Shanghai workshop promotes social marketing for changing illegal wildlife product consumption

Around 40 wildlife conservation and law enforcement officers, together with NGO representatives, met this week to examine the use of social media in awareness raising and promoting messaging encouraging changes towards consumption of illegal wildlife products.

The “New communications approaches to reduce demand for threatened wildlife and enhance public awareness” workshop was co-hosted by the Shanghai Wildlife Conservation Association, Shanghai Zoo and TRAFFIC.

Social marketing is rapidly gaining momentum in China as a means to raise awareness of particular issues and for encouraging behaviour change initiatives for social good. Messaging can be highly targeted, encouraging actionable solutions by certain groups using audience segmentation and insight learning.