I betray my age with this but reading through the first module of Social Marketing: Changing Behaviors for Good by Nancy Lee and Philip Kotler reminded me of a popular series of TV ads in the 1980s. The commercials were about mothers shopping for soap to address their teenagers’ pimple infection, and just as they are about to pick up a beauty brand, their konsensya appears, telling them that Safeguard is the best protection against the skin germs that cause pimples. This is, of course, commercial marketing at its finest—something that skeptics like me have come to easily identify and doubt. And so to learn that marketing has historically been used for purposes nobler than to build the wealth of the already-wealthy is a revelation and a relief.   Social marketing, I believe, puts the conscience in marketing. To shift from marketing for profit to marketing for public gain is a kind of poetic redemption for those of us who at one time or another have served corporate interests over common good (no judgment here, …