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.
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