From Social Marketing to Transformative Communication: Innovation and Social Awareness in Social Services

In the context of the transformation of welfare systems, and following the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, communication and social marketing have taken on a strategic role in community social services. This study aims to analyse communication and social marketing campaigns developed from 2020 to the present, in order to identify the social issues addressed, the communication objectives and the strategies employed, as well as their link to Community Social Services. A qualitative, exploratory and descriptive design is adopted based on analysing the content of a corpus of 60 campaigns selected through intentional sampling from international public sources. The results show a clear intensification of campaigns in the post-COVID-19 period, with a predominance of themes such as gender violence, mental health, unwanted loneliness and social exclusion. The communication strategies are characterised by the use of emotional narratives, storytelling, audiovisual formats and multi-channel dissemination, combining awareness-raising, prevention and guidance towards social resources. It is concluded that community social marketing is consolidating its position as a transformative tool that reinforces access to rights, social cohesion and the role of Community Social Services as active agents of social change.