« Applying Service-Dominant Logic to Social Marketing Programs | Main | Creating a Better World Through Marketing: The World Marketing Summit »

08 February 2012

Comments

Bloggeroncampaigns

Hi, Craig.

I enjoyed reading your post on Walmart’s “Great For You” food labeling program. As you pointed out, one could view this as part of a larger effort or campaign to encourage healthy eating. It could also be viewed as a crafty corporate marketing strategy targeting Walmart shoppers, who range from people making less than $40,000 a year to young “brand aspirationals,” earning $70,000 a year. Whatever the rationale behind the “Great For You” food labeling program, I think it is a smart public relations action strategy on the part of the company. I’d be interested to know what type of market research went into this decision. The research component is critical in determining whether or not a strategy like this will be successful with consumers. I also think the positive quote in the New York Times article from the Larry Soler of the Partnership for a Healthier America’s, an organization chaired by First Lady Michelle Obama, reinforces that this is a clever and well-timed move by the company. Industry is a much needed ally and partner in the battle against obesity, and I think Walmart is smart to leverage its position in the market as arguably one of the world’s largest food retailers. The timing is right for the organization to capitalize on the national interest around this issue as well. While I don’t think this is an effort to truly improve the health of America, I do think it is a smart well-thought-out PR strategy that benefits the organization and its key publics. It will be interesting to see if other companies follow in Walmart’s footsteps.

Campaign Blogger

Verify your Comment

Previewing your Comment

This is only a preview. Your comment has not yet been posted.

Working...
Your comment could not be posted. Error type:
Your comment has been saved. Comments are moderated and will not appear until approved by the author. Post another comment

The letters and numbers you entered did not match the image. Please try again.

As a final step before posting your comment, enter the letters and numbers you see in the image below. This prevents automated programs from posting comments.

Having trouble reading this image? View an alternate.

Working...

Post a comment

Comments are moderated, and will not appear until the author has approved them.

Your Information

(Name is required. Email address will not be displayed with the comment.)

Subscribe

A Few of My Publications

  • Health communication campaigns to drive demand for evidence-based practices and reduce stigma in the HEALing communities study
    Describes the development of five communication campaigns that focused on naloxone, MOUD, and stigma reduction as part of a community intervention study (n=65) to reduce opioid deaths.
  • Social Marketing and Social Change: Strategies and Tools For Improving Health, Well-Being, and the Environment
    This book weaves together multi-level theories of change, research and case studies to explain and illustrate the development of social marketing to address some of society’s most vexing problems. The result is a people-centered approach that relies on insight and empathy as much as on data for the inspiration, design and management of programs that strive for changes for good. “This is it -- the comprehensive, brainy road map for tackling wicked social problems. It’s all right here: how to create and innovate, build and implement, manage and measure, scale up and sustain programs that go well beyond influencing individual behaviors, all the way to broad social change in a world that needs the help."
  • SAGE: Social Marketing: Six-Volume Series
    Bringing together seminal texts from diverse sources, this six-volume set organizes the field of social marketing, highlights its global scope and empirical contributions, and present its current growth and dynamism. Each volume addresses specific themes: conceptual frameworks and common ground, social marketing in the developed world, social marketing in developing countries, applications for sustainable behavior and environmental protection, and deepening and expanding its impact.
  • An integrative model for social marketing
    The model pulls together social marketing ideas and practices from the diversity of settings in which they have been developed and allows practitioners and academics to use a common set of concepts to think about and design social marketing programs. The model gives social marketers more latitude in how to use price and place in the design of programs and how to approach social change and public health in the years ahead through market‐based reform.
  • Transformative social marketing: Co-creating the social marketing discipline and brand
    The paper reviews new insights and understandings from modern social marketing practice, social innovation, design thinking and service design, social media, transformative consumer research, marketing theory and advertising practice to develop a model for transforming social marketing thought, research and practice.
  • The new technology: The consumer as participant rather than target audience
    The original argument against social marketers having "target audiences."
  • Consumer-based health communication
    The foundational work behind the creative brief as used today.
  • Social marketing and public health intervention
    The first widely cited article on using marketing for public health programs that focused on its application in community approaches to preventing heart disease. The essential principles still hold.
My Photo