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The paper aims to explore the apparent tension between upstream and downstream social marketing and propose these should be treated as contiguous and complementary.

An environmental, population‐based framework is used to explore the varied roles social marketing might play in reducing public health problems.

The paper concludes that social marketers should collaborate with public health researchers to identify and ameliorate the environmental determinants of risk behaviour and create a context where downstream interventions may flourish. It is argued that the upstream measures necessary to shape supportive environments should be regarded not as constraints diminishing voluntary behaviour, but instead as the pre‐requisites enabling full and free choices.

The call for a rapprochement between upstream and …