On Social Marketing and Social Change

Stoppping the Nonsense

A meditation for a Sunday morning - or whenever you are seeing this.

An [sic] lot of nonsense has been written about social marketing, that it's a waste of money, but we've shown the way it can be done effectively...Changing people's behaviour is the hardest thing to do, but government has a responsibility to set out an example and inform people. Unless you get your branding right, you're going to fail because no-one's going to understand you. - Roger Williams, head of marketing at the Scottish government.

And for more food for thought on social marketing.

Social Marketing in the News

User Fees, Optimal Pricing & Upward Sloping Demand Curves in Health

One of the most controversial subjects in global health is the topic of user fees for health services and commodities. Ever since Nancy Birdsall, David de Ferranti and John Akin declined to rule out user fees as a useful source of health financing way back in 1987, the World Bank has been pilloried for "advocating user fees" in the health sector, which the Bank has never done. By setting out explicit criteria for setting user fees in the 2004 World Development Report, the Bank resisted continuing political pressure to ban them outright and further fueled the debate. Among the donors, DFID (see also this white paper) has most adamantly rejected user fees as either effective or legitimate for improving access to health care by the poor. On the other hand, the social marketing of health care commodities, from condoms to antibiotics, is increasingly popular among actors such as PSI and KfW and presumes that the optimal price of these commodities, while heavily subsidized, is not free.

The obvious argument against user fees is based on the fundamental economic proposition that demand curves slope downward* - e.g. that the number of people willing to purchase a product or service declines as its price increases. It follows that lower prices should result in more health care utilization than higher prices, and that zero prices would be even better. However, a fascinating new study by Nava Ashraf, James Berry, and Jesse Shapiro of the market for home water purification solution in Zambia finds that in fact demand curves seem to flatten out as the price approaches zero, and may even slope upward - or, in plain English, that the act of paying a small amount (up to 18 cents, in this case) actually increases use over distributing Clorin free of charge.

The authors posit two reasons why people might behave contrary to the simple law of demand. First, the price effectively targets the distribution of the health commodity to those least likely to waste it. Second, people who have paid more for a product may have a greater psychological commitment to using it. They find strong statistical support for the first of these effects and weak support for the second.

If these results could be generalized to other health commodities, like bednets to prevent malaria, or to health services such as curative health clinic visits, the suggestion would be that sufficiently small user fees do little to discourage utilization; they might even increase it by stimulating the supply of health care quantity and quality.

Condom-inium!

Condoms and their sociology have indeed come a long way in India. But their, ahem, penetration has not really gone far into rural India, where they are distributed mostly through the State AIDS Control Societies (SACS) and social marketing channels. A lot of it is wasted due to the lack of proper distribution. Many of these pieces eventually find their way to making chappals, lining hut roofs, or oiling loom shuttles (with the non-staining lubricant). Bad distribution also leads to the problem of having outdated products in circulation. Vivek Anand, CEO of Humsafar Trust, says it’s silly to expect condom users to look at “user instructions and expiry dates in the dead of the night” when you have only one thing on your mind…

We tend to forget that this is the country that started the world’s first social marketing programme with the Nirodh campaign in the mid-1960s. The government procured condoms from various companies and coerced large-network FMCG and durables companies such as ITC, Union Carbide (till the Bhopal gas tragedy), Hindustan Lever and Voltas to distribute them. When the winds of liberalisation started blowing in the early 1990s, specialised social marketing agencies like PSI, Marie Stopes, Family Planning Association of India and DKT International entered the scene, and the private sector companies kept to their own domains.

A New Weapon in the Fight Against Anaemia

A nutritional supplement known as Sprinkles, which is a simple powder that parents can easily add to their children's food, reduces childhood anaemia by more than half, according to a recent study published in the Journal of Nutrition…

Among the children who received Sprinkles mixed into their food for two months, the incidence of anaemia declined from 54 percent to 24 percent, the study found. And even seven months after the children stopped taking Sprinkles, the rate of anaemia had declined even further, to 14 percent…

The study found that the use of iron-fortified food, such as wheat-soy blend or corn-soy blend, failed to reduce anaemia among young children on its own. In fact, the incidence of anaemia actually rose among the children who received only wheat-soy blend without Sprinkles.

Ruel is confident that Sprinkles -- a dry powder containing iron, zinc, and other vitamins -- could get around the problems facing iron syrups and other anti-anaemia measures…

Since 2005, the social marketing organisation Population Services International has been marketing Sprinkles commercially in Haiti under the name "Babyfer".

Pacific People Fail to Get Health Message

The majority of Pacific people have been left untouched by the healthy-food message of eating at least five servings of fruit and vegetables a day.

A survey for the Counties Manukau District Health Board found that less than 30 per cent of Pacific people knew this was the recommended intake of fruit and vegetables - set out in the '5-plus-a-day' message…

The "baseline" survey of 2400 adults was to gather more information for the health board's five-year, $10 million Let's Beat Diabetes scheme, an ambitious campaign to help defuse the timebomb of obesity and type 2 diabetes by changing eating, drinking and physical activity habits.

Fifty-six per cent of adults are overweight or obese and the rate of obesity has doubled in the past 30 years. Among children, 31 per cent are overweight or obese, but the rate is 41 per cent among Maori children and 61 per cent for Pacific youngsters aged 5-14.

When asked if the lack of Pacific awareness of the fruit and vegetables message was a concern, public health specialist Dr Tom Robinson said, "I guess it creates an opportunity".

"Let's Beat Diabetes is a social marketing campaign. That's partly about providing knowledge so, yeah, that creates opportunities to work with Pacific and Asian people in particular to increase their knowledge about healthy eating."

Social Marketing in the News

BrainTrust Canada Launches New 'protectyourhead' Social Marketing Campaign

BrainTrust Canada, a community rehabilitation organization dedicated to being a leader in injury prevention, is launching a hard-hitting social marketing campaign in BC [British Columbia, Canada] targeted at the highest risk group for brain injury, males 16-24 years of age. This is the only social marketing campaign of its kind in Canada focused on brain injury…

The new multi-media campaign includes a new website ... [that] includes a series of interactive and entertaining simulators that demonstrate what everyday social situations may be like after sustaining brain injury. The new website will be followed by various other campaign elements including television, print, outdoor advertising, event marketing and non-traditional lifestyle promotions to help raise awareness of the issue of brain injury with the target audience.

Recycling Is Not Enough; We Need To Consume Less, Experts Urge

Recycling rates have risen, and the UK is on schedule to meet EU targets, but the key to dealing with our escalating waste problem lies in changing our buying habits and our attitudes to consumption, according to the authors of a new Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) publication…

Professor Ken Peattie, Director of the ESRC Centre for Business Relationships, Accountability, Sustainability and Society (BRASS), Cardiff University, describes three projects which are linked to different aspects of waste reduction at the production stage and in consumption. He says the key tool in the development and implementation of consumption reduction policies is 'social marketing,' which involves using commercial marketing techniques to influence their behaviour for the benefit of society as a whole.

Ken Peattie explains that social marketing can be successful because it focuses on the target audience's point of view, taking account of any emotional or physical barriers that may prevent people from changing their behaviour. 'Guilt messages are ineffective. A focus on the benefits of a greener lifestyle has been shown to be a better way to encourage people to reduce their consumption,' the report says.

Social Marketing in the News

Analysis: Partners Sell Women’s Health

From soap to birth control, cash-strapped public health groups are partnering with private companies to sell women's health products.

The cooperation harnesses the vast resources of the private sector, the groups say, and a self-sustaining private market means products will still be available even if donor aid dries up. But others say the partnerships are more about profit than public health.

"Family planning needs are currently outstripping available resources," said Ruth Berg, director of the PSP-One Project, a group that helps USAID develop such public-private partnerships.

Public health groups need private companies "because of the resources the private sector can bring," she said Tuesday at the International Conference on Global Health…

Many countries already have private markets for women's health products, but only wealthier women purchase them. Aid-supported social marketing can be successful in encouraging women across all income groups to purchase their health products.

Covering Up!

Barbadians are protecting "their wicket" more than ever before. They spent nearly $2.5 million on condoms between 2004 and last year…

When presented with the statistics, Dr Carol Jacobs, chairperson of the National HIV/AIDS Commission, said she was delighted to see the increased usage. "Obviously people are taking heed of the prevention messages," she said.

Despite the increased use, Jacobs said the commission was nowhere near "the figures we should be. The surveys are telling us that not enough people are using condoms in some of the age groups, particularly over-25 pregnant women. That age group is telling us they are not happy using condoms consistently; so we still need to do a lot of social marketing on condoms."

$20m Health Ad Campaign Plan

…Meanwhile, a federal [Australia] Health Department spokeswoman confirmed a new advertising campaign was under development but said it should not be compared with other big-spending election year advertising.

She said concepts were being tested for advertising that would promote a healthy lifestyle to reduce the incidence of chronic disease among Australians, but said it would be co-funded by state and territory government health departments.

The Government has flagged development of a rolling national social marketing campaign that could run three or four years in the $1 billion Better Health Initiative to tackle chronic diseases like type 2 diabetes.

NACO Pilot Project to Popularise Female Condom

National AIDS Control Organisation (NACO; India) has launched its pilot project from April this year introducing 'female condom' in six states for more effective control of the dreaded disease…

"The use of female condom can reduce unsafe sex to a greater extent as women can also protect themselves and take their own decisions," Ranjit said. Stating the programme has already yielded positive response, he said women have started getting benefits in the NACO project area in South 24 Parganas district. "The  women-users describe the condom as more comfortable." The sex-workers, particularly, are happy as it reduces fear and risk, besides averting the possibility of loss of customers, Ranjit said.

…during the month of May CWRC had recorded 'social marketing' of 1163 units of the new contraceptive so far, the highest figure in the state in the period, among the flying female sex workers of the metropolis and its southern outskirts. "We have also got feedback that flying woman sex-workers are quite comfortable with the 'female condoms'," Ranjit said.

The project had been taken up following requests by the social activists for introducing such condoms among high risk groups, as many male partners did not like to use condoms on their own, Ranjit said.

Social Marketing in the News

MBA Toolkit For CSR: Corporate Branding

…Using marketing activities to undertake major initiatives to support social causes and to implement CSR initiatives comes in three forms: cause-related marketing, cause promotions and corporate social marketing...

Corporate Social Marketing is utilized to support the development and/or implementation of behavior change campaigns intended to improve public health, safety, the environment, or community well being. The distinguishing feature is the behavior change focus, which differentiates it from the cause promotions that focus on supporting awareness, fundraising and volunteer recruitment…

Setting their focus on acting as socially responsible businesses, companies are beginning to understand that their relationship with communities, customers, consumers and stakeholders need to be developed as being long-term and sustainable, not short term and transactional.

When it Comes to Safety on the Lake, Nobody’s Waterproof

With…the spring/summer boating season gearing up, the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department (TPWD) and its partners are launching a fresh public education and water safety initiative. This creative, fun, interactive social marketing campaign is called “Nobody’s Waterproof.” The campaign was developed in 2006 by Lower Colorado River Authority (LCRA) and EnviroMedia Social Marketing, Inc. and has won state, regional and national awards. This year, through an agreement with LCRA, TPWD is working to expand the initiative outside the Colorado River watershed to other Texas metropolitan areas.

New Campaign Builds Awareness of Healthy Eating

[New Zealand] Minister of Health Pete Hodgson launched a social marketing campaign to complement the Government's Healthy Eating - Healthy Action Strategy at the Agencies for Nutrition Action biannual conference in Rotorua today.

The campaign 'Feeding our Futures' has been funded and supported by the Government and developed by the Health Sponsorship Council (HSC).

"This is the first social marketing campaign of its type to be launched since the Healthy Eating - Healthy Action Strategy came into play in 2003. 'Feeding our Futures' will begin by communicating with parents and caregivers through a mass media campaign about ways of achieving healthy diets for their children…"

Social Marketing in the News

Students Create New Environmental Strategy for Lake Ripley

With the help of University of Wisconsin-Madison students, communities around Lake Ripley in southeastern Wisconsin are among the first in the state to use an innovative social strategy known as community-based social marketing, or CBSM, to deal with an environmental problem…

The students adopted CBSM because research shows that traditional education campaigns aren't always effective. Informational brochures may change attitudes and beliefs, but urging people to "do the right thing" doesn't usually change their behavior. CBSM focuses on what may be preventing people from changing those behaviors — why, for instance, they keep smoking even if they know it's bad for them. It uses focus groups and other market research to identify the barriers to changing behavior and strategies to overcome them.

A Life Aquatic

We’ve done work with the Institute for Learning Innovation and other groups that are focused on understanding, from the perspective of behavioral psychology and social marketing, how people learn, and how they change their behavior. Habits are ingrained, and it’s hard to get people to change, especially when they feel powerless. In our experience, if you get somebody to make a change and then celebrate what they’re doing and make them advocates for creating change elsewhere, that seems to be something that works…

We don’t want to repeat the work of other organizations. We really want environmentalism to become mainstream and part of popular culture, because that’s when things happen. That’s why we’re a storytelling organization.

The Condom Debate

…Dr Sam Okware of Uganda’s Ministry of Health believes it actually was a combination of the three aspects of the ABC approach that helped the country bring the epidemic down to more manageable levels. Okware said he thinks that in large part, that was because ABC made no value judgments, but instead offered a range of options for everyone. 

“Even in the same individual, in the morning you are on mode A,” Okware told an interviewer last June. “In the evening you are on mode B. And maybe at night, after a small drink, you are on mode C, and vice versa.” 

But in 2003 and 2004, the delicate, often uneasy balance among the three parts of the ABC strategy began to shift. Bush administration officials began working with the Ugandan government to develop a new “emergency plan” for combating HIV/Aids, with the avowed goal of averting 165,000 new infections over a five-year period, according to PEPFAR documents.

The new effort wouldn't totally exclude condoms — the US would buy and ship 47 million of them in 2005. But their use would be promoted only to a narrow “increased risk” segment of the adult population, including roving fishermen, truck drivers, soldiers, and commercial sex workers and their clientele. (The “social marketing” promotion effort would include putting condoms and literature about HIV/Aids in bars, nightclubs, truck stops and drugstores and offering counselling through outreach organisations.)

“We have erroneously given more prominence to condoms, and this is going to change,” Uganda’s then-Minister for Information, Nsaba Buturo explained. “It is now going to be equal treatment…”

Social Marketing in the News

Colombia: Agreement between Carrefour and IOM Promotes Products Made by Vulnerable Populations

Products covered under the agreement include items for home decor, office supplies, handicrafts and clothing made by displaced persons, victims of human trafficking and minors demobilized from the illegal armed groups, and Afro-Colombians and indigenous populations.

The initiative stems from IOM's Social Marketing Strategy, which seeks to improve the levels of economic sustainability that are part of the Organization's income generating projects. These initiatives have received financial support from the governments of the United States, Canada, Holland and Italy.

23-Year-Old Hopes to Revolutionize the Marketing of Clean Living to Teens

...Jordan has developed a concept he calls “social branding,” which uses CIA-like methods to infiltrate teen social circles and work to steer kids away from drinking, smoking and other destructive behaviors…

Commercials, billboards and magazine ads with slogans such as the classic “this is your brain on drugs . . . ” may be catchy, said Jordan and other social marketing experts, but, by themselves, have little effect at the house party where a teen is likely to be offered a smoke or a beer.

Preventing Underage Drinking, Drug Use is Coalition Goal

So how do we prevent drug and alcohol abuse, specifically among young people? We start by trying to address the environment in which they live — by changing the so-called social norms (those beliefs which are held by community members about the frequency and amount of drug and alcohol use that takes place), addressing policy issues (the laws that govern underage drinking and drug use and its repercussions) and the accessibility of drugs and alcohol (where and how young people either buy or get drugs and alcohol).

...our Social Marketing Committee is developing marketing campaigns and media materials that will raise awareness among parents and youth in order to influence them to make healthy decisions. Our current campaign has the goal of reducing youth access to alcohol and is targeted to middle school parents.

Canadian Health Initiatives: Global Companies Dishing Out Support

New initiatives launched in Canada to highlight the importance of healthy eating are being backed by leading consumer goods companies, including Coca-Cola. The initiatives will alter the landscape of advertising directed at children, and demonstrate that global players are taking the issue of rising childhood obesity seriously…

The strength of the program lies in its integrated approach, with government and industry players uniting to tackle the issue. Whether other countries will follow Canada's example, combining changes to advertising practices with enhanced social marketing and education initiatives, remains to be seen. Canada already has some of the toughest rules when it comes to advertising aimed at children, and, against this backdrop, the new initiatives represent a clear stance that the country is taking the rising rates of overweight and obese children seriously.

Women as Brood Mares

... India was the first country to launch a Government family planning programme in 1952. Due to mismanagement, forced sterilisations and chasing fictitious targets, the programme received an unsavoury reputation it just cannot discard although decades have gone by.

Post-1994, Cairo and ICPD, Governments the world over supported by international organisations and NGOs ushered in a new reproductive child health approach. Today, people who talk of population control and explosion are considered barbaric. In the name of giving "reproductive choices" to women and offering "a cafeteria approach", the old targets, incentives and disincentives have been struck off the strategy list. Rightly so, if one goes back to the horrors of family planning excesses, but wrongly so if there is no cafeteria, no coffee (read condoms), IUDs or oral pills to make that choice.

The emergency contraception pill, the most needed of all, is unheard of in most of the country. The social marketing approach can deliver up to a point - no more…

It is time that spacing and male sterilisation were resolutely brought back on the front line. Lest the next generations require more hospitals than schools to attend to the abysmal levels of anaemia among women, and the resultant wasting and stunting of children, accompanied by high levels of under-five mortality. This beckons a deliberate restoration of family planning services to prevent unwanted pregnancies.

Keeping It Clean: The Chemical Industry is Finding Ways to Secure and Expand Global Water Supplies

…Seeing both human need and, someday at least, profits, companies in the chemical industry have begun developing a wide range of technologies that can help secure safe drinking water for the world's poor. Usually the projects are offshoots of technology that companies are developing for profit-generating business…

Arch Chemicals' involvement in a safe drinking water program reflects the company's relationship with P&G, to which it supplies the calcium hypochlorite in P&G's PUR sanitization sachets. The partnership focuses on provision of two household-level technologies to disinfect drinking water: PUR sachets and WaterGuard, a dilute chlorine solution developed by the Washington, D.C.-based Population Services International (PSI), the Centers for Disease Control & Prevention, and the Pan American Health Organization.

"We have provided more than 600 million L of safe drinking water over the past three years," says Charlotte Otto, global external relations officer at P&G...

The project works, in great part, because it has turned to social marketing partners. For P&G and USAID, the main partner for social marketing is PSI, which has outreach programs for PUR in eight countries and WaterGuard in 18 countries.

Among the lessons learned in the project, according to Arch's Campbell, is that "we have to provide people in undeveloped regions with simple, easy-to-maintain, water treatment systems that villages or even individual households can continue to operate when relief workers have moved on to other communities or other crisis-stricken regions."

Social Marketing in the News

Botswana: PSI Lauded for Condom Campaign

Population Services International (PSI) Botswana has been praised for promoting condom use among youth of 15 to 24 years through its good and innovative social marketing strategies.

Speaking at the annual stakeholders breakfast meeting this week, the Director for HIV/AIDS Prevention and Care, Khumo Seipone, commended PSI's stellar work of bringing condoms out of the closet and making them acceptable to our daily life. "The thirteen long years of involvement of PSI in the Government of Botswana's national condom distribution program has complemented public sector free distribution program. Its contribution of marketing condom use among youth aged 15 to 24 years from less than 1% in 1988 to 72,9% in 2004 with reported use of condoms in last sex within 12 months with a non regular partner at 89% among men and 83% among women," said Seipone…

Making Smoking History Worldwide

…In short, the world has begun to reclaim clean air as the social norm. For too long, the tobacco industry has spent billions to normalize, market, and glamorize a behavior that is now recognized as a tragic drug addiction. Industry marketing has fueled global consumption exceeding 5 trillion cigarettes annually, leading to 100 million deaths in the 20th century and a billion deaths projected for the century ahead.4 Furthermore, evidence points to systematic increases in nicotine yields from cigarettes marketed in the United States in recent years. Fundamental to industry success is the portrayal of smoking as a desirable way of staying "alive with pleasure." Now, however, entire countries have begun to deglamorize and denormalize this addiction.

Changing social norms requires perseverance. Some countries have passed partial smoking bans as part of a strategy for transitioning toward comprehensive bans. France, after partially restricting smoking in bars and restaurants in 1991 but not enforcing the law, is currently phasing in a ban to be completed in 2008, backed up by a social marketing campaign, an enormous cadre of agents for enforcement, and fines for noncompliance. Change also entails confronting unfounded economic arguments: although critics regularly assail smoking bans for hurting business, more than 20 high-quality studies have shown no negative economic effect of smoke-free policies on restaurants and bars…

Two-Pronged Approach to Drug Problem

…Neither street cops nor addiction treatment are going to be the cure-all for adolescent drug use. The only way to really turn the problem around is with the kind of social marketing efforts that convinces kids that drugs and alcohol are things not worth the risk of experimentation. That’s a long-term project, generations long, probably.

Until the day comes that drugs are no longer a threat, if that day ever comes, [Prince Edward Island, Canada] government should keep up the approach it’s now crafting — hammering people who sells illegal drugs, and helping young addicts before a teenage problem becomes a life sacrificed to substance abuse.

Social Marketing in the News

New Toolkit Will Help Fight Against Obesity

NHS, council and community organisations will benefit from a new toolkit crammed with information about obesity, including practical tips on how to get active and healthy.

The resource, developed by the British Heart Forum and Faculty of Public Health, will support work that is already being developed across the South West…

The toolkit is part of an overall drive to reduce both childhood and adult obesity in the South West. Other key actions include:

…The development of the Health Living Social Marketing Initiative which is exploring what barriers people feel they have to overcome when trying to achieve healthy eating and an active lifestyle. The programme is developing new approaches to help motivate people to change their lifestyle.

Group Aims for Greener Campus

Students for Sustainable Living, a [Duke University] group dedicated to grassroots environmental change, has been working behind the scenes to encourage environmentally friendly behavior at the University. But unlike most student groups-many of which receive funding from the Student Organization Finance Committee-SSL is financed by the Office of the Executive Vice President and its members are compensated for their work…

Instead of trying to just raise awareness and spread information, SSL uses a social science research method called community-based social marketing to identify barriers to sustainability and implement practical, tangible changes, said SSL member Bradford Harris, a senior.

"I think a lot of the initiatives that students have undertaken have been designed to raise people's awareness, but SSL is incorporating CBSM to change people's habits," Harris said.

Dr Ken Outlines Right Dose

…The Pacific Health Ministers met again at Port Vila, Vanuatu two weeks ago. When the NCD [non-communicable diseases] was discussed, ministers recommended more effective ways to communicate the risk of unhealthy life styles through (a) use of social marketing in all settings include schools, (b) include the theme "Eat Local", (c) more effective sharing between countries on material on advocacy on health lifestyle, tobacco control etc that can be used in radio and television in small island states that do not have capacity to develop such material, and (c) continue primary prevention best practices. The ministers recommended applying a "whole-of-society" approach as well as a "whole-of-government" approach to NCD prevention and control.

Social marketing and reach out will be important measures for the efforts. We will provide our support to Ministries of Health in the Pacific to implement recommendations from Health Ministers. We will continue to work on healthy setting projects such as healthy school, healthy hospital, healthy working place and tobacco free village, tobacco free hospital.

Social Marketing in the News

Young People and Alcohol - Agenzija sedqa Represented at an International Conference

Jean-Claude Cardona, sedqa Operations Director, addressed this 2-day conference and focused on sedqa's alcohol strategies and campaigns over the last two years. Cardona referred to local studies showing wide alcohol abuse by young people in Malta, which served as a basis for the Agency's social marketing campaigns in the past years…

Since 2005, sedqa has initiated 3 major alcohol-abuse awareness camapigns, namely the 'Don't Risk It' campaign in 2005, and the 'Health Above All' and 'Responsible Drinking Awareness Campaign' in 2006. All aimed at different groups of young people, these campaigns had a twofold purpose: to raise awareness on the ill-effects of binge-drinking, and to raise public understanding on sedqa's legislative and regulatorly proposals. Several parallel initiatives were coordinated with target adults, most particularly parents, during these 3 campaigns.

Speaker Advocates ‘Social Cause’ in Marketing

The presentation addressed global branding and the necessity of marketing agencies to look beyond sheer financial profits and strive to produce social benefits. “Overcome the feeling that the bottom of the line is all that matters,” Johnson said.

Johnson exemplified this concept to the Global Branding class through the discussion of specific global marketing campaigns. He focused on Project Red, a global campaign to increase interest and awareness for issues in Africa, mainly HIV and AIDS…

In extreme contrast to Project Red, Johnson presented Dove’s Campaign for Real Beauty, a campaign infinitely more successful in raising social awareness and, respectively, increasing the company’s profits.

“Universal and global insight are the foundation of all global markets,” Johnson said. He credits Dove’s success with recognizing this foundation.

Alongside Dove’s creation of a strategy that possesses insight into consumers universally, despite their background and characteristics, Johnson said their concept was more appealing and applicable to real-world buyers. Consumers have concern regarding the HIV and AIDS crisis in Africa, but the marketing campaign was unsuccessful in relating consumers to the beneficiaries of the charity.

“At the end of the day, we are story tellers, that’s what advertising is,” said Johnson. Dove’s success with their social marketing campaign can be accredited to applying this concept in their advertising venues, including commercials and print ads. They related to the everyday, average consumer.

Nelson GP Wants Healthier Option for Sponsorship

A Mapua [New Zealand] GP and junior soccer coach is calling for a publicly funded brand to be created to give sports clubs and schools a healthy alternative to sponsorship from fast food companies. .. She said the health education messages delivered to children at school were contradicted when they were given fast food vouchers for doing well at sport.

Dr Wood said she would like a new brand, similar to Smokefree, created to reinforce the healthy eating and activity messages children were given at school…

Sports clubs struggling for money accepted sponsorship from fast food companies to keep subscription fees down, she said.

Health Sponsorship Council chief executive Iain Potter backed Dr Wood's idea but said its current healthy eating campaign did not have the budget to launch its own sponsorship brand.

At last week's meeting, PHO executive officer Andrew Dobbs said the Nelson Marlborough District Health Board had "ring-fenced" money for social marketing, and he would approach it with Dr Wood's idea.