The Tip Jar makes its triumphant return after a hiatus of almost a month. Here are some of the latest finds from the world of social marketing…
- If you are a health educator inspired by my or others’ recent pandemic flu-blogging, take advantage of this free training opportunity. The Society for Public Health Education (SOPHE) is partnering with CDC and DHHS to host a 1-1/2 day workshop for health educators on Crisis and Emergency Risk Communication for Pandemic Influenza, on September 20-21, 2007 in Chicago, IL. Up to 100 travel scholarships will be awarded to health educators to participate in the workshop, covering the cost of travel, lodging, and registration for the workshop. You don’t have to be a SOPHE member to participate. The catch is that the deadline to apply is this Tuesday, July 31st. Get the application form and more information on the SOPHE website.
- ChangeFan is a new Digg-like web community that offers a place to share information about “changing the world.” Recent featured links include articles on plug-in hybrids, poverty & education, and philanthropy. It’s similar to CThings and I’m not entirely clear on how much they differ from each other. But they are both good places to find interesting news stories.
- Changemakers, in partnership with the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, is sponsoring a competition for solutions that merge computer and video games with health and health care. You can read the competition entries as they come in, and consider submitting your own entry by September 26. If you need inspiration, the latest issue of the Drum Beat focuses on Games for Change, with related case studies and resources.
- Though the website is in sore need of some explanatory information, the Netroots Network provides an interesting way of viewing various issues on a map. You can view the distribution of things like alleged voter fraud, anti-war protests, and incidents of corruption in Texas. The display is crude, but holds promise as a way of helping to provide context to issues and identify trends.
- Speaking of maps, the CDC just released the 2006 SMART BRFSS (Selected Metropolitan/Micropolitan Area Risk Trends from the Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System) data and prevalence tables and the BRFSS Maps. This is data from a nationwide annual survey that looks at health-related behaviors. BRFSS Maps is a system that allows users to visualize the prevalence estimates, mapping them across the entire country, or zooming in on a region or state. It’s a great place to start looking at data related to your program or issue.
- If you develop materials on any topic, the NCI’s (actually, the International Cancer Screening Network’s) latest downloadable publication will be useful to you. Designing Print Materials: A Communications Guide for Breast Cancer Screening takes you through the design process and has tips that are applicable to any issue. But of course, nothing beats the NCI’s Pink Bible for health communicators.
- Robert Marshall, a Fullbright scholar from Rhode Island spending 6 weeks in England, is documenting his experiences at and exchanges with the UK’s National Social Marketing Centre on a blog. He gives an American perspective on how social marketing is being practiced in the UK, as well as insights he gleans from his colleagues there about what can be learned from the state of social marketing in the US. He also provides an enjoyable travelogue, including his encounter with the Broad Street Pump, considered the birthplace of modern epidemiology.
- The Ad Council and Kaiser Family Foundation hosted a forum called The Digital Opportunity: Using New Media for Public Education Campaigns. Speakers included Dan Solomon of Mindshare Interactive Campaigns, Tina Hoff of Kaiser and its Entertainment Media Partnerships, and Jeff Berman of MySpace. The webcast and a transcript can be downloaded from the site.
- From the “And you thought your social marketing program had tough opponents” file… Staff at Green Star Social Marketing, an NGO in Peshawar, Pakistan that does work in family planning and maternal and child health, were the intended victims of an explosive device planted in the NGO’s vehicle. Luckily, the defused device was found not to be capable of exploding, but it came with a pamphlet that said, in part, “The next time nobody will stop us and we will plant a real bomb instead of this small sample.” The terrorists identified themselves as members of Jihad-e-Islami and said that family planning was the equivalent of genocide of Muslims. We shouldn’t forget that social marketing can be powerful, and because of that may provoke powerful detractors.
- Social marketer Bob Belinoff has a thought-provoking article in LA Yoga magazine in which he advocates that sometimes it’s better to do nothing than to jump in to try to solve major social problems. While that idea goes against many of our initial instincts, he likens the approach to Ayurveda and other types of natural medicine in which you do very little but remove the blocks to letting the problem solve itself. It’s an idea worth exploring. Or maybe just watching to see what happens.
- Liz Losh takes a look at viral videos and parody ads addressing pharma and anti-drug ads. I especially liked the website for the fictional drug Havidol.
- Thanks to Chris Forbes for the pointer to a great roundup of articles and resources about marketing with Facebook. I’m still finding that Facebook doesn’t hold much attraction for me the way a professionally-oriented social network like LinkedIn does. Perhaps it’s because I feel a need to have a specific purpose rather than a more open-ended place to hang out. But just because I don’t personally spend time on my Facebook page doesn’t mean that the target audiences I may need to reach feel the same way. Marketers definitely need to get up-to-speed on using this and other social networks.
- On the off-chance that you didn’t see the recent study showing that obesity is contagious, this concept of behaviors as contagioמ is intriguing. When the people around you are engaging in a particular behavior, it becomes more acceptable to you and increases the likelihood of you doing it as well. This has been well-known regarding youth who smoke, and it makes a lot of sense in regards to obesity and its related behaviors of overeating and a sedentary lifestyle. Craig and Seth had the most interesting takes on the report, with Craig looking at it as confirming the power of social networks and Seth discussing how to get your ideas to spread contagiously.
- And another study of interest recently found that the more exposure middle school students have to certain anti-smoking ads, the more likely they are to smoke. The ads causing this opposite effect tended to use an authoritarian “just say no” type of message. The researchers found that messages most effective in preventing smoking were those that gave the perception that their peers were not smoking — changing the social norms made avoiding tobacco contagious, in effect.
Photo Credit: BrittneyBush
Nedra helps nonprofits and public agencies create positive change on health and social issues through social marketing and transmedia storytelling strategies at Weinreich Communications since founding the company in 1995. She helps organizations make a difference for the populations they serve by strategically designing programs that draw on state-of-the-art behavior change techniques, digital media approaches and the power of stories. 
