbH, July 2009 (this edition January 2011)
Published in the German HIV Practice Collection

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Long version - English (40 pp. 4.1 MB)
Short version - English (4 pp. 1.0 MB)
Long version - French (40 pp. 4.2 MB)
Short version - French (8 pp. 2.0 MB)

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When we hear "social marketing" we think "selling condoms to prevent HIV" but what does social marketing really mean? This report takes us into the cities, towns and villages of Niger and shows us that it can also be about family planning, gender equality, reducing poverty and improving general health, not just sexual and reproductive health.

Social marketing can deliver a range of low-cost and reliable health products (oral contraceptives, water purification tablets and mosquito nets) to the smallest village and teach people how to use them. But, more importantly, it can deliver inter-active communications to that same small village and change attitudes and behaviour. It can get across complex messages such as, for example, everyone benefits when girls go to school, do not marry at age 15 to men twice their age, and do not have far more babies than their families can afford, most of them destined to be stunted and malnourished.