Purpose – The promise of marketing is great: a responsive, consumer‐oriented business philosophy that uses a wide selection of carefully honed tools to provide excellent service in perpetuity. The reality, however, is far removed from this idyll. This paper seeks to examine the power of...

Purpose – In MIP , Vol. 25 No. 1, Mike Saren argued that academic marketers need to move beyond our “traditional managerial and business confines”. This paper aims to suggest that the discipline is already on the move in that direction, and that social marketing is in the vanguard....

Purpose – The financial crisis demands that we in the business academy raise our game: we either caused it by training the generation of “greed is good” MBAs who designed those financial instruments of mass destruction, or failed to prevent it by not equipping them with appropriate caution...

Purpose – The paper aims to discuss the thorny issues of industry‐funded social marketing campaigns. Can the tobacco industry be trusted to educate our children about the dangers of smoking? Is a brewer the best source of health promotion? The paper argues for transparency and critical...

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to question the role of corporate marketing in society and suggest ways of combating it. Design/methodology/approach – The problems are urgent and the style is polemical. Findings – Marketing is as old as human civilisation; it enables us to engage in...

Purpose This paper aims to explore the spiritual dimension of social marketing. Design/methodology/approach The paper adopts a conceptual approach. Findings The greatest problems humankind faces, from non-communicable diseases epidemics to global warming, are self-inflicted. Humans are...