by Nedra Weinreich | Feb 9, 2007 | Blog, Resources
It’s time for another edition of The Tip Jar, where instead of you having to leave a little something behind for me, I give tips to you:
- The next Healthcare Blogging Summit will be held on April 30 in Las Vegas, coming on the successful heels of the first one in December. I will be moderating a session on using new media to motivate behavior change, with a panel of speakers that includes Fabio Gratton of Ignite Health, Debbie Donovan of Conceptus, Adam Pellegrini of the American Cancer Society, Graham McReynolds of the National Multiple Sclerosis Society, and Ralph De Simone of the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society. The other sessions look fantastic as well, and the keynote speaker will be Jay Bernhardt, the director of the CDC’s National Center for Health Marketing. Check out the program, and I hope I’ll see you in Vegas!
- NomadsLand is an online distributor of high-quality documentary films with a social mission, sort of a higher-end social marketing YouTube. They pay filmmakers 50% in royalties for each download. The range of films highlighted looked very interesting, including what is happening after the tsunami in Sri Lanka, a look at global human rights, and an American filmmaker’s journey through Sudan. In a separate but related story, a new genre is emerging in short films specifically designed for viewing on mobile phones.
- And for those who create health-related video content, the Health Communication Working Group (HCWG) Steering Committee has announced its 4rd annual Film/Media Festival to be held during the American Public Health Association’s (APHA) Annual Meeting this November in Washington, DC. This call for submissions is limited to productions created for audiences in the United States, but is not limited to English language productions. Submission deadline is July 31, 2007. For more information and guidelines, contact Linda Bergonzi King, MPH, at bellapro AT aol.com. (sorry, can’t find any web link for it)
- Francois Lagarde and Sameer Deshpande are conducting a worldwide survey on advanced-level social marketing training events. Give them your two cents by filling out the survey, and you could win a social marketing book. Please respond by February 21st.
- Congratulations to Albuquerque, the fittest city in the United States, according to Men’s Fitness magazine. The criteria included lifestyle factors in each city: fast-food restaurants per capita, availability of gyms or bike paths, commute times, how much television watching Nielsen records, and federal health statistics on obesity-related injuries and illnesses.
- Great news! Gambian president Yahya Jammeh has discovered a cure for AIDS that works in three days, and his health minister backs him up on it so it must be true. Well, that takes care of that problem.
- I have been watching Season 1 of the show 24 on DVD and am really enjoying it. The New Yorker just ran an article on Joel Surnow, the man behind the series, and raises the question of whether the show has made the idea of using torture to extract information more acceptable to Americans in general and American soldiers in particular. Whichever side of the issue you come down on, it’s interesting to see how a TV show can affect a national ethical debate.
- Tammy at Influential Foofaraw shares a piece explaining the differences between various types of marketing that will elicit a giggle. And by the way, if she says that she’s fantastic in bed because she makes sure her partner wears a condom, that’s social marketing.
On that note, I think I’d better end here!
Photo Credit: chezamy
Technorati Tags: social marketing, healthcare blogging summit, nomadsland, apha, AIDS, 24
by Nedra Weinreich | Feb 9, 2007 | Blog, Professional Development
This great sketch of my last Social Marketing University training was done by Ashley Cecil (she of the beautiful blog). Ashley’s policy is that she will not post anything on her blog without an accompanying painting or sketch, so she created this from a picture I sent her. Fortunately for me, the drawing looks much better than the original photo (and you can even see my Mac). Thanks so much, Ashley!
Thanks also to my other blogger friends who have helped to get the word out about the Social Marketing University training:
Allison Fine – A. Fine Blog
Noah Scalin – A Limited Rebellion
Beth Kanter – Beth’s Blog
Carol Kirshner – Driving in Traffic
Nancy Schwartz – Getting Attention
Britt Bravo – Have Fun * Do Good
Fard Johnmar – HealthCareVox
Fabio Gratton – IgniteBlog
Marc Sirkin – npMarketing Blog
Marianne Richmond – Resonance Partnership Blog
Joe Waters – Selfish Giving
Alison Byrne Fields – We’ll Know When We Get There
Anastasia Goodstein – Ypulse
UPDATE (2/14/07):
Marc van Gurp – Houtlust
Katya Andresen – Nonprofit Marketing Blog
Kivi Leroux Miller – Nonprofit Communications
John Bell – Digital Influence Mapping Project
Dmitriy Kruglyak – Trusted.MD
UPDATE (3/4/07):
Toby Bloomberg – Diva Marketing
Mike Swenson – Citizen Brand
Roger von Oech – Creative Think
Rohit Bhargava – Influential Interactive Marketing
Guy Brighton – PSFK
If you posted something about SMU that I missed, please let me know and I’ll add you to the list.
And if you are thinking about registering for the training but haven’t gotten around to it yet, don’t delay too long. Seats are filling up and may be sold out soon if this pace of registrations continues. I hope you’ll join us!
Technorati Tags: social marketing university, training, workshop
by Nedra Weinreich | Feb 8, 2007 | Blog, Entertainment
Last night I attended a panel discussion in Hollywood on the State of Teen TV coordinated and hosted by Anastasia Goodstein of Ypulse. It’s always fun to meet a blogger whom I read regularly, and Anastasia was even more fun in person than on her blog. You can read her summary of the event, but I’ll also give you some thoughts on what struck me most.
The panelists included:
- Rob Thomas – creator and exec. producer of the CW show “Veronica Mars“
- Rajiv Mody – director of franchise development for MTV’s Virtual Laguna Beach/The Hills
- Dixie Feldman – editorial director of The N (the network with the #1 concentration of the teen/young adult demo)
- Amanda Zweerink – director of community at Current TV
- Kelli Feigley – partner at Dreaming Tree Films
The overall theme that emerged is that television as we know it is changing, and that some of the players involved are more willing or able to adapt to this new world, which is not all that different from the online world that teens already live in.
The ethos that is evolving is that teen audiences want “to be able to live the show and share it with their friends,” as Rajiv described how his virtual worlds tie into the TV-based programming. Fans can go online and mingle with the cast members, participate in events tied to the latest episode, and feel like they are part of the show. Dixie (whose bio contained one of the best lines of the night: “She puts the broad back in broadcasting.”) described how when one of the characters in the N show Degrassi died, fans lit candles at a virtual vigil and put armbands and veils on their avatars. The network facilitated the expressions of grief by providing clips of sad scenes and sad music for use in creating video tributes.
The other part of it is that teens want to have a voice in the content that they watch. Current TV contains about one-third viewer created content, and they also give a lot of latitude to the producers they call on to create content. They are looking for ways to make it easier for people to contribute content, such as submitting short pieces of footage for editing rather than a long finished piece. As mobile technology improves toward broadcast quality, impromptu videos of newsworthy events will become a major source of content. For a younger audience, Samsung Fresh Films (part of Dreaming Tree) runs a program to help teens create their own professional-quality films.
One of the most interesting parts of the evening was when Rob and Dixie spoke about how they approach dealing with hot-button topics on their shows. Rob lamented that the show that just aired with some references to the abortion pill got hate mail from both the left and the right. He emphasized that as a writer, he’s not trying to be topical and teach life lessons, but he is interested in “putting a moral and ethical dilemma in front of Veronica and seeing how she responds.” Another episode coming up will have one of the characters active in the Invisible Children campaign.
Dixie talked about some of the many issues that had come up on The N’s shows. There was an abortion episode on “Degrassi,” which ended up being pulled by Viacom (MTV’s parent company). Another character got gonorrhea of the throat. In the show “South of Nowhere,” an episode centered around a girl who was attracted to another girl. They took a lot of heat for that, but they also got a positive response from a lot of teen girls. She and Rob both said that they had not had the network execs object to or censor an episode, but their battles have been more with the standards and practices people who get into niggling details like how many times they can use the word “boner” in one episode or whether it’s less objectionable to show a girl eating a popsicle, lollipop, banana or corn dog in a particular scene. On the positive side (from my perspective, at least), Dixie said that because their audience is primarily teens and preteens, the S&P folks are more emphatic about the need to portray consequences and provide context for decisions made by the characters.
Rob had some interesting predictions about where TV is heading. He thinks there will be more specificity of viewing, with fewer “big tent” shows that appeal to everyone and more shows for niche audiences. In the future, we may buy particular shows a la carte rather than subscribing to cable or satellite channels. He also speculated about the interesting things they could do with a virtual universe based on Veronica Mars.
The worst term of the night that I’d never heard before was “vomenting,” which means adding text or audio commentary to shows a la MST 3000. The N provides a “video mix masher” for teens to use with scenes from the shows to create their voments. (I hope this term doesn’t catch on!)
So it sounds like television and online content will continue to mash themselves together until eventually there will be no distinction between the two. Teens want to interact with the programs, create their own content, and do this all on their own terms. Our challenge as social marketers now is how to facilitate teens doing this with content related to our health and social issues, whether on TV, online or both.
Anastasia will be uploading the recording of the event on her blog soon.
Technorati Tags: television, TV, teens, youth, ypulse
by Nedra Weinreich | Feb 7, 2007 | Blog, Marketing
The Walt Disney Concert Hall in downtown LA took a while to grow on me. Frank Gehry’s landmark building at first looks like a jumble of metal cans and boxes haphazardly piled on top of each other. But look at it more closely — both inside and out — and you start to see how the swooping curves mix with the sharp angles to create amazing synergy and negative space. It’s whimsical and functional at the same time. I once sat at a conference in one of the rooms there and tried to sketch the contrasts between the concave and convex curves on the interior but gave up because it was so hard to capture the unique play of light on the surfaces. That was when Disney Hall started to win my heart. [Fun Fact: Last year, they had to sandblast some of the stainless steel surfaces of the exterior because they were so shiny at certain times of day, drivers were being blinded.]
All this is to preface the fact that last night I went to an amazing performance of the Israel Philharmonic at Disney Hall. Each piece was perfect, and I even got weepy at Tchaikovsky’s Romeo and Juliet Overture. To add to the experience, a high school friend is the house manager there and he upgraded our expensive but lousy balcony tickets to seats right in the middle of the Orchestra section. It’s nice to have friends in high places.
And, sad but true, as I sat there with the gorgeous music washing over me, I started thinking about how I could relate the experience to marketing for this blog. Perhaps this is one of the 10 signs of blog addiction. In any case, while watching the musicians it all came together for me as an excellent metaphor for how to run an effective social marketing program.
- Nothing happens without a plan. The music score lays out exactly what will happen when the piece is played. Every musician knows what his or her role is, when their part comes on, and how to carry it out. So too, we need a marketing strategy and a workplan for how to implement it.
- Someone needs to take the lead. The conductor sees the big picture, how everything fits together. He keeps things moving and prompts the appropriate parts of the orchestra when it’s their turn to shine. He also gives immediate feedback, adjusting volume and tempo as needed. Similarly, an effective marketing program needs a manager overseeing it and making adjustments as needed along the way.
- Everyone has an important role to play. From the first violin to the guy playing the triangle, each musician adds his unique voice to the performance. Everyone is not playing the same notes at the same time, but the melody, harmony, counterpoints and percussion come together to create an amazing sound. In a social marketing program, we might have many different stakeholders participating in different ways, including our staff, funders, partner organizations, the target audience, secondary audiences that influence them, the media, advocates, etc. Each of them makes a contribution that adds to the effectiveness of the campaign.
- You need to know your audience. The music director of an orchestra must have a good idea of the types of composers and pieces that their audience most enjoys, and makes sure that the programs for each concert includes them. If they veer too far from the type of music the audience wants to listen to, that orchestra will start losing customers. We also need to understand our audience so that the products we offer are what they actually want.
- The audience will tell you how you are doing. For an orchestra, applause is immediate feedback that they are doing their job right and delivering what the audience wants. At the concert last night, the Israel Phil received a standing ovation after each piece and went beyond what they said they would do by performing an encore (which in turn received another 5-minute standing ovation, but sadly, no more encores). Feedback from our audiences (you are soliciting feedback, right?) either reinforces what we are doing so we can go above and beyond to deliver more or tells us that we are hitting some sour notes and need to figure out how to get back on track.
An interesting cap to the evening came on the drive back from Disney Hall, when the downtown weather suddenly changed within one block from a clear starry night to a thick bank of fog that appeared as though on cue from a Hollywood fog machine. This lasted until we passed Westwood, when the wall of fog disappeared and left us with the stars and the hills as if it had never happened.
Photo Credit: DonnaGrayson
Technorati Tags: marketing, disney hall, music, orchestra
by Nedra Weinreich | Feb 5, 2007 | Blog, Technology
My friend Brian Humphrey of the LA Fire Department (watch for an interview with him here as soon as he has a chance in his 96-hour workday in between appearances on CNN and the Today Show) told me about an amazing civilian-led search and rescue operation that’s going on right now using technology and online social networks.
Last Sunday (Jan 28), a renowned Microsoft researcher named James Gray (pictured above) failed to return from a sailing trip in the San Francisco Bay Area. The US Coast Guard searched the ocean along nearly the length of California from Sunday night through Thursday without finding a thing — Dr. Gray’s sailboat Tenacious was gone without a trace.
On that Monday, dozens of Dr. Gray’s colleagues, friends and former students came together to figure out ways to use their technical know-how to find him. Computer scientists from Google, Amazon, Microsoft, NASA and various universities put together software, created a blog to track their efforts, and leveraged technical resources like Google Earth’s satellite imaging expertise and Amazon’s image processing capabilities.
Google worked with DigitalGlobe to capture satellite images of the hundreds of thousands of square miles of ocean coastline that were the most likely areas Dr. Gray’s boat would be found. The circle of computer scientists then created a program to break up the images in a way that they could be posted to Amazon’s Mechanical Turk site, where people can sift through the images one by one to see if there were any sign of the boat or debris. Images that are marked by the volunteers as having objects of potential interest are then reviewed by the team. Any promising leads will be followed up on by the Coast Guard. (If you would like to volunteer to help sift through the images, go to http://www.mturk.com/mturk/preview?groupId=J0XZ58STDWJZ5QY4F9M0.)
In addition to scanning the satellite images, the group is using the blog as a clearinghouse to collect ideas, share theories and for people with related expertise to put together clues as to what might have happened to Dr. Gray’s boat. There are oceanography experts looking at ocean models, scientists looking at radar data, communications experts trying to figure out his trajectory based on the last signals from his cell phone, people in their own planes and boats physically searching the waters, volunteers putting up posters and talking to boaters and Harbormasters around Bay Area marinas, and many other angles being pursued. The technology is making it possible for people from across the country and around the world to put their heads together to come up with solutions quickly.
Dr. Gray must have touched a lot of lives to engender the kind of dedicated effort being expended to find him. With this amount of brain power focused on looking for him, I would like to think he has a good chance of being found soon. I wish them tremendous luck in their search and hope this story will have a happy ending. I’m going to get back to scanning the images. There are still more than 3000 left in this group to get though.
Technorati Tags: James Gray, Microsoft, Google, Amazon, Tenacious, social networking
by Nedra Weinreich | Feb 5, 2007 | Blog, Gaming
I’ve written in the past about marketing health and social issues via
video games, but it’s usually been in the context of content within the games. But on the heels of the success of
Dance Dance Revolution in getting kids moving is the even hotter
Nintendo Wii, according to this report from
MarketingVOX:
With gaming console Nintendo Wii’s initial release came reports of people hurting muscles and experiencing soreness due to the physical exertion caused by playing virtual games such as bowling, tennis and baseball. Apparently, that was just one side of the coin.
At first, Nintendo dodged the reports of injuries, saying the Wii was not meant to be an exercise tool. However, that hasn’t stopped people like Michael DeLorenzo from losing nine pounds in six weeks thanks to the Wii, according to Time magazine. DeLorenzo has a book deal in the works about his Wii Workout and he’s teamed up with Traineo.com, a social fitness networking site to feature his new regime.
Even more amazing is that the Wii is now being used by medical researchers to treat children who suffer from hemiplegic cerebral palsy, a condition that can paralyze one side of the body. The Wii is also helping others bounce back from illness.
Breast cancer sufferer Mary Jane Zamora was too tired to get off the couch, but her daughters brought over a Wii and together they played Wii Sports daily. Zamora has since become the most-improved player in her bowling league.
With studies showing that active videogames, such as the Wii and Sony’s EyeToy, can burn three times more calories than traditional games, Nintendo has since embraced the phenomenon. “This huge fitness craze was more than we anticipated,” said Wii spokeswoman Perrin Kaplan.
Perhaps now is the time for health and fitness experts to partner with Nintendo to develop more games geared toward getting players moving aerobically without realizing they are exercising.
Photo Credit: wii-family by dcodez
Technorati Tags: wii, nintendo, exercise, fitness, health, videogames, gaming
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. 
