by Nedra Weinreich | Oct 24, 2006 | Blog, Social Media
If you’ve been wondering what’s all the fuss those young folks are makin’ about YouTube and what-all they’re doin’ over there (beyond the commercials, music videos and wacky stunts), watch this video: YOUTUBERS. It’s a powerful demonstration of the range of human emotion and communication (both silly and dead serious) you can find in videoblogs. It’s heartbreaking and uplifting at the same time, and provides a voyeuristic glimpse into what used to be private. The YouTube Generation is reaching out to bring us into their lives — will we listen to what they are saying, and what will we do once we are there?
(via CGM)
by Nedra Weinreich | Oct 24, 2006 | Blog, Miscellaneous
I received a happy surprise in the mail this week. My new blog friend Roger von Oech, about whom I wrote recently, sent me his new product – the Ball of Whacks. It’s a rhombic triacontahedron (try saying that 5 times fast!) made up of 30 individual blocks held together with magnets. It can be taken apart and rearranged in an infinite number of ways.
I’ve spent the past few days playing with it, enjoying feeling the heft of the ball, the decisive click of the magnets and the satisfaction of making symmetrical designs that use up all of the pieces (yes, I’m very left-brained even when trying to be creative!). While I’m not someone who needs to have her hands occupied while thinking, I find that the process of arranging and rearranging the pieces does put me into a more relaxed and open state of mind. For those who have to doodle, fidget with a pen or toss a ball around while they think, this would be perfect.
The ball comes with a small book that provides ideas for how to use it to boost your creativity, and some background on how Roger came up with the idea to create the ball. There are studies that have shown the link between stimulating your motor function and stimulating your brain activity. And it keeps the kids busy too.
You can find information on ordering the ball here. Thanks again, Roger!
Technorati Tags: ball of whacks, roger von oech, creativity
by Nedra Weinreich | Oct 22, 2006 | Blog, Marketing
The big top is back up at Spare Change to welcome the
Carnival of Nonprofit Consultants as it winds its way across the blogosphere each week. We feature seven of the best blog posts by and/or for nonprofit consultants, and the theme this week is “marketing for nonprofits.”
Nancy Schwartz at Getting Attention shares what the University of Minnesota is doing with its Brand Ambassadors program that you could use to harness the enthusiasm of your biggest fans.
Ken Goldstein at the Nonprofit Consultant Blog calls attention to the possible problem of “donor poachers” who compile lists of potential donors from other organizations’ online annual reports.
Leila Johnson at Data-Scribe describes how to apply scientific concepts from chemistry in your marketing to make the process more efficient.
Joe Waters at Selfish Giving ponders how to market your brand without being perceived as too slick, with some lessons from Burger King.
Kate Zimmermann at SearchViews presents her thoughts on Bono’s (RED) campaign from a social network marketing and SEO perspective.
Jeff Brooks at Donor Power Blog provides some reasons to consider using other research methods besides focus groups in your marketing research.
David Maister contributes a post and its comments with excellent advice for nonprofit consultants that addresses how much up-front work at no charge is reasonable for a potential client before a contract is signed.
And the bonus host post from yours truly is about whether the use of potentially stigmatizing messages in social marketing campaigns is acceptable and/or effective.
Thanks to all of this week’s participants. Next week the Carnival of Nonprofit Consultants will be hosted by Zen and the Art of Nonprofit Technology, with an open call for submissions. If you want to submit a post to be considered for next week, send an email to npc.carnival AT yahoo DOT com with your name, your blog’s name and the URL of the post (not your blog homepage).
Technorati Tags: carnival, nonprofit, consultants, marketing
by Nedra Weinreich | Oct 18, 2006 | Blog, Marketing
We women are awful to ourselves. A man sees an attractive woman walk by and instinctively thinks about sex. A woman sees another woman walk by and she automatically compares herself to the other, often in a negative way — who is prettier, slimmer, has nicer hair, has better fashion sense? We can usually find something “wrong” with the other woman to make ourselves feel better — she has a little roll of skin hanging over the top of her low-cut pants, her teeth are crooked, her roots are showing. This negative self-comparison is especially true when looking at pictures of celebrities or models, but it’s harder to find the compensating imperfections in the professional photos (that’s why the National Enquirer and other checkout line tabloids are so popular – they show you what the celebs look like when they are being “real people” without makeup and airbrushes).
And this is why I’m fascinated by the latest entry in the Dove Campaign for Real Beauty, a short time-lapse film that shows the transformation of a somewhat plain everywoman to a gorgeous billboard model through makeup and Photoshop. I’ve watched it several times and find it reassuring to be reminded that the manufactured images of perfect beauty that surround us are not real — we cannot and should not compare ourselves to those pictures.
And beauty is such a cultural construct. The Dove campaign in China is quite different than in the US. Compare the women on this billboard in Shanghai (as photographed by Brian Sack of the humor site the Banterist, whose series of China travelogue posts was gut-bustingly funny and worth checking out)…
…with the American version:
Notice anything different about the Chinese “real women with real curves”? Chinese women must have a very different perception of what is beautiful and what is unattractive, assuming the campaign was coming from the same angle as the American one. But the Chinese campaign is enough to make even slim American women feel inadequate all over again.
Technorati Tags: dove, beauty, china, women
by Nedra Weinreich | Oct 18, 2006 | Blog, Miscellaneous
Next Monday, October 23rd the Carnival of Nonprofit Consultants will make its temporary home here at Spare Change. Our theme will be Marketing for Nonprofits. If you are a blogger, please submit your best post of the past week or so that relates to the theme by this Friday night (Oct. 20) and I will compile and post the top seven submissions on Monday. Send an email to npc.carnival AT yahoo DOT com with your name, your blog’s name and the URL of the post (not your blog homepage).
In the meantime, take a look at the most recent Carnival at Aspiration Tech with the theme of Nonprofit Management Advice.
Technorati Tags: carnival, nonprofit, marketing
by Nedra Weinreich | Oct 18, 2006 | Blog, Social Marketing
A few weeks ago, I wrote about a community forum (“Selling Us to Ourselves: Is Social Marketing Effective HIV Prevention?) in New York that would be discussing recent HIV/AIDS prevention social marketing campaigns that have been criticized by the gay community for using stigmatizing messages and images. CHAMP, which was one of the sponsors, has now posted a report from the forum that summarizes the speaker presentations.
And last week, another forum was held in Los Angeles to discuss a new campaign by the LA Gay and Lesbian Center that states “HIV is a gay disease. Own it. End it.” Richard Kearns of aids-write.org attended the forum and posted his notes and reactions, along with a powerful poem about the use of stigma in these recent social marketing campaigns. He calls the effects of this approach “friendly fire,” which I thought was a quite apt description. While trying to shoot down the “enemy” — AIDS — these social marketing campaigns also cause some collateral damage by either reinforcing negative stereotypes or creating an environment that makes people not want to acknowledge that they are at risk.
By saying that HIV is a “gay disease” (75% of people with HIV in LA are gay), the campaign undoes decades of hard work to get the point across that anyone can become infected if they engage in risky behaviors. While I understand that the point is to get the gay community to re-engage and take ownership of the solution for ending AIDS, this statement in one fell swoop both implies that all gays have HIV and that everyone with HIV is gay. If this campaign were only visible to the gay community (maybe using gaydar vision?), then perhaps it would be justifiable if it were shown to be effective, to get people talking and empowered to take action. But they cannot ignore the effects of the campaign on the general population, who may form negative opinions about gays or people with HIV as a result.
Steve Simon, the LA City AIDS coordinator, spoke on the panel and said that he had received phone calls 20 to 1 complaining about the ad. He felt that “this is undermining messages we’ve been putting out for a long time.” He was contemplating creating a series of ads to balance out the “HIV is a gay disease” theme, with messages like “HIV is a Latino disease,” “… a black disease,” “…a woman’s disease,” etc.
Les Pappas, whose company Better World Advertising created the campaigns, spoke at both forums. At the New York forum, he said this about the approach they took with the HIV (not fabulous) campaign:
Change can come in different ways. It can come from attracting people (getting them on the bandwagon), but it also comes through disturbing them or causing them discomfort (so they’re challenged in some way to move to make a change). We like it when it makes us “feel good” but we don’t like it when it confronts our reality, shocks us, airs our dirty laundry, or makes us think too much. But why do we think that we have to like or approve or agree with social marketing? Ultimately, what is the role of controversy? We need to leverage the scarce resources we have, and we need to get people’s attention. The first hurdle is getting people’s attention; then, you can gauge people and deal with other hurdles…
…Now what about campaigns that people don’t like so much? What about campaigns that make people feel bad? For example, we launched the HIV (not fabulous) campaign. We had a gentleman with facial wasting, we had a gentleman in a diaper because of chronic diarrhea, and we had a gentleman with a bloated belly. People thought it was stigmatizing people with HIV, but what I can speak for is the e-mails that we received about the ads. We had a lot of people complaining, but we also had a lot of people who had no idea that HIV was so bad. Young gay men in Los Angeles woke up with this campaign—it gave them a reality check and changed their behavior in terms of protecting themselves.
Contrast this confrontational in-your-face approach with other more positive and empowering campaigns like Better World’s HIV Stops with Me and We Are Part of You or Oakland’s new I Am Worth It campaign (though I’m not crazy about Kenneth Cole’s anti-stigma We All Have AIDS campaign — it’s too wishy-washy). Unfortunately, there is not much data to show whether the controversial approach has been effective.
So what do you think? Is it worth creating controversy and potentially stigmatizing some of the members of your target audience in order to attract attention to the issue? Is some collateral damage acceptable when dealing with life and death issues? Or should you stay away from those methods even if you find it works to bring about change?
I think an effective social marketing campaign needs to involve members of the target audience in the message development and pretesting to find out whether the approach will shock and awe or completely backfire. If you make people angry with your message, they will dismiss you and the campaign without paying attention to what else you might be saying. Getting their attention is good, but you also need to get them on your side.
Technorati Tags: hiv, aids, social marketing, gay, stigma
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. 
