by Nedra Weinreich | Oct 16, 2006 | Blog, Marketing
This morning I received a hot stock tip with the title above as the subject line. Here is a representative paragraph from that e-mail:
Hip Hop superstar Sean “P.Diddy” Combs sees a huge possibility for his company in cooperation with Goldmark inc. Sean “P.Diddy” Combs tells that it is enjoyably to deal with these guys. They as anybody else know entertainment industriousness and exactly know what is required for the American spectators. He also emphasizes exclusivity of his fresh album Press Play and tells that the appearance of this album on october 17 will make an result of the blasted bomb.
Apparently Goldmark Industries “moved rapidly in taking on the already triumphant and growing star in an violent attempt to stay ahead of the game.” Don’t tell anyone I told you, but they “will promote that st0ck till the end of the year and the price will lift . People will buy it and they will earn big cash. Don’t miss that and buy it now cause the price is low. After the 18 October the price will grow up to 1000%. Take it now!!”
Yes, there is a social marketing lesson in this amusing piece of mangled marketing. If you do not fluently speak the same language as your audience, do not rely on Babelfish or an English-Croatian dictionary to piece together your communications. Spend the money to hire a good translator who is fluent in both languages and then test your materials with people who are fluent speakers of that language to make sure the wording is both accurate and effective. Otherwise you might make an result of the blasted bomb.
Technorati Tags: marketing, translation, diddy
by Nedra Weinreich | Oct 13, 2006 | Blog, Cause Marketing
Driving home today, I caught the tail end of a broadcast by radio talk show host Michael Medved in which he was discussing the (RED) campaign. In case you missed my post on this campaign when it was announced, here’s a recap based on information on their website. “(RED) was created by Bono and Bobby Shriver, Chairman of DATA to raise awareness and money for The Global Fund by teaming up with the world’s most iconic brands to produce (PRODUCT)RED branded products. A percentage of each (PRODUCT)RED product sold is given to The Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria. The money helps women and children affected by HIV/AIDS in Africa.” (RED) Products are sold by companies such as Motorola, American Express, the Gap, Apple and other fashionable brands.
Michael Medved’s point was that this type of cause marketing is not helpful in addressing issues like AIDS or poverty in a place like Africa because it serves as a distraction from the root causes for these problems — corrupt, repressive political systems that keep their citizens from joining the global economy. Instead of encouraging more rampant consumerism, he says, we should be working towards political solutions to bring the African countries out of poverty, which would also reduce the problem of AIDS. When the focus is moved to other approaches that don’t solve that basic problem, the world feels like it has done something and does not pursue the harder, but more effective, work of transforming Africa’s political and economic systems. At least, that’s what I’m extrapolating from the few minutes I heard of the show, so forgive me if I’ve misquoted him.
I think Medved definitely has a valid point. People in many of the African countries are living under thuggish dictators who want to keep their citizens poor and ignorant so that they can remain in power. And corruption is so widespread that the economy simply does not function — people cannot run businesses, travel or get health care without paying graft to officials at each layer of the bureaucracy (including the police). This absolutely must change before people in most African countries can improve their standard of living.
But does that mean that we can’t simultaneously attack the problem from several angles at the same time? Even though these companies are making a bundle from selling the (RED) products, they are also buying and distributing anti-retroviral medicine to people who would not be getting it otherwise. And if consumers would be purchasing products from the participating companies anyways, why not buy the version that will help to save a life?
Bono seems to understand this. Here’s what he says on the website:
Enter Product (RED). (RED) is a new idea we’re launching to work alongside the growing ONE Campaign to Make Poverty History. Over the past year, almost 2 million Americans have joined ONE, in churches and chatrooms… on soccer pitches and movie sets… at Nascar races and rock concerts. By 2008, we’re aiming to have 5 million members – that’s more than the National Rifle Association. Just think for a moment of what that kind of political firepower could achieve for the poorest of the poor…
Where ONE takes on the bigger, longer-term beast of changing policy and influencing government, (RED) is, I guess, about a more instant kind of gratification. If you buy a (RED) product from GAP, Motorola, Armani, Converse or Apple, they will give up to 50% of their profit to buy AIDS drugs for mothers and children in Africa. (RED) is the consumer battalion gathering in the shopping malls. You buy the jeans, phones, iPods, shoes, sunglasses, and someone – somebody’s mother, father, daughter or son – will live instead of dying in the poorest part of the world. It’s a different kind of fashion statement…
…There are though still 4.3 million Africans without drugs, which is why 100% of (RED) money is going directly to the Global Fund to support the work they are doing. (RED) uses the power in your pocket to keep people alive. ONE uses the power of your voice to create a more just world where people can earn their own way out of poverty. This means tackling more than AIDS. It means fighting corruption. Insisting on good governance. Getting kids in school. Changing trade rules. Getting businesses to invest in Africa. Ali and I started a company called Edun – a fashion line that makes clothes in Africa – because so many Africans we met said what they wanted more than anything was a job.
Seems to me that these campaigns work together. Hope they work.
Technorati Tags: red, (red), bono, AIDS, Africa, Medved
by Nedra Weinreich | Oct 13, 2006 | Behavior Change, Blog, Social Marketing
David Roberts on the Gristmill blog shares what he learned from Malcolm Gladwell (author of The Tipping Point
and Blink) when he gave a keynote address about social change at a luncheon in Seattle:
Stripped of the anecdotes, the basic thesis of the talk was that social change has three somewhat unexpected features:
- It almost always happens faster and cheaper than anybody predicts. See: Berlin Wall falling.
- It is typically brought about not by people with great political or economic power, but by people with great social power — “connectors,” as he calls them. These are folks who are part of an unusually large number of social circles, who can bring disparate groups together.
- It usually happens after a seemingly intractable problem has been reframed. The example here was the spread of seatbelt use in the U.S. For a long time it was a “government meddling” issue. Then a bunch of child-restraint laws were passed, and little Johnny started asking mom why she didn’t buckle up, and it became a “family responsibility” issue. In a matter of just two or three years, seatbelt use rates soared from 15% to 65%.
So, although social change can be somewhat unpredictable (see #1), we can set the stage for it and work to create the conditions in which it can happen (see #2 and 3).
Think about who your “connectors” are for your audiences and how you can hook into their networks. And see if you might be able to reframe the issue so that it connects with the core values of the people you are trying to reach. For example, the issue of school choice has been defined by its opponents (primarily teachers’ unions) as an attack on public schools and teachers that subsidizes private and religious schools. But if you reframe the issue as one of social justice — that poor children are being denied their right to a good education — or one of government waste — that taxpayer funds are being inefficiently used by the bloated and overbureaucratized school system — then you might be able to mobilize new constituencies that had not previously thought about the issue in that way.
One of the commenters to the post, CyberBrook, shared some useful information on community organizing for social change. I especially liked the “M Factor” organizing template:
mission (plan)
message (what’s the point?)
mainstreaming (creating cultural resonance)
money (funding and resources)
mechanics (how to)
mapping (where best to organize, where best to marginalize)
might (strength and power)
marketing (getting the message out in appropriate ways)
media (using the mass media, supporting / creating alternative media)
management (organization)
measurement / market research (feedback)
mobilization (getting people organized and involved, developing capacity and leadership)
It’s like our social marketing Ps but from a community organization angle. The rest of the comments are also worth checking out.
Technorati Tags: social change, marketing, gladwell
by Nedra Weinreich | Oct 12, 2006 | Blog, Communication
Continuing with the silly mood:
AITKIN, MN—A Dream To Breathe Foundation reasserted its status as a “non-profit organization” and expressed embarrassment at unnecessary “handouts.”
Cystic-fibrosis foundation A Dream To Breathe, which has refused to accept more than $250,000 in donations since 2001, announced Monday that it was continuing to make strides in fighting the rare respiratory disorder without any handouts from “self-righteous do-gooders.”
“In the past three months alone, thousands of people from all across the country have come out and asked us to take their money, insisting that we need it more than they do,” said Development Director Joan Vandercamp in an urgent plea to Americans to take their pity elsewhere. “To you and countless others, we can only say: Who do we look like? The Salvation Army?”
“When we need your help wiping this degenerative disorder that affects 30,000 Americans off the face of the earth, we’ll let you know, okay?” she added.
According to Vandercamp, who described her foundation as an independent organization determined to make a difference in the lives of those with cystic fibrosis and not “some pathetic charity case,” A Dream To Breathe is perfectly capable of finding a cure for the deadly genetic disease that strikes the lungs and pancreas without anyone else’s aid.
“Not that it’s any of your concern, but we’ve been raising plenty of awareness on our own, thank you very much, and we’d really like to keep it that way,” said Vandercamp, who added that her foundation already had its hands full identifying the defective protein-producing gene earlier in victims of the disease without others trying to get involved. “We may not be the biggest or the most successful organization of our kind, but we have dignity, and I’ll be damned if we let your patronizing donations change that.”
Read the rest at The Onion…
by Nedra Weinreich | Oct 11, 2006 | Blog, Miscellaneous
No, this post doesn’t really have to do with social marketing. I’m just looking for an excuse to share this adorable cartoon that I saw on Coolz0r’s blog and fell in love with for some strange reason. I will just take this opportunity to thank all of you for reading and commenting on my blog so that I know I’m not just shouting into the wind. For those of you who read Spare Change regularly but do not comment, I would love to learn more about you. Leave a comment or send an email introducing yourself, tell me what kinds of things you would like me to write about, or let me know what you think about the posts I’ve written so far.
by Nedra Weinreich | Oct 10, 2006 | Behavior Change, Blog, Social Marketing
In recent years, college campuses (and other community settings) have increasingly been adopting the social norms marketing approach to reducing things like binge drinking, drug use and smoking by their students. The idea behind this approach is that people will avoid unhealthy activities if they think that most other people around them are doing it too. So, if college students think it’s normal for people to each drink a six-pack of beer at a party, they will be more likely to engage in unhealthy levels of drinking. By publicizing the statistics of how few students at that campus actually do drink that much alcohol in one sitting, showing that the norm is to drink moderately, the model suggests that students will be less likely to binge drink themselves.
This approach has quite a bit of documented success. According to the National Social Norms Resource Center, some examples of the effectiveness of this type of project in addressing high-risk drinking include:
- Hobart and William Smith Colleges — 32% Reduction over 4 years
- Northern Illinois University — 44% Reduction over 9 years
- Rowan University — 25% Reduction over 3 years
- University of Arizona — 27% Reduction over 3 years
- University of Missouri at Columbia — 21% Reduction over 2 years
- Western Washington University — 20% Reduction in the first year
But what if there is actually a substantial proportion of the population that does engage in the undesirable behavior? You could still say that “a majority of West Knippenquad University students do not smoke pot,” if 51% say they abstain. But is that a meaningful statement? Even if only 20% of the population uses drugs, that is still one out of five people — not an insignificant figure. Among certain subgroups, the percentage might be much higher.
A recent study published in the Journal of Health Communication backs up these concerns. Not surprisingly, the study found that friends have a greater influence on students’ drinking behavior or beliefs about drinking on campus than social norms campaigns. The social norms messages are not believable if they do not square with what students have observed in their own experience among their friends and acquaintances.
A survey of 277 college students at a northeastern university found that nearly 73 percent did not believe the norms message that most students drink “0-4” drinks when they party. Of that group, nearly 53 percent reported they typically drank five or more drinks at one sitting. To illustrate the influence of social networks, 96 percent of the 5-plus-drink group said their friends drank a similar amount and believed that “other students” on campus drank a similar amount.
“Disbelief in the campaign message may have resulted from the behavior observed by students among their friends and acquaintances, which contrasted with the 0-4 message,” said co-author Ann Major, professor of communications and director of the Jimirro Center for the Study of Media Influence at Penn State. “Also, some students may discount social norms campaigns as an attempt by university administrators to control their behavior.”
Perhaps the social norms approach works among those students who are on the fence about engaging in an unhealthy behavior, and just need a little reinforcement to help them do what they would be inclined to do otherwise. Other types of approaches — social marketing, policy enforcement, or counseling — might be necessary to reach the more diehard partiers who already have set expectations for what is appropriate.
I am also made more skeptical about this approach with the announcement of the establishment of the National Social Norms Institute at the University of Virginia with a $2.5 million grant from the Anheuser-Busch Corporation. I’m glad that many campuses have had success with social norms marketing, but I do hope that it will not be seen as the magic bullet across all subgroups — especially for those most in need of some type of intervention.
Technorati Tags: social norms, marketing, social marketing, alcohol, college
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. 
