On Social Marketing and Social Change

VERB's Swan Song?

Came across this release tonight that tells the story (the final chapter given the precariousness of continued funding?) of the VERB campaign.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, a federal agency usually known for stopping epidemics, will try to create one with a $59.2 million TV and viral marketing program in which it will distribute 300,000 yellow balls to curb child obesity.

The core of the effort will be Verb Yellowball, which was inspired by yellow bike programs in Amsterdam; Seattle; Austin, Texas; and elsewhere. Those cities provided bicycles that residents would ride and then leave on the street for the next user.

Yellowball comes with instructions to play with the ball and then log onto Verbnow.com. Kids then enter the code printed on the ball and create a blog telling the world what they did with it. They also can read the blogs of other kids who touched that same ball. Then they have the obligation to keep play alive by giving the ball to another kid.

"We're trying to get play into kids' hands," said Lori Asbury, the CDC's marketing director. "Our early efforts were about creating awareness that physical activity was important and fun for them. Now we're going to be much more about activation."

Yellowball will be given momentum online with contests for the most inspired play or the ball that is passed the most, and prizes like free music downloads given to every kid who touched the winning ball.

If nothing else, a creative ending to a social marketing campaign that should be just getting its legs - not losing them.

Social Marketing in the Professional Literature

Barbara A. Moeykens, a Social Marketing Specialist in the Vermont Department of Health, made a presentation at the University of South Florida Social Marketing in Public Health Conference a few years ago in which she looked at the number of citations of the term "social marketing" in the professional literature through a Medline search.  She updated those data in 2004 and has graciously allowed me to publish the summary table here.

The chart shows the expected increases in social marketing citations from 1976 through 2004 (note: either left click on the thumbnail or right click on it and select "Open Link in New Window" for a full screen view).  After a rather stable rate of approximately 20/year throughout the '90s, her data show a 5-fold increase in citations from 1999 through 2004.  A great showing that documents the increasing use of the term in titles and abstracts of papers (whether these authors are all appropriately using the term to describe their activities is another question).  As she also points out, the search may not be capturing all references to social marketing in the professional literature, but for my money, using the same methodology across all years gives me confidence that her trends are likely quite reliable and valid.  For those of you who are regular readers of the "Social Marketing in the News" sections I have been posting on my other blog, it would be interesting to see whether similar trends might have occurred in the general media.

Micro Persuasion: Mind The Conversation Gap

Steve Rubel, who is well known in business and PR circles as one of the oracles of new technologies - and blogs in particular, had an interetsing post today.  It involves the use of tools to discover the 'conversation gaps' a company or brand might have in the blogosphere.  As he explains it -I try to show the communication/brand manager their share of the online conversation. I talk about the gap that exists between the number of conversations that are just about their category and the ones that are about their brand AND the category. This illustrates the gap they can narrow by getting more involved in the dialogue by having a blog.

I am going to test them later today, but for those of you interested in such issues as what people are talking about related to your health or social issue as it relates to broader themes, check it out at Micro Persuasion: Mind The Conversation Gap.  Stay tuned for a field report.

Australasian Nonprofit and Social Marketing Conference

Stephen Dann has been kind to send a participant report from this conference.

Finding a good quality niche conference in your specialist field is like discovering a great little restaurant.  As much as you want to tell all your friends, you don’t want to overcrowd the situation and miss out on the very intimacy that made it so great in the first place.  That’s the feeling I have about reporting on the Second Non Profit Conference. 

So, with that disclaimer, let’s take the overview.  This year’s conference covered social, sports and arts marketing, making for a diverse and surprisingly linked series of papers.  Although this is a highlights package, a detailed rundown of the papers is available in the following posts.

The conference opened with Emeritus Professor Michael Rothschild, author of a couple of the definitive set pieces in social marketing, presenting his view of the current social marketing paradigm.  A hallmark of the quality of this conference comes from Prof. Rothschild’s continued attendance at the following sessions, and the presence of the keynote speaker from the previous year as a delegate in 2005.  The other keynote speakers Dr Dennis Apo, and Professor Gus Geursen were also notable by their presence in the sessions.  All three keynote speakers brought their best game to the conference,  contributing suggestions, asking questions, and offering advice to their fellow delegates.  The small size of the conference also allowed for the opportunity for genuine one-on-one discussions in the post-conference breaks, rather than the usual business card swap and promise of an e-mail.

Papers at the conference covered a broad gamut from the PhD-in-motion papers of first time presenters, through to statistically laden empirical works, qualitative journeys of -discovery, and the occasional theoretical/conceptual paper.  Although the dual-stream presentation format only afforded me the opportunity to see half the tracks, it has been a rare conference to find yourself sitting in one session, dying to see the other papers being presented but completely unwilling to leave the presentation at hand.  It’s a tribute to the reviewers and the conference chairs that the quality was so high.

Track Stream Overview

* Arts and Aboriginal Arts Stream

* Education Marketing

* Event Marketing

* Health Marketing

* Marketing Legal Drugs (Alcohol Stream)

* Marketing Value

* Social Marketing Stream

* Sports Marketing

More information about the conference and links to individual papers are available at Stephen's blog.  Thanks again, Stephen!

Social Marketing in the News

A new Social Marketing in the News feature was posted on R. Craig Lefebvre's Social Marketing Blog.  They include a report on the need to use regulatory approaches to combat obesity because "it's unrealistic to rely on social marketing to change behaviour" (which signifies that many people do not view social marketing as having an "upstream" component to it); the need to understand culture and traditional beliefs to develop effective social marketing programs to combat HIV/AIDS; the power of pricing in increasing consumption of healthier foods (which is somehow contrasted with "social marketing" approaches); an interview with the President of the Australasian Society for the Study on Obesity in which he talks about the lack of social marketing expertise in food industry campaigns (could an American president of a similar asssociation/society be so informed?); and a look at the social marketing approach of the Winchester Substance Abuse Coalition.

Social Marketing in the News

A new edition of Social Marketing in the News has been posted at R. Craig Lefebvre's Social Marketing Blog.  This week's issue includes notes on food industry support (that's a switch) of canada's new health promotion social marketing initiative; a report on a sppech from a marketing conference that again lumps social marketing in with other "social network" marketing and public relations tactics; a summary of a proposal to use social marketing to build political support at the Global Ocean Policy Summit; and discussions of reclycing, garbage disposal and water waste social marketing campaigns in Toronto and the expansion of the Road Crew campaign in Wisconsin. (Whew!)

Getting to the roots of obesity: why surroundings may matter

A project in Seattle is strongly focusing on place and price issues for obesity prevcention and incresing physical activity (public health folks might call them environmental or structural interventions).

Across King County, researchers .. are studying everything from the clusters of fast-food restaurants to the number of run-down sidewalks, trying to explain high rates of obesity.

King County's obesity rate has more than doubled in the past two decades, reaching about 18 percent of the population last year. Genetics alone can't explain it, public health officials say. And urging better individual behavior hasn't worked. So many experts are focusing now on access — both to healthy foods and to exercise — and what can be done to improve it.

A local pedestrian group called Feet First has been working on "walking audits" with residents in Seattle and South King County, documenting everything from faded crosswalks to missing sidewalks, then taking that information to city officials. Their work has already inspired Seattle's Department of Transportation to move some neighborhoods to the top of lists for improvements.

If you create environments where it's easier to choose the healthy option, people will choose the healthy option," said Dr. Jim Krieger, of Public Health.

AMEN!  Now if they come up with some realistic behaviors to comprehensively promote, we might have a social marketing program here.

New publication on nutrition and an active life

The Pan American Health Organization announces a new resource.  It is described as a

publication, written by leading international public health professionals, highlights 13 case studies on a variety of topics including control of vitamin A deficiency, folic acid fortification of bread, control of iodine deficiency disorders, and the contribution of research to infant breast-feeding policies, as well as successful community projects to promote increased physical activity and the role of urban planning and public transportation in reducing the prevalence of sedentary lifestyles, among other important topics. 

Social marketers are being targed by PAHO's promotion efforts.  The link to the full description and order information for the book is here.

Experimenting with the Media Mix

Many people who design social marketing programs ponder how to best develop their communications mix (unfortunately they often don't spend as much time on the other 3 Ps).  Stuart Elliott reports from the meeting of the Association of National Advertisers that experimentation is the name of the game.

Speaker after speaker at the meeting, which ended here yesterday, exhorted the more than 900 attendees to acknowledge and act on a new marketing reality: that major changes in consumer attitudes, habits and behavior will require completely making over how products are advertised...For example, to introduce a variant of Secret deodorant, Secret Sparkle, aimed at teenage girls, Procter decided to "forgo television entirely," Mr. Stengel said, which would have been considered heretical not too long ago, in favor of a print and online campaign that "far exceeded our expectations."

The openess of Madison Avenue to new ways of looking at the use of media for reaching audiences is one for social marketers to contemplate.  That a Proctor & Gamble will forego the television route (usually the Holy Grail for many national social marketing programs) not because of the expense, but because of better reach and effectiveness in other media, underscores the point that it is reaching the audience where and when they are open to the message - not HOW they receive it - that leads to success in product and, I submit, social marketing.