On Social Marketing and Social Change

Monitoring Cellphone Use

Another indication that the use of cellphones for all types of media use is growing (they are not just for telling time, taking pictures, and oh yeah, calling and talking with people) - the people who monitor television viewing patterns have bought in:

“We follow content wherever it goes across all platforms, and this is a really significant step forward in measuring content across mobile platforms,” said Susan D. Whiting, executive vice president of Nielsen...

Nielsen intends to build a fuller picture of media consumption, including mobile phone use. The company embarked on an initiative last year to track how people spend their time with video and other media, wherever it occurs. NetRatings, a division of Nielsen, tracks online consumption, and Nielsen is tracking more viewing outside of the home and even on the television screens that are popping up in big-box stores [via NYTimes].

A big bet, by Nielsen and advertisers, that if you follow the consumer so will the Benjamins. It's not too soon to begin thinking about what your mobile strategies are going to be in the world of media multiplexity.

Behavioral Evangelists

A lot is being written about evangelists these days, and I'm not speaking about the ones of the religious persuasion. [Fun Fact: I was actively dissuaded from using the term 'evangelist' in a talk I recently did at the CDC. PC you know, nudge nudge.] Rather, it is the brand evangelist that has captured the rhetoric, and few have done it better than the folks at Church of the Customer Blog.

I was reading yet another article/post about brand evangelists, this time a very good one by Mack Collier at MarketingProfs (subscription required). His action steps provide a framework for how social marketers can think about our own types of evangelists: what I term behavioral evangelists (now you see where that can go at CDC). The idea behind behavioral evangelists is quite simple: take people who already practice the behaviors you are encouraging, or who quickly adopt them (aka early adopters) - or use the product or service you are marketing - and provide them with the tools and encouragement to 'take the message' to others. This evangelism might be straight word-of-mouth, passing out literature and other materials, sending digital messages to friends through email or SMS, and even volunteering to act as peer counselors or other program disseminators and extenders. Here are the action steps Mack suggests in his article with my own commentary in applying it to a social marketing program.

1. Make brand evangelism a part of your company from the top down. Whatever your organization's mission is, discover how your colleagues and co-workers get excited and passionate about their work and fuel it. I can always tell, and so can you, when an organization is successful by the energy you get from the employees; so do your clients and customers. When you feel it, they feel it, and vice versa. It doesn't always have to come through as unbridled enthusiasm either; determination, commitment, compassion are other infectious agents for evangelism - just as brooding, passivity and negativity suck the oxygen right out of the room. When you are excited about the behaviors and changes you are encouraging, it's difficult for others to not catch the spirit as well. Do the attitude check before you go out the door every morning (or as a friend says: bring your A game).
2. Figure out who your evangelists are and also what common traits they possess. Understand what it is about the behaviors, products and services you encourage that motivates and is reinforcing to your audience to try them and evangelize them to other people. An even better idea: find your positive deviants and learn who are your existing evangelists and why they are already doing the desired behaviors and promoting them to others.
3. Shift your marketing mindset regarding your evangelists to that of a marketing partner. Your evangelists are your direct link to your target market, and they will happily teach you exactly how to reach them. Find ways to incorporate their feedback into your marketing processes, and give them a greater say into the direction of your program.
4. Look for ways to put your brand on the same level with your customers. Make your behavior change programs, your products and your services transparent to your clients. You aren't trying to trick them or deceive them into doing something they really don't want to do (are you?). So open up, let them be part of your process - from beginning to end. Talk with them, often and where they gather, whether it is a social network site or blog, a beauty parlor or a pool hall. Conversations allow you to establish deeper and more meaningful relationships with your priority audiences; the kinds that lead to the world changing insights for your programs and nurture their evangelism.
5. Create and maintain as many channels of communication as possible between your and your customers. How many ways can you provide opportunities to talk with your audience, and for them to talk with you? Do more! Mack suggests adding areas on your Web site and blog where customers can leave feedback, including suggestions. Make sure your product packaging includes information on how to contact customer service, and how to leave suggestions and feedback. Put suggestion boxes in the waiting area.
6. Make it as easy as possible for them to give you feedback. Add contact forms or email links to your Web site and blog, and include contact information on your product's packaging and any emails you send. And acknowledge receipt of the feedback. Then do something about it and let them know you listened.
7. View your evangelists as volunteer salespeople for your brand, because that's exactly what they are. Give them all the information and tools they need to promote your program, behaviors, products and services to their relatives, friends and co-workers. Create an outreach program just for them. Treat them like staff. Make it as easy as possible for your evangelists to promote your program offerings to everyone they come in contact with.
8. Make every effort to create a sense of community among your evangelists. We need to make it as easy as possible for our evangelists to come together and share information, their love of our program and what it does to improve their lives. Our organizations also need to make every effort to be a member of these communities, wherever they occur - and let them run themselves.

Whether you want to call them ambassadors, diffusion agents, volunteer, advocates or evangelists, the logic (and evidence base) for the strategy is clear:

• Reaching through people is the best way to reach people.
• People trust and are most receptive to messages that come from others like them.
  
• Interpersonal communication is the most effective method for behavior change.
• Social support enhances maintenance of change.
• Advocacy for behavior change also supports one's long term practice of the behavior as well.

Photo from Lynette Webb.

AMA Wants Investigations of Health Retail Clinics - For Now

The American Medical Association decided to not call for an outright ban on pharmacy-based health care right now and instead wants federal officials to investigate the wrong questions. From the Houston Chronicle:

The AMA wants state and federal agencies to look into whether pharmacy chain-owned clinics located in the stores urge patients to get their prescriptions filled on site, which the AMA maintains would pose a conflict. It also said that insurance companies should be banned from waiving or lowering co-payments only for patients who get treatment at store-based clinics.

And I'm happy to see one group immediately respond to the issue, not the smoke and mirrors:

"If the AMA pushes this agenda, its members may find out that legislators and constituents have been demanding accessible, affordable and high-quality health care for years and that's what retail clinics are delivering," Walgreen spokesman Michael Polzin said.

I find it curious that the American Academy of Family Physicians, whose members could be perceived as having more at stake with the unspoken cost here of losing patients and income to retail outlets, entered into an agreement with one chain last October to help assure the quality of care.

And on a very related note: [Health] Uninsured Americans numbered 43.6 million last year, a 6 percent increase from 2005, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

More from Bruce Japsen at the Chicago Tribune:

For those without health insurance, the retailers often charge less than $60. That is significantly less than the $100 or more a doctor would charge for an office visit, analysts and insurers say. Out-of-pocket costs for those with health insurance coverage have tended to be the same $20 co-pay at a retail clinic as at a doctor's office, retailers have said.

But doctors say the health insurers have recently created an "unfair playing field" by waiving patients' co-payments at retail health clinics. Doctors say that is designed to get patients to bypass a more comprehensive visit to the doctor's office.

Supporters of retail clinics say such complaints about insurance coverage show the AMA's interest in the issue is largely financial.

"It's going to affect their bank account, that is why they oppose retail clinics," said Edie Brous, a nurse and lawyer from New York who represents nurses on license issues. "The real reason physicians oppose retail clinics has nothing to do with patient safety or quality care. Rather, it is pure profit-driven, anti-competition greed."

Confessions of an Environmental Social Marketer

The lack of clear-cut personal benefits, especially in the short term, is one of the greatest challenges facing social marketers who work on environmental issues.  The other is that it is often hard for individuals to see how they can make a difference with their own actions in the world of environmental stewardship and conservation.

That’s how Jay Kassirer started off in his talk, Confessions of an Environmental Social Marketer, that ranged from the beginnings of social marketing in environmental management to case studies of its application. Jay presented the evolution of the adoption of social marketing in environmental programs in four stages:

1. The first was the ‘end of the pipe’ approaches that are command and control in nature; primarily using regulatory and legal instruments to manage individual and corporate behaviors.
2. Then came efforts to educate people and teach and promote activism skills, efforts that while successful in some cases, were seen as not being able to comprehensively address the problem.
3. The information campaigns that followed, often imaginative, creative and evocative were likewise found to not be the single answer to encouraging broad adoption of environmentally responsible, or sustainable, behaviors.
4. Now is the recognition that a continuum of approaches are needed, ranging from information/education (show me), through social marketing approaches (help me) to regulations and legal interventions (make me).

Some of the points I took away from his presentation were:

Being careful with fear, guilt and shame approaches (often favored in this community of practitioners) because they can often backfire or simply lead people to turn off to the messages.

Thinking about how to use social marketing to influence an audience’s perceived reality of the threat, their personal susceptibility to the outcomes, beliefs of self efficacy (feelings of and being in control), and response efficacy, or answering their question: will what I do make a difference?

I was really intrigued by the idea that people often have the choice between fear control OR danger control when faced with threats and risk communication. That is, you can choose to manage the emotion of fear by ignoring, justifying, rationalizing the threat of simply shutting down OR you can decide to actively engage in behaviors that lead to a reduction in the threat, your susceptibility to it or in the likelihood of experiencing negative outcomes. Factoring this dichotomy of behavioral responses (you choose one way OR the other) into how we think about many types of protective behaviors we focus on in public health (HIV, immunizations, injury prevention, bioterrorism preparedness) could lead to insights into how to allow people to cross the bridge from totally emotional responses to threats to actively coping with them.

Jay finished up with several case studies on a divergent collection of conservation behaviors and audiences including getting automobile recyclers to pull out light switches from cars before crushing them and releasing the mercury they contain into the ground (and eventually seeping into ground water supplies), encouraging citizens in the greater Toronto area to reduce home energy use and vehicle pollution, and continually expanding efforts for a more water efficient Durham. These and many other cases in environmental social marketing are available at Tools of Change.

And in a timely Op-Ed piece on Sunday, Thomas Friedman writes (Times Select viewing only):

...we’re in a green bubble - a festival of hot air by the news media, corporate America and presidential candidates about green this and green that, but, when it comes to actually doing something hard to bring about a green revolution at scale - and if you don’t have scale on this you have nothing - we wimp out. Climate change is not a hoax. The hoax is that we are really doing something about it.

I look forward to hearing more from social marketers working on these issues at future Social Marketing and Public Health conferences.

Retail Health Care and Franchising Health Care Delivery

The American Medical Association is being lobbied hard by some members to take a strong stand against retail outlets such as Wal-Mart and Walgreens, asking for a ban on their opening of in-store medical clinics. They are using the usual arguments that doctors aren't involved so how can quality care be provided to patients who use these clinics? And I love this argument: If the AMA does nothing, Hashemi said, "in five years, the chairs [at the AMA] meeting will be filled with representatives from Walgreens, Wal-Mart" and other retail outlets.

It's the old strategy: if they get you asking the wrong questions, they don't have to worry about the answers [Thomas Pynchon's Proverbs for Paranoids].

How about - why not figure how to make these clinics work even better and more efficiently in order to help make primary health care more accessible and affordable (and timely) for people living in poverty or are do not have health insurance? And why continue to support the current model of primary health care delivery anyway without comparative trials of alternative models to improve community access to services and their impacts on health status? Other models seem to be working.

Here's an earlier post I did on business models for social marketing programs where franchising approaches to health were looked at.

Keeping Up with Mobile News

How do I keep up with mobile news and trends? was the most frequently asked question after my presentation on marketing to the connected consumer. I just did a quick review of my RSS readers (yes, more than 1!) and here's my current list:

• Captology Notebook
• Communities Dominate Brands
• FierceMobile Content
• RCR Wireless News
• Mobile Active
• MobileCrunch
• Open Gardens
• Smart Mobs
• Wap Review

I try to keep up with news and trends that will affect the way I think about using mobile in social marketing and public health programs. If you have other suggestions for what I and others might also be looking at on a regular basis, please leave a comment for all of us. And my caveat: this is not exhaustive. I read on MANY other topics as well. Quality and inspiration, not quantity and tedious details, count here.

Marketing with the Connected Consumer

It was a gratifying SRO crowd for my session on mobile marketing at the social marketing conference. The presentation takes off from the one I did on social media last year, and switches focus from the networked world to the connected one. I was surprised at how many (maybe 1/4) of the audience were active SMS and MMS users, though mobile web access was much less than that. The presentation seemed to get a great response. Here it is.

Special thanks again to Lynette Webb for the interesting snippets.

Increasing Recycling Behavior with Social Media and Marketing

I first noted the North Carolina RE3 project last Fall. I was so impressed by their use of marketing and social media approaches that I encouraged Kelley Dennings to submit an abstract for presentation at the Social Marketing in Public Health Conference. Well, she had her own breakout session today and I hope that this is a milestone for the regular appearance of environmental social marketing in the program. That Jay Kassirer, who will do his 'Confessions of an Environmental Social Marketer' at tomorrow's plenary, as well as someone else doing water conservation programs in Florida were in the audience may also be a sign that we are moving out of the predominant 'health behavior' focus of the field (or the environmental people are feeling more comfortable about presenting their work to this audience!). Anyway, great job by Kelley! You can see some of the project's latest work on YouTube - Epiphany seems to be the audience favorite. Their blog is here. And their MySpace profile.

Her slides, as well as most of the other presentations made at the conference, will be available online in a few weeks. I'll keep you posted.

Marketing Lessons from the Commercial Sector

The Devil Came Down to Tampa was the opening plenary session by Gerard Hastings at the Social Marketing and Public Health conference. Gerard drew on two reviews of marketing practices of the pharmaceutical and financial services industries to distill 7 key ideas that should inform social marketing practice.

1. Rethink our use of research to be more what he termed 'navigational' - providing guidance for program decision-making - rather than solely focused on monitoring and outcomes.
2. A consumer-orientation is crucial for effective programs.
3. Emotion matters when it comes to individual decision-making and brands (in which he also rejected the tag line and logo oversimplification of the process).
4. Need for segmentation and targeting.
5. Have a long term vision for impact.
6. Context matters when seeking behavior change.
7. Tackle the competition rather than avoiding or ignoring it.

He has a new book on social marketing coming out next month. A review of the book is in the latest issue of Social Marketing Quarterly.

Catching Up with Social Marketers

Several of us at the USF social marketing conference got together for dinner last night at Columbia - THE Spanish/Cuban restaurant that is always a stop for me during this meeting. Great food and conversation was the result. A couple of points that came up:

Bob Marshall talked about worked they are doing at the Rhode Island DoH with nurses on increasing their own flu vaccination behaviors. The world changing result from their formative research is that many nurses state they have developed 'natural immunity' to flu and other contagious diseases as a result of their many years of exposure in their work in hospital settings. Consequently, they are already 'naturally immune' to the flu; in fact, getting a flu shot is perceived as something that might actually REDUCE their immunity. Interesting idea and something I have heard anecdotally before from health care professionals to explain their own aversion to flu vaccines. That these knowledgeable, trusted sources of information may be telling other people this same story has plenty of implications for our social marketing efforts to increase vaccination prevalence. Comes back to an idea I put forth that too many times that we ignore the audiences who are critical to our success.

Jay Kassirer, who will be doing a Saturday plenary of environmental social marketing, brought us around to the many barriers and challenges to introducing more people to behaviors that will have a more positive, or less damaging, impact on the environment. What exactly are these behaviors and why can't the experts agree on any (what would be the environmental social marketing equivalent of 5 A Day)? What do we do when the short term, immediate consequences of recycling waste, driving a hybrid car or switching to biofuels are then shown to have even greater negative environmental impacts when we look at the costs and byproducts of recyling processes, disposing of the batteries, and the clear cutting of forests to make more space to grow palm trees to produce palm oil? Looking forward to more discussions on those and other issues Saturday.

Sandra Jones and Becky Murphy from OSH/CDC are very interested in research on fear arousal and the questions of when and under what circumstances to use them in social marketing programs (a question I am hearing more and more regularly as well from practitioners). Moderate levels of arousal, perceived self efficacy of responses to mitigate the arousal, and the expected and actual consequences of actions are important elements of the process. I also wondered why so much of the 'new' fear arousal research seems to neglect the decades of research in anxiety arousal that occurred in the 1970s and 80s? And the part of the conversation about fear-based campaigns I don't see surfaced is that fear-arousal does not so much result in behavior change as it does in suppression of current behaviors. It may seem liked a nuanced or inconsequential distinEdit Post | Post | On Social Marketing and Social Change | Your Weblogs | TypePadction until you remember basic principles of operant conditioning: punishment has a temporary effect of behavior. Parents have been hearing for years that they need to focus on praise and reinforcement, not punishment, to change their children's behavior. Strip the parental frame away, and the same holds true for social marketers and health communicators too. As Jay noted however, if people turn to internal attributions and self-reinforcement to maintain alternative behaviors, then the longer term behavior change is possible. The question is how often do our programs focus on the IF? My belief: resorting to fear-based campaigns is the last step before cheating.

Mobile Persuasion Conference Capsule

Some of us believe that mobile technologies may offer the next technological leap forward in creating, maintaining and sustaining effective behavior change efforts. The first conclave of pioneers in this field was held earlier this year at Stanford University, which I have summarized here.

Just got the word that a limited number of copies of a book based on the conference presentations are now available from the Stanford University Persuasive Technology Lab - MobilePersuasion. If you have an interest in this area and want to get up to speed quickly, it is worth a read.

Parents, Sex, Violence, Media and Kids

Parents report taking more steps to monitor and/or limit the amount of exposure their children have to online sexual and violent content. Nearly 2/3s of parents say they closely monitor their child's media use. From the release -

Nearly three out of four parents (73%) say they know “a lot” about what their kids are doing online (among all parents with children 9 or older who use the Internet at home). Most parents whose children engage in these activities say they check their children’s Instant Messaging (IM) “buddy lists” (87%), review their children’s profiles on social networking sites (82%), and look to see what websites they’ve visited (76%) after they’ve gone online.

The Kaiser Family Foundation sponsored study was released at a meeting in DC Tuesday. The presentation, webcast and podcast are available here. The full report, Parents, Children & Media: A Kaiser Family Foundation Survey (pdf file), is based on a national survey of 1,008 parents of children ages 2-17 supplemented with focus groups. The survey also explores such issues as media content, media ratings and the V-Chip, media monitoring, educational media, advertising, and the Internet.

For researchers and practitioners, these new results offer some support for the notion that parents are heeding the pervasive messaging about monitoring kids' online behavior, though they seem to be less sure of how to use basic parental control technologies like the V-chip on their television sets or block access to specific websites (and yet they know how to look up buddy lists, social network profiles and histories). I'd like to see the ecological validation studies done before I swallow all of this whole. It's that whole lion in the zoo thing.

Bill Gates on Global Health

I left Harvard with no real awareness of the awful inequities in the world – the appalling disparities of health, and wealth, and opportunity that condemn millions of people to lives of despair.

I learned a lot here at Harvard about new ideas in economics and politics. I got great exposure to the advances being made in the sciences.

But humanity’s greatest advances are not in its discoveries – but in how those discoveries are applied to reduce inequity. Whether through democracy, strong public education, quality health care, or broad economic opportunity – reducing inequity is the highest human achievement.

I left campus knowing little about the millions of young people cheated out of educational opportunities here in this country. And I knew nothing about the millions of people living in unspeakable poverty and disease in developing countries.

It took me decades to find out...

“How could the world let these children die?”

The answer is simple, and harsh. The market did not reward saving the lives of these children, and governments did not subsidize it. So the children died because their mothers and their fathers had no power in the market and no voice in the system.

But you and I have both.

We can make market forces work better for the poor if we can develop a more creative capitalism – if we can stretch the reach of market forces so that more people can make a profit, or at least make a living, serving people who are suffering from the worst inequities. We also can press governments around the world to spend taxpayer money in ways that better reflect the values of the people who pay the taxes.

If we can find approaches that meet the needs of the poor in ways that generate profits for business and votes for politicians, we will have found a sustainable way to reduce inequity in the world. This task is open-ended. It can never be finished. But a conscious effort to answer this challenge will change the world...

In line with the promise of this age, I want to exhort each of the graduates here to take on an issue – a complex problem, a deep inequity, and become a specialist on it. If you make it the focus of your career, that would be phenomenal. But you don’t have to do that to make an impact. For a few hours every week, you can use the growing power of the Internet to get informed, find others with the same interests, see the barriers, and find ways to cut through them.

Don’t let complexity stop you. Be activists. Take on the big inequities. It will be one of the great experiences of your lives.

- Bill Gates, Harvard Commencement 2007.

And thanx to Karl for the tip!

Marketing Condoms in Africa and the US

Today two stories paint very different pictures about the practice of marketing condoms. National Public Radio focuses on the social marketing of condoms in Africa:

In developing countries, social marketers have been trying to get more people to use condoms. And where they've been successful, rates of HIV are coming down. And the United States, despite conservative protests, is the primary donor of condoms.

In 2005, 13 billion condoms were distributed worldwide. But the United Nations Development Program says that breaks down to about 10 condoms a year for every man in Africa — and that is not enough. There were 7 million new infections of HIV last year...

Since 2003, according to a PSI survey, young men and women in Kenya with multiple partners increased their use of condoms from 33 to 47 percent. Rates of HIV in the country have been nearly halved.

Audio of the NPR Morning Edition story.

Tonight starts a new US campaign from condom maker Trojan. Problem is that two of the four major networks (CBS and FOX) rejected the TV ads for not focusing on preventing diseases (which diseases do the ED drugs prevent again?). From the NY Times -

“We have to change the perception that carrying a condom for women or men is a sign they’re on the prowl and just want to have sex,” said Linda Kaplan Thaler, chief executive of the Kaplan Thaler Group, the New York advertising agency that created the “Evolve” campaign. “It’s a sign of somebody being prepared — if the opportunity arises — to think about their own health and the health and safety of their partner.”

Be sure to check the Trojan campaign site for the ad - it is LOL funny! When pigs have wings...

Related to my question yesterday about how to make markets work for the poor, note this quote:

“With a 75 percent share of the market, we can prioritize growing the category and increasing overall condom usage,” Mr. Daniels said. “Right now in the U.S. only one in four sex acts involves using a condom. That’s dramatically below usage rates in other developed countries. Our goal is to dramatically increase use.”

And I have to note that NPR says Population Services International is "the largest condom distributor in the world."

Thanx to Bob, my NPR listener, for the tip!

Follow Me on Twitter

This Friday I am talking about the connected consumer at the USF social marketing and public health conference. Since the topic is about mobile social marketing, I have set up a Twitter account to let you get involved in one of the newer uses of mobile phones for social networking. If you want to follow along with my trip to Clearwater Beach, the conference and the immediate aftermath, you can check in with the Twitter badge on the blog, check my Twitter site, or sign up for a free Twitter account and select the option to get mobile updates via SMS (especially if you are attending the meeting and plan to be at the session).

The initial crest in the wave of Twitter enthusiasm may have passed, but this could be the time for you to experience some of the networking aspects of the connected world.

More Technology or More Aid for Africa?

At TED Global 2007, I witnessed one small skirmish in a larger ideological conflict between those who believe that Africa needs more and better international aid, and those who think entrepreneurialism and technology will lift the continent out of poverty and thus reduce its miseries.

Jason Pontin on his experience at the conference in today's New York Times.

Ethan Zuckerman has been posting on the TED conference and the Global Economic Forum in Capetown.

So how can social marketing help make markets work for the poor?

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.

USF Health Names Charter Group of Distinguished Professors

A round of applause for Carol Bryant who was recommended by her peers at University of South Florida Health as one of the first six distinguished professors who have made substantial contributions to research, teaching or clinical care. From the release:

Dr. Bryant is professor of Community and Family Health and co-director of the Florida Prevention Research Center, College of Public Health. Through the annual Social Marketing in Public Health Conference and Field School, the FRPC, the Graduate Certificate in Social Marketing and her consultations to national, state and local organizations, Dr. Bryant helped put USF on the map as a vital sponsor of cutting-edge health social marketing programs. Over the last five years, Dr. Bryant and the FPRC have been awarded nearly $6 million in competitive grants and contracts.

If you are at the social marketing conference this week, be sure to make a note of it to her - she can SO shy.

Kellogg's Leads with Voluntary Ad Restraints

Kellogg has announced it will voluntarily phase out all advertising of its products to children under the age of 12 years over the next 18 months unless the product meets specific nutrition guidelines. While the action comes under some duress - threatened lawsuits that are now being dropped - it does point the way for what the industry group SHOULD be doing now that it's been meeting for 8 months as well as the FTC task force on media and childhood obesity.

The president and chief executive of Kellogg, David Mackay, said that the products that did not meet the guidelines would either be reformulated so that they did, or no longer be advertised to children...

In the same announcement, Kellogg will also be placing some nutrition information on the front of their cereal boxes. Finally some point-of-choice education that begins to make sense (rather than hiding the complex nutrient tables on side panels).

A Little Extra Push

For all the management books that are out there, I ran across this post on The Engaging Brand that covered a lot of the little steps. Great list!

Imagine if you did these 10 things just one more time during each day.

   1. Just said one more thank you.
   2. Just made one more visit to the team to encourage.
   3. Just had one more idea
   4. Just said "Have a go" one more time.
   5. Just made one more coaching session to your team.
   6. Just smiled one more time.
   7. Just asked for feedback one more time.
   8. Just asked how people were feeling one more time
   9. Just told one more story of what success will look like!
  10. Just tried one more time

Who knows, maybe it will change your world - or somebody else's.