Tribute to Philip D. Harvey: A Social Marketing Founding Father and Titan

On December 2, 2021, the social marketing world lost one of its own when Phil Harvey passed away.

The youngest of five children, Phil Harvey was born in Evanston, Illinois. He earned his bachelor’s degree from Harvard College and soon went to work in India with CARE International. After 5 years, he returned to the USA to pursue a master’s degree at the University of North Carolina. His research focused on increasing access to condoms by mail, a project that eventually led to the establishment of Adam & Eve, a business focused on adult erotica. Profits from that successful business helped launch several social marketing non-profits and a wide range of philanthropic activity that centered around the fundamental premise of securing and ensuring personal freedoms for all people.

Phil cared deeply about people and treated everyone with kindness—regardless of your title or position. He wanted people to live life with dignity and freedom. He devoted his professional life and personal fortune to making that a reality around the world and fought for individuals in ways both grand and direct.

Phil was many things: a social marketing pioneer and titan, a serial entrepreneur, a generous philanthropist, and an ardent believer in empowering each individual to live life as they saw fit. He was a founder of three large contraceptive and reproductive health social marketing organizations: Population Services International, Marie Stopes International, and DKT International. Combined, these three organizations provide contraception and safe abortion products, services and technology in more than 100 countries and are the largest procurers and distributors of these products in the world.

He helped shape the principles of contraceptive social marketing and was a steadfast believer that using these strategies made the world a better place. Phil contributed dozens of articles and op-eds to promote social marketing, and his book, Let Every Child Be Wanted, is a primer on how these principles are articulated into action. His interview in this Journal was an example of the passion Phil brought to the social marketing field.

A quiet but active philanthropist, Phil donated tens of millions of dollars to promote social marketing programs in countries around the world—as well as numerous other causes that promoted liberty and well-being.

Phil relished being a maverick and iconoclast, challenging systems and rules, and calling out injustices where he saw them. In 1977, he challenged the Comstock law that prohibited the advertising and display of contraceptives, taking the case to the Supreme Court, where it was overturned. When Adam & Eve was raided by the police, he sued the Reagan administration in 1990 for abuse of power, a lawsuit that he won. And in 2005, Phil sued the US Government for a violation of free speech when USAID tried to force grantees to sign a pledge disavowing prostitution as a pre-requisite for funding.

Phil’s leadership style was unique. A consummate delegator, he trusted, deeply trusted, believing that given the chance, people would do the right thing and work assiduously to achieve goals. He loved to see people succeed and push themselves to new places. He knew that the best way to unlock people’s power and passion was to give them a huge degree of authority and autonomy. And we loved him for it.

On Phil’s office wall was a pinned quote which served both as a goal for himself but also for the many leaders that he coached and supported over the years. The quote, attributed to Lao Tzu, read as follows: “A leader is best when people barely know he exists, when his work is done, his aim fulfilled, they will say: we did it ourselves.”