On Social Marketing and Social Change

Brainstorming Tips

You know the feeling: it follows the announcement that 'we're having a brainstorming meeting.' Call it dread, dysphoria, or drudgery. What it isn't, and what has been beaten out of you and your colleagues or smothered in numerous previous sessions is enthusiasm, anticipation and a sense of 'anything is possible' when challenged by a brain-storming session.

If you're like me, you've been in too many sessions where the editing is fierce, the conversation is dominated by the leader/manager, most people are clearly self-censoring (that's if they are engaged at all) and, worst of all, you never see the results go anywhere. Bob Sutton writes up some tips for brain-storming to pass around your office. Here's one:

A good brainstorming session is competitive—in the right way. In the best brainstorms, people feel pressure to show off what they know and how skilled they are at building on others' ideas. But people are also competitive in a paradoxical way. They "compete" to get everyone else to contribute, to make everyone feel like part of the group, and to treat everyone as collaborators toward a common goal. The worst thing a manager can do is set up the session as an "I win, you lose" game, in which ideas are explicitly rated, ranked, and rewarded.

We all pay homage to research and evidence bases for our work and audience insights to drive program development. But it is the creativity brain-storming can foster that inspires our staff, partners and audiences to do their best when engaging in social marketing and social change programs. Learn to unleash it.

Technorati Tags: Brainstorming, Program Planning

Social Marketing in the News

Youth Plan Friday Vigil

As a way to literally shed some light on substance abuse, a local group will be holding a candlelight vigil Friday night at the Richland County [Illinois] Courthouse…

“It was his idea as a way to bring the community together” while also being able to reveal a new youth social-marketing message, said coordinator Bea Gardner.

The new message is entitled “Are You in the Majority or the Minority?” which will be explained during the program.

Pollster Paid $65,000 to Point Ottawa Toward Google

The federal government recently paid a little more than $65,000 to The Strategic Counsel, a Toronto-based polling firm, for a report that basically told them people use such popular search engines as Yahoo, Lycos, Alta Vista and Google to find websites on the World Wide Web…

The report later recommended that the federal government consider changing the current ''gc'' suffix in www.canada.gc.ca URL to ''www.gov.canada.ca''. It cites the American government's ''www.us.gov'' site as an example of the use of ''gov'' rather than ''gc.''

But in the end, the report says search engines are the key to steering web users to their site and the URLs should be simply designed to attract results in searches.

Christopher Williams, a media relations officer at Health Canada, said the department will use the findings of the report to ensure that ''future social marketing campaigns'' are, well, Google-friendly.

Survey: Hispanics Not As Well Informed About College Financial Aid

Hispanic students are under-informed about financial aid, according to a June survey of California youth by the Tomas Rivera Policy Institute, a nonprofit research organization with headquarters at the University of Southern California.

The survey consisted of 400 Hispanics ages 18 through 24, half of whom had never attended college. Interviews were made up of 35 closed-ended questions and were conducted in either Spanish, English or both, depending on respondents' preferences…

Mass social marketing and making sure students know about financial aid instruments will help make Hispanic students more aware of the resources available, Zarate said.

3 Oro Barangays to Serve as Zero Waste, Coastal Mgmt Models

The identification of the three barangays as role models came after they successfully implemented zero waste management and coastal protection projects being pilot areas under the city's Local Environment Protection Management (LEPM [Philippines]).

In an effort to share its 'best practices and experiences' to other barangays in the city, Department of Interior and Local Government (DILG-10) regional director Quirino Libunao and acting City Local Environment and Natural Resources (CLENRO) officer Zaida Tan-Nery launched recently the social marketing of a project dubbed as "Good Practices in Local Governance: Facility for Adaptation and Replication - Local Environment Protection Management (GOFAR-LEPM).

From Nanny State to a Helping Hand

Tony Blair has made public health the subject of his end-of-term speech on Wednesday.

…Dr Fiona Adshead, the government's deputy Chief Medical Officer for England, said the drive was born out of a need to be realistic about how people live their lives…

"What we can do is create the conditions for individuals to do that. Clear food labelling is one way this can be done, but we have to look to tailor approaches to individuals."

To do this, the government is embracing a technique called social marketing which attempts to use well-researched, subtle measures to get people to make healthy choices.

Breastfeeding Helps Fight Obesity

Artificial baby milks, premature introduction of solids, premature weaning and nutritionally inadequate weaning foods expose children to increased risks of obesity and diabetes.

This was the key message that La Leche League gave today to the Parliamentary Inquiry into Obesity and Type 2 Diabetes…

La Leche League urged the Committee to halt the widespread marketing of formula, and replace it with an imaginative social marketing campaign to 'sell' breastfeeding as possible, desirable and acceptable through to toddlerhood and beyond.

Social Marketing Project Inaugurated

Marie Stopes International- Yemen, saw the inauguration of its Social Marketing Project (SMP) which is due to last for four years with a total cost of 4.5 million Euros, funded by the German Construction Bank.

In a press conference, SMP Director, Dr. Ashraf Badr said the project is part of a Yemeni-German Reproductive Health Project (YGRHP). “Training society is our main goal,” he noted.

The YGRHP trained 18 midwives from Sana’a and Amran with the aim of fostering the use of modern techniques in family planning. The training focused on poor families, by training health service providers such as clinics, pharmacies and midwives, in addition to spreading health awareness amongst communities.

Nigeria: LG Unveils Chocolate Phones Across Nigeria

…According to the company's Official Sales Partner for DD and DM Products, Mr. Mohammed Fouani, who presented the products and items, "We are launching the first time in Lagos the beginning of our social marketing, having done same in Kano, Kaduna, Port Harcourt, Onitsha, Jos and Ibadan".

The move for the social course, according to him, represents that the company have reached a stage to pay back their clients for supporting their business.

He explained that LG Electronics is a global corporate citizen that works diligently and passionately to fulfill its social responsibility.

Business Ethics And Unethical Practices

…Vinten (1991) has divided the business ethical issues at different levels i.e. international business, domestic business and professional ethics. At the international level ethical issues include free-masonry and socialism versus capitalism; at domestic level these include religious dimensions, social marketing and ethical education; and lastly at the individual level these include bribery, corruption and data protection.

Technorati Tags: Breastfeeding, Business Ethics, Environment Protection Management, Financial Aid, Food Labeling, Health Communication, Health Education, Obesity, Public Health, Reproductive Health, Search Engines, Social Marketing, Social Responsibility

Public Health as a National Priority

It's not often (once in a blue moon occurs more frequently) that the elected leader of a developed country stands up and asserts the importance of public health policy. Tony Blair, the UK Prime Minister, did just that on Wednesday.  One focus of his speech was that unless the food industry agrees to restrictions in television advertising, especially those targeted to children, he will impose mandatory requirements. Blair pointed to the impact of poor lifestyle choices on the National Health Service as well as a cause for continuing social inequities.

"The truth is we all now pay a collective price for the failure to take shared responsibility."

"That doesn't mean you stop treating people on the NHS who smoke, or force people to do things that they don't choose in their lifestyle," he said.

"But it does mean that government has to play an active role in precisely the way the enabling state should work and that is empowering people, setting the conditions in which they can choose responsibly."

He argued that public health problems were "not, strictly speaking, public health problems at all".

"They are questions of individual lifestyle - obesity, smoking, alcohol abuse, diabetes, sexually transmitted disease," said Mr Blair.

"These are not epidemics in the epidemiological sense - they are the result of millions of individual decisions, at millions of points in time."

In other coverage of the speech -

Dr Fiona Adshead, the government's deputy Chief Medical Officer for England, said the drive was born out of a need to be realistic about how people live their lives.

"We have to understand how people live their lives. We can't approach it from the fantasy of how we would want them to.

"Some people will not always make the healthy choices.

"But I think if we can get the message across that a small change can make a big difference, and it is up to the individual to take responsibility for that, anything is achievable.

"What we can do is create the conditions for individuals to do that. Clear food labelling is one way this can be done, but we have to look to tailor approaches to individuals."

To do this, the government is embracing a technique called social marketing which attempts to use well-researched, subtle measures to get people to make healthy choices.

Now that's leadership with a plan. What's also interesting is how the path has been carved to include both the economic argument and address the "nanny state" rejoinders (Government intrusion in people's personal lives). Public health becomes a conservative cause? Now that would be a normative change!

Technorati Tags: Food Advertising, Public Health Policy, Social Marketing

Health Communications, Social Marketing and Coke

Recent graduates of health communications and public health programs like to ask me what the differences are between health communications and social marketing. Today, one of these students carefully pointed out that social marketing is the 'backbone' of health communications because it leads communicators to segment their audience, understand them (conduct research) and then focus on behavior change. "All of those things are true," I said, " for any good health communications program."

What the students, and apparently others who are having these debates in classrooms and staff meetings, miss is the marketing mix. As I described my take on the differences with a Coke analogy, they became clear (or so she said anyway). Here it is for you to try on (with apologies to Coke and their agencies).

Health communicators are like the advertising agencies for Coke. Their job is to understand the audience, create engaging and persuasive communication and deliver it in ways that raise awareness of the brand and maybe even increase purchase behaviors. If a person sees a Coke ad and is thirsty, but can't get to a store to buy one, finds no Cokes on the shelves when they get there, sees Pepsis are cheaper and/or really wants a diet Coke - no amount of advertising is going to fix those problems. And no advertising agency would dream of trying to do that.

Social marketers are like the marketing department for Coke. They need to be sure that the product line (behavioral choices) has in it something for every one - not one thing for everyone. They then focus on the distribution system so that anywhere someone is thirsty, a Coke is within an arm's reach of desire [and is why the recent vending machine agreement was a victory for the beverage industry]. Now they focus on the pricing side of the equation, not only deciding what price a thirsty consumer will pay for a Coke, but how much to charge for it relative to the other beverage marketers - not just the other colas, when to have sales, send coupons to people, run contests and in other ways create incentives for people to buy Cokes. And only then do they worry about jingles, furry polar bears in ads and public relations activities.

A big difference that demonstrates itself in so many meetings when as soon as the brain-storming begins, it's all about the  4Ps of posters, pamphlets, PSAs and publicity and not the 4Ps of marketing.

Technorati Tags: Coke, Health Communications, Marketing Mix, Social Marketing

Some New Features

You will notice that there are a few new features at the bottom of each RSS feed and post. These are a few of the new items available from Feedburner (FeedFlares) through Typepad. The RSS feeds now have an email opportunity at the bottom; the posts also have an email link and an option to click and add a post to your del.icio.us tags. More options may appear in the next few weeks. I don't usually call attention to these types of updates. Because I had to pull so hard on help from both Feedburner and Six Apart technical/customer support to get this done, I have to publicly say 'thanks' to them for their patience and responsiveness to my ongoing requests for help, answering my questions and trouble shooting with me over the weekend and into Monday. They make exploring these spaces and technologies a lot friendlier and hopefully more useful for you!

Technorati Tags: Feedburner, FeedFlares, Six Apart, Typepad

Digging into Podcasts

A lot people have been talking about the Pew Internet and American Life Project study of bloggers. For some POVs, see TechNews World, BuzzMachine and Neville Hobson. BottomLine: some good descriptive statistics demonstrating a very complex and growing enterprise (note to those in the early majority: it's passed being a fad).

What is another interesting form of social media are podcasts; interesting because while they may be 'social' in allowing more people to simply and inexpensively generate content that the world can tap into and take with them on their MP3 player, they are a creator-centric (command and control) media. Users cannot interact (yet) with the content - it's listen and learn. This property of podcasts is one reason why Federal government agencies have picked up on them (National Institutes of Health, National Institute of Nursing Research, Agency for Healthcare Quality and Research) and not blogs (hint: turn off the comments to your blog and you've created a text version of a podcast).

Nielsen Analytics released a report on The Economics of Podcasting last week.  Using their facility in Las Vegas (that  introduces some unknown - to me anyway - set of biases to their sample), they surveyed 1,700 people about their podcast use. Some of the findings include:

• 6% describe themselves as regular podcast users (about 9 million)
  
• The more popular podcasts are being downloaded up to 2 million times a month
• The average length of a podcast is 44 minutes
• Among people who download podcasts, 72% download an average of 1-3 week while the heavy users (10%) download 8 or more/week.

The report also notes some of the uses podcasts are being applied to, including making class lectures available on college campuses [example]. For more information about podcasting try these sites for starters: Podcasting News, Podcasters Wiki and 20 Ideas for a Great Podcast at FrogBlog.

Technorati Tags: Audience Characteristics, Podcasts, Users

Beyond Advergaming

After the advergaming report released last week, the good news/bad news is that there are plenty of other marketing activities on the web that you can investigate. Advergames were an obvious target, especially when you choose to focus on food companies in these days of the war on obesity. How many children actually go to these sites and spend as much time on them as adult researchers do is the unanswered question.

If you enjoy thinking about how to incorporate advertising, games and entertainment (and immersion or engagement) into your programs, or are curious as to where marketing minds are going, these sites will provide you with some inspiration (or perspiration).

Interested in reaching the online gamer culture? Try out Xfire (N=4.7 million) and read some of their advertising case studies and a review at Resonance Partnership.

I've written about Neopets (N>70 million) before, but it's a good reference point before heading over to Whyville (N=1.7 million).

Finally, a preview of the first retail store opening in Second Life (N ~ 350K) is at the MIT Advertising Lab and get some information about the American Cancer Society's Second Life Relay for Life fundraiser.

Guess some people may need to revise their ideas of what constitutes an audience's everyday life.

Photo by Lynette Webb (click to enlarge)

Technorati Tags: Advergames, Xfire, Marketing, Neopets, Second Life, Whyville

Social Marketing in the News

Campaign Touts Hurricane Readiness

As hurricane season moves into full swing this summer, the Somerset County (Maryland) Health Department is doing all it can to ensure its residents aren't blindsided by a northward moving storm.

A large part of that effort is directed toward Plan 9: a social marketing campaign that aims to educate residents about potential emergency situations.

TeenScreen Mental Illness Screening in Schools – How Could This Happen?

According to Mr Kramer, in promoting TeenScreen, FMHI worked together with the "social marketing" firm, Roberts Communications, to do a media blitz in the Tampa Bay area. The goal, he says, was to "foster an environment in Florida, beginning in Tampa Bay, which supports large-scale mental health screening programs for teens." Among the "target audiences," listed, Mr Kramers says, "were elected officials, school district administrators, community leaders and mental health professionals."

… The FMHI's plan was to increase the rate of participation in screening. To that end, FMHI agreed to implement TeenScreen in schools, collect information from parents and children, and to employ "Social Marketing" techniques to gather information and determine the most often raised objections by parents to the program.

From this data, Mr Kramer explains, a systematic message and dissemination strategy was to be developed to help sell the program in schools all across the US. He says the bait used to get kids to participate in the screening included gifts like Blockbuster Video cards or $5 in cash or fast food coupons.

Young Adults Foregoing Insurance

Walton was one of four Community Health majors who worked with Carr recently to develop a "social marketing" campaign to find out why local young adults aren't insured and to spread the word about how alliance staff members help people find low-cost health insurance…

In addition to believing they didn't need health insurance, Walton said, many young adults thought they couldn't afford it. They often overestimated how much they'd pay, she said. Others said they were put off by the complexities of signing up…

The students also developed a series of posters, stickers and bar coasters to appeal to the young adults themselves. After testing several, they threw out messages that relied on humor ("Happy 23rd, you're uninsured!"), tongue-in-cheek sexual innuendo ("There's something about the ladies with health insurance") or extreme sports. They opted for straightforward messages appealing to their sense of grown-up responsibility: "Don't go broke" with an X-ray showing a broken bone.

Governor Puts His Heart Into Making Hoosiers Healthier

Here is a plan to make INShape and our state tobacco prevention and cessation program truly successful: Next year the governor proposes a $1 increase in the cigarette tax. That brings in added state revenue of about $339 million a year and decreases the youth smoking rate by 18 percent and adult smoking by more than 4 percent. The legislature allocates $279 million for important purposes -- Medicaid, economic development, or whatever. Another $24 million is assigned to the tobacco prevention program to make it whole again. This would recreate Indiana's immensely successful, once nationally recognized tobacco control initiative.

That leaves $36 million to transform INShape into a comprehensive, community-based program led by the Department of Health. The program is in need of a coordinating "Healthy Communities" civic entity in each county, an intensive media campaign designed to produce cultural change, and the delivery of initiatives and messages concerning healthy lifestyles that reach people in every aspect of their daily lives. Independent governmental and nonprofit programs like FitCity and the Ruth Lilly initiatives could be brought into this larger coordinated effort.

Public health programs designed to create enduring changes in attitudes and behaviors need sustained adequate funding, social marketing, and intensive coordinated programming to be significantly effective. It's up to government to provide that financial support and leadership.

The Greater Yellowstone Area: Conserving a Beacon of Hope and a Western Icon, Together

Four years ago, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service recognized the multiple layers of complexity surrounding the aquatic invasive species issue and its limitations as one agency acting alone. As a result, it made several key decisions that produced a much different approach for making people aware of this issue. By combining strategic communications, social marketing and branding processes, the Service, working through the national Aquatic Nuisance Species Task Force, now leads a national campaign known as Stop Aquatic Hitchhikers!TM The multi-layered intent of the campaign is unify the entire conservation community to speak with one voice about this complex issue so we can empower all recreational users to adopt environmentally responsible behaviors to prevent the spread of harmful species. By targeting aquatic recreation users, Stop Aquatic Hitchhikers!TM strives to make stewardship inherent in all recreational experiences.

AIDS Walk Raises $3.8 Million

"People from all over the Bay Area (California) came together today to show their continued commitment and unwavering compassion for people living with HIV," said Mark Cloutier, SFAF executive director. "This money will help fund services for those with HIV, forwarding-thinking social marketing campaigns and innovative new approaches to prevent HIV infection."

Technorati Tags: Aquatic Invasive Species, Health Communication, Health Education, Health Insurance, HIV/AIDS, Hurricane Preparedness, Mental Illness Screening, Social Marketing, Tobacco

Barney is Alive and Well in Public Health

Steve Rubin posts on the resurrection, or rediscovery, of the Barney Release in the social media world. I had not heard the term before and it perfectly captures the essence of at least 80% of all the press releases I've seen over the years from public health agencies and their partners, Guaranteed for a grin!

Technorati Tags: Barney Release, Media Release, Partnerships, Public Health

Segmentation and the Social Media Market

Social networking sites have moved from the 'bigger is better' and 'all things for all people' philosophies of the entertainment oriented ones such as MySpace and YouTube. More frequent now are ones that pay attention to the fundamentals of audience segmentation and then developing products that deliver value to priority audiences. This trend towards niche marketing is explored at Jointblog with the spotlight on one of the many so-called 'mommy blogs' - UrbanBaby.

Sviokla is asking where are the My Healthspaces? Coming as soon as the health care industry and public health agencies can figure out that social networks provide numerous types of social support and resources for people trying to prevent, make treatment decisions, recover and cope with health and medical problems.

Some research suggests that users of social networking sites skew to younger ages. Of course, that's who they are designed for! Will HealthSpace sites attract an older user? It's all about developing the product that engages with and delivers value for a priority audience.

You might also want to check out Flock for a targeted browser, one the company is designing for the tens of millions of users for whom social engagement (sharing pictures, talking to existing friends and discovering new ones) is what they enjoy doing online. That includes people on MySpace, LiveJournal, FaceBook and YouTube.

Technorati Tags: Health, Product Development, Segmentation, Social Media, Social Networking, Social Support

More on Advergames

The KFF report on advergames released yesterday has received some ad industry coverage that sounds suspiciously like (a) more coincidences and (b) getting caught with your hand in the cookie jar.

It comes on the eve of a Children's Now conference tomorrow, where senators including Hillary Clinton, D-N.Y., and Sam Brownback, R-Kan., and several Federal Communications Commission members are expected to be critical of such targeting. [Note that they didn't miss the Nickelodeum move either.]

Advertisers and ad-group representative said food websites aimed at children remain a tiny part of the overall marketing mix, and that the reasons behind increased childhood obesity are complex.

Stephan Dahl from Middlesex University Business School in the UK sent a note about his research on advergames and gave me permission to quote from it.

In his study they looked at the websites of all the major UK food advertisers whose products have significant appeal to children (N=15). Those that included advergames (n=13) then had that content evaluated against the British Broadcast Committee of Advertising Practice: Television Advertising Standards Code.

They found that 10 sites had no significant separation between content and advertising, 6 contained no obvious nutrition or health information, 10 of the sites used some form of viral marketing including offers of  e-cards and other devices for users to invite their friends to the site, 6 offered downloads such as screensavers or PC games, 5 either required purchases to access the games or some purchases were otherwise required, and 8 required site registration information (5 also asked for guardian consent). “No single site of those sites included in the study appeared to show the same restraints the industry is touting in traditional advertising when developing their online activities.”

The results of this very limited study certainly indicated the need for concern from the perspective of the regulators and policymakers: While the regulators, or even the industry itself in various countries, through self-regulation, has regulated advertising to children and pledged responsible marketing to this segment, the same advertisers appear to forget the promises as soon as they are advertising online.

Unfortunately the KFF methodology did not evaluate the advergaming sites against any advertising code of ethics. It is purely a descriptive study that, absent any context, can be interpreted in any number of ways. Hopefully, the next looks at advergaming will not only review them in light of industry standards, but also in terms of engagement, influence, intentions and purchase behaviors - other areas, as Dr. Dahl points out, in which data are lacking.

Technorati Tags: Advergames, Childhood Obesity, Children's Advertising

There Are No Coincidences

There are some sayings that you wonder where they came from, and a quick search tells you ... William Burroughs. [Bio here] Then there are the events that bring them to mind.

On the same day, these two releases related to national efforts to prevent obesity:

The report, It’s Child’s Play: Advergaming and the Online Marketing of Food to Children, found that more than eight out of ten (85%) of the top food brands that target children through TV advertising also use branded websites to market to children online. Unlike traditional TV advertising, these corporate-sponsored websites offer extensive opportunities for visitors to spend an unlimited amount of time interacting with specific food brands in more personal and detailed ways. For instance, the study documents the broad use of “advergames” (online games in which a company’s product or brand characters are featured, found on 73% of the websites) and viral marketing (encouraging children to contact their peers about a specific product or brand, found on 64% of sites). In addition, a variety of other advertising and marketing tactics are employed on these sites, including sweepstakes and promotions (65%), memberships (25%), on-demand access to TV ads (53%), and incentives for product purchase (38%).

Then in USA Today -

On Wednesday, Nickelodeon will announce plans to put images of cartoon stars SpongeBob and Dora on packs of apples, pears, cherries and edamame (soybeans).

The move comes just one year after SpongeBob and Dora — each with about $2 billion in annual sales of consumer licensed products — first appeared on packages of carrots and Clementines. Entertainment rivals from Sesame Workshop to Disney have increasingly linked their most popular cartoon characters with fruits and veggies...

The more prevalent use of SpongeBob and Dora is to market sugary cereals, ice cream or candy, says Susan Linn, co-founder of the Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood. "Until companies stop marketing junk food to children, it's hard to see putting media characters on produce as anything but window dressing."

Well-intentioned people can point to a variety of possible causes, contributors and remedies for the obesity epidemic among our nation's youth and adults. The question is whether and when policy makers and public health people begin to counter the many commercial marketing practices that are being identified through research as contributing to the obesity problem with social marketing insights and strategies - or cheat by relying on policy and regulatory initiatives? It is, after all, a struggle in the marketplace of ideas and behaviors.

Technorati Tags: Advergames, Cartoon Endorsers, Food Advertising, Obesity Prevention

Searching for Health Information

While 71% of all Internet users search for health information, most of them are dissatisfied with the quality of material available. That is the top line from Wendy Davis' column on a new report from Forrester Research. Only 16% actually find the information they are looking for.

What a change in perspective from the usual banter about how 'everyone wants health information on line so let's give them more.' When the consumer is listened to, as in this report, the Field of Dreams fallacy becomes obvious ('build it and they will come' only happens in movies).

When consumers were asked what would improve the state of health-related search... Fifty-three percent of heavy search users (those who rely on search more now than one year ago) said they wanted clear indications of the author or source of the material. Forty-eight percent of the heavy searchers wanted a list of keywords related to their search, and 43 percent wanted to know which sites other users thought were helpful.

So maybe expert driven searches like Google Coop aren't the answer. In addition to wanting more source information (a national health objective is to increase the proportion of health-related Web sites that disclose information that can be used to assess the quality of the site), people want to hear from their peers about what's relevant and useful. You may want to consider how social or community search engines (like the swicki on this site) can begin to tailor health searches in a more customer-centric way. Or alternatively, should user voting and reviews or social tagging be incorporated into the next generation of health search engines?

Technorati Tags: Health, Search Behavior, Search Engines, Social Search

Virtual Entertainment-Education

The virtual world of sites like Second Life meet entertainment-education for 8-15 year-olds as Heather Green describes Working for Clams in Whyville.

The virtual world ... uses a wide variety of games to teach kids how to manage their money, hone their math and science skills, and even learn how to eat better.

Nedra at Spare Change has recently described her visit to Second Life. There she finds the nonprofit world busily establishing itself. In a post on Immersive Marketing you can find the complete blurring of entertainment and marketing in virtual worlds as practiced at Neopets. 

If you are thinking about developing health promotion and social engagement applications in virtual worlds designed for kids and tweens, or conducting research on these issues, perhaps Whyville might make a nice center of gravity.

via Blogspotting

Technorati Tags: Entertainment-Education, Social Media, Virtual Worlds, Whyville

Creative Gallery on Sustainable Communications

The United Nations Environment Programme, Adforum and Advertising Community Together (ACT) have created an advertising database: Creative Gallery on Sustainable Communications. You will find materials from campaigns addressing issues ranging from Agriculture & Fisheries to Waste & Recycling. Information about each campaign is provided including, in some cases, detailed background and results sections.

via Houtlust

Technorati Tags: Environment, Health, Social Advertising, Sustainability Communications

Working with Wikis

Elizabeth Albrycht posts on 'Thinking About Wikis' at the Society for New Communications Research blog as a prelude for a research study on the use of wikis among knowledge workers in creative roles. Over the past few weeks several of us have been putting together a social marketing wiki. I was surprised to find that she considers us among the early adopters of this technology for community collaboration and knoiwledge management. Here are some of her thoughts from a preliminary review of research on collaboration.

• How do you encourage individuals to contribute their knowledge when it is a primary factor in the way they are evaluated and rewarded? The latter leads to knowledge hoarding to increase value vs. knowledge sharing, which is what collaborative systems are designed, at heart, to do.
• How do you deal with group dynamics in order to keep participants productive?
• How can the collaborative technology be designed to be a part of an employee's work process vs. an add-on system?
• How can you best support the learning curve demanded by the technology?

Her group has also distilled seven factors that seem to be critical for success in designing and implementing a wiki.

1. Support of Reputation Development
2. Clear Procedures of Management and Discipline
3. Defined and Followed User Responsibilities
4. Content: Knowledge Creation and Decision Making
5. Group Attributes
6. Effective Wiki Design
7. Training/Convincing People

I invite you to read her post - and be sure to check some of the online references at the end of it. Then join our social marketing wiki experiment in using social media to enhance all our abilities to do bigger and better social change programs.

Technorati Tags: Communication Research, Social Media, Society for New Communications Research, Wikis

Social Marketing in the News

Martin Rebuilds His Life

State anti-meth efforts began in 1992, when drug arrests in Wyoming doubled and meth accounted for 70 percent of drug-related law enforcement cases…

The premise of the new approach, Freudenthal said, is that communities in which potential addicts live stand the best chance of preventing them from getting started on drugs. If people do partake, communities also are best positioned to get them back on track…

The first step, officials said, is pinpointing the problem in each community. Right now a team of high-ranking Department of Health officials is taking part in "listening sessions" in towns across the state. A state epidemiologist is building snapshots of meth addiction using local statistics.

The state also is creating a new social marketing campaign that will incorporate local coalitions. And it's working to foster idea sharing and support among meth coalitions in different towns. A state Web site offers tips on how to build a community coalition.

Teen Smoking Rate in Nova Scotia Continues to Decline; Survey 

The annual Canadian Tobacco Use Monitoring Survey, released today, suggests that smoking rates among 15 to 19-year-olds have dropped from 20 per cent in 2004 to 13 per cent in 2005… Health Promotion Minister Barry Barnet says it shows the province's tobacco strategy is working… The strategy includes cessation programs, youth prevention, social marketing, policy development and legislation.

Don't Be Scared of Marketing

Once the equation was straightforward: patient plus treatment equalled healthcare. Now ministers want care to be delivered before people become patients in need of treatment. But public health campaigns are failing because of a lack of marketing expertise, according to a National Consumer Council (NCC) report.

The NCC tells the Department of Health, who commissioned the report, that health campaigners need to adopt social marketing techniques if they are to have any success in persuading people to lead healthier lifestyles. Social marketing is a posh moniker for a commonsense approach that advocates understanding a target audience’s behaviour before trying to change it.

Premier Defends Appointment of Foley Melvin to New Post

… Mr. MacDonald said Ms. Foley Melvin will be shaping the organization, to be created in legislation coming this fall, and her government and marketing experience are important.

"Part of the key to that organization Conserve Nova Scotia is going to be marketing and social marketing, and so that is of the utmost importance when it comes to that position," Mr. MacDonald said.

Technorati Tags: Conservation, Health Communication, Health Education, Methamphetamine, Social Marketing, Tobacco Use

Obesity Begins in the Home?

Two recent studies point to the role of parent behaviors in the development of healthy eating behaviors and childhood obesity.  The first study looked at the relationship of four parenting styles with the risk of being overweight among first graders. Children were examined and weighed at 4 1/2 years of age and again 2 years later. The four styles were created from measures of 'maternal sensitivity [MS]' and 'maternal expectations for child self-control [ME]' and were defined in the report and a story by Jane Brody as:

Authoritative: Hi MS & Hi ME - high demands for maturity and self-control from their children but also display high levels of sensitivity, emotional warmth, and involvement,

Authoritarian: Lo MS & Hi ME - compared with authoritative parents, they are more dictatorial. They are strict disciplinarians, often insensitive to the child’s needs and give little emotional support.

Permissive: Hi MS & Lo ME - their children often fail to learn limits. They may be more self-confident but often have little self-control, resulting in higher levels of drug use and school misconduct.

Neglectful: Lo MS and Lo ME - displays little sensitivity to a child’s developmental needs. This style is associated typically with ... high rates of depression, smoking and poor school achievement.

Brody summarizes the findings as: The children of authoritarian mothers were [two years later] nearly five times as likely to be overweight as those of authoritative mothers, and those of permissive or neglectful mothers were at nearly three times the risk.

The second study looked at correlates of fruit, vegetable and fat consumption among 11-15 year olds. One of the variables that was found to be associated with healthier eating patterns was what the authors termed 'household eating rules' that included:

• Having healthful snacks available at home
• Including vegetables with dinner
• Including fruit with breakfast
• Limiting sweet snacks, desserts and sodas

These data suggest that parents have more impact on their children's eating behaviors, and perhaps their weight, than they commonly acknowledge. More typical for the parents, and many nutrition researchers, is to focus the blame for children's poor eating patterns on 'outside of the home' influences such as the ready availability of unhealthy food choices in schools and at fast food restaurants.

The importance of this work for social marketers and others trying to improve children's nutrition behaviors and slowing the increase of childhood obesity (first things first) is that there are specific behaviors that we can focus on in the home that are based on empirical evidence and not hunches. Obviously there are many other influences on child and adolescent nutrition behaviors. What the war on obesity needs is funding for multiple intervention strategies in many different places and times in children's, teen's and their parents' everyday lives, not just searches for magic bullets in schools, built environments or public policies.

Tips from the RWJF Childhood Obesity News Digest.

Technorati Tags: Childhood Obesity, Diet, Fat Intake, Fruit and Vegetable Consumption, Home Eating Rules, Parenting Styles

Sometimes Communication May be Enough

One of the sensitivities some of us social marketers have (in case you haven't noticed) is seeing communications campaigns passed off as 'marketing' ones. Speaking for myself, it's not that there aren't plenty of creative and effective health and social communications campaigns going on around the world (and some of my best friends are ...). Houtlust does a great job presenting many examples of social advertising campaigns and while many of them I don't get from a behavior change POV (yes, attention-getting they can be), I like this one for the possibilities that any 'Big' idea has for expanding across the marketing platform.

Too many people still park in parking spaces reserved for disabled drivers. The Brussels Equal Rights Organisation wanted to give handicapped people a voice and send a clear message to stop this antisocial behaviour.

The action created a shock effect: people who parked in a space reserved for disabled drivers felt 'caught' in the act and became more conscious of the problem. .. This action received big exposure in media like TV and press. It helped draw the attention of a large audience. People talked about what they saw in the streets or in the press (word of mouth), which positively influenced the public's opinion and attitude.

There was a time when I was temporarily on crutches that I would have loved to have had a few of these, but frankly, there are more times now that I wish I did. Add some enforcement and broader, more visible public disapproval or censure (price) and the next thing you know...behavior change.

Technorati Tags: Handicapped Parking Spaces, Health Communications, Social Advertising

Benchmarking Social Marketing Programs

A new survey from the Association of National Advertisers reveals that many commercial marketers face the same problems as social marketers when trying to construct and deliver integrated marketing programs.

• Sixty-three percent of marketers rank organizational issues as the greatest challenge to successfully integrating their marketing efforts. More specifically, they identified the existence of "functional silos" inside their companies as a key challenge.
• Most marketers (72 percent) feel the development of the “Big” creative idea that can be leveraged across all marketing channels is the most important contribution an agency can make toward an integrated marketing campaign.
• Almost 50 percent of marketers want their agencies to be media neutral when developing an integrated marketing program.
• Sales data and ROI analysis are viewed as the most important measures of the effectiveness of an IMC campaign.

So for the social change agents who look to the commercial sector for some inputs and points of comparison for benchmarking marketing practices:

Intraorganizational and other management concerns are among the greatest impediments to successful marketing efforts: a fact that is rarely recognized in discussions of 'what goes wrong' with social change efforts - not that it hasn't been been raised before.

The work to gain the audience insight that leads to the 'big' idea is one of the more unappreciated elements of the 'great' or most successful social marketing programs. Truly inspired and effective campaigns do not come out of workbooks or by following 'recipes.'

Programs designed from a tactical communications (promotion or media) perspective rather than a strategic and comprehensive marketing one have less value in the short and long-term.

The focus of marketing and change efforts needs to be on objective measures of change - not the feelings and perceptions of program and agency managers, stakeholders, informants or focus group participants.

Technorati Tags: Benchmarking, Integrated Marketing Programs, Marketing Practices, Social Marketing