• The Social Marketing in Public Health conference is coming up on June 20-23 in Clearwater Beach, Florida. It’s a great way to learn the basics of social marketing, for those new to the field, as well as to learn more about what others are doing in their own programs and about topics of interest to social marketers. As always, they are also offering a more intensive Field School with 5-day courses before and after the conference on topics like formative research, health message design, consumer behavior and focus groups.

• While I so far have been pretty down on Twitter, Dan McQuillan has found some ideas for how it could be used for social change. First responders to a disaster could easily use it for text messaging each other with updates and requests. It could help in places where the internet does not yet reach or is censored by the government. It can provide a feeling of immediacy in activism efforts. Maybe it’s not a complete waste of time. 🙂

• A recent study found that more than one-third of the people living in Washington DC are functionally illiterate (vs. about one-fifth nationally). I suspect that this is similar to other big cities. This fact has major implications for social marketing efforts. Don’t rely on printed text to get your messages out, and make sure that your visuals support your message rather than showing what you do not want people to do. This oldie but goodie publication from the National Cancer Institute — Clear & Simple — gives tips for reaching low literacy audiences.

• My alma mater, the Harvard School of Public Health, is joining other organizations in lobbying the MPAA to incorporate depictions of smoking as a factor in determining movie ratings. HSPH found that 66% of the top-50 grossing films in 2004-2005 contained depictions of smoking. I agree that showing positive characters smoking can make the practice seem more acceptable and desirable. I’m concerned, though, that there is no sense of context in how it is depicted. If a villain or unlikeable character smokes, I think that is perfectly fine. Smoking is one way that writers and filmmakers portray an aspect of a character, and I think the key is in getting them on board to change how they use that tool. I just can’t see parents keeping their kids from going to a movie because it shows someone smoking.

• If you speak Spanish, Alan Andresen just passed along the information on the social marketing listserv that there is a 2004 social marketing book written by a Mexican professor in Monterrey:

  Luis Alfonso Perez Romero, Marketing Social, Teoría y Práctica, Editorial Pearson Prentice Hall, 2004

• Britt Bravo let me know about NetSquared’s upcoming conference (May 29-30 in San Jose, CA), which will provide 20 social change nonprofits using social media with an all-expense paid invitation to the event and technical support to help them get to the next level of innovation. Voting will take place from April 9-14, and you can find a list of all the nominated projects here. One of my personal favorites is Buttons of Hope.

• Happy Easter to my friends celebrating it today. And happy Passover to those who have been and will continue to celebrate it until Tuesday night (then let the bread eating begin!) On Passover (Pesach, in Hebrew) we commemorate going from slavery to freedom. But we cannot forget that many people are still enslaved in the world (and even in our own country) today. Please consider making a donation to the American Anti-Slavery Group today via the blue Network for Good widget on the right side of my blog (scroll down a bit to find it) or directly to free a slave in Sudan or support their other activities. We cannot truly be free if others are enslaved.

• Speaking of fundraising widgets, congrats to Beth Kanter who received the Fantasticness Award at the Nonprofit Technology Conference. She’s the hardest working gal in blog and roll, and I think she’s fantastic not just for the sheer volume of content-packed blog posts she puts out, but also for her willingness to help us learn along with her as she explores the cutting edge of social media. You deserve it, Beth!

I lost my voice completely for three days after Social Marketing University, so I’m going to spare my fingers the same fate and stop here. I will be out on Monday and Tuesday for the last days of Passover and will jump back in after that.

Photo Credit: Aureus