by Nedra Weinreich | Jun 18, 2006 | Blog, Social Marketing
This week’s Carnival of Marketing is up at Marketallica.
My favorite post was from Spike Jones at Brains on Fire. He talks about the differences between a campaign and a movement:
Campaigns have a beginning and an end. Movements go on as long as kindred spirits are involved. Campaigns are part of the war vocabulary. Movements are part of the evangelist vocabulary. Campaigns are dry and emotionally detached. Movements are organic and rooted in passion. Campaigns rely on traditional mediums. Movements rely on word of mouth. Campaigns are part of the creationist theory. Movements are part of the evolutionist theory. Campaigns are you talking about yourself. Movements are others talking about you. Campaigns add to awareness. Movements add to credibility. Campaigns are “you vs. us.” Movements are “let’s do this together.”
To this I would add: Campaigns are static, but movements are dynamic. Nobody wants to have a campaign directed at them, but people want to become part of a movement that’s larger than themselves — and to invite their friends to join them. I think the truth campaign and the Invisible Children campaign are great examples of social marketing movements.
Are you trying to create a campaign or a movement?
by Nedra Weinreich | Jun 16, 2006 | Blog, Miscellaneous
I just found out that my book Hands-On Social Marketing: A Step-by-Step Guide is going to be translated into Chinese through a Chinese publisher. Now that’s a big market! This will join the Arabic version currently being translated by the Lebanese Ministry of Health. I would love to have a Spanish version as well (anyone out there have connections with a Latin American publisher?).
I have a favor to ask of those of you who have read and used my book. I am starting work on the next edition of the book and will be updating and adding information to it, such as a new piece on using online media in your social marketing program. If you have any feedback or suggestions on what has been most helpful from the book or what could be changed to make it better (i.e., topics, formats, etc), please either leave a comment here or e-mail me with your ideas. Thanks!
by Nedra Weinreich | Jun 15, 2006 | Blog, Social Marketing
Last night I was interviewed about social marketing by Eric Mattson of MarketingMonger.com. He is on a quest to do 1,000 podcasted interviews with “marketers, innovators, entrepreneurs and other interesting people” and I was number 41. Check out the other interviews while you’re there.
My interview lasts about 25 minutes, and covers a lot of ground about what social marketing is, its history, examples, challenges and related resources. You can download the mp3 podcast here (and don’t worry if you don’t have an iPod — you can listen on your computer directly).
by Nedra Weinreich | Jun 14, 2006 | Blog, Entertainment, Storytelling
The other night I watched a movie called Murderball that was sent to me by Participant Productions, a company I have written about in the past. Both the movie and the way it has been promoted are notable.
First, the movie – wow. Picture gladiators in wheelchairs. Mad Max playing rugby. These quadriplegic rugby players do not fit the standard stereotypes of people in wheelchairs. They are anything but fragile, banging into each other and knocking over opposing players’ chairs. Without helmets, no less.
The documentary follows the rivalry of the American and Canadian quad rugby teams and gives us a glimpse into the lives of some of the players. The ways that the men came to be in a wheelchair are as varied as the personalities of the men themselves — by a car crash, childhood meningitis, bar brawl, gunshot. And that’s the point. People in wheelchairs are as different from each other as anyone else and should be treated as individuals. But what brings this group of guys together is what they have done with their situation. They have as much, if not more, testosterone as every other man, and their competitiveness and desire to excel drives them to do what nobody would ever expect. They drink, curse, have sex, harshly discipline their children…this is not a romanticized view of the “brave disabled person.”
And because of this, I think that even more important than mainstream audiences seeing this film is having other quadriplegic people see this film. The most touching scene in the movie was when Mark Zupan, one of the American players, went to a rehab hospital to talk to the people there who had recently become paralyzed. The visit captured the imagination of one of the patients, a young man whose main love was motorcycles, when he was able to try out a competition wheelchair. It helped him see that his enjoyment of life did not have to be over just because he was in a wheelchair, and by the end of the movie he was saving up to buy his own rugby chair. A copy of this DVD should be sent to every rehab hospital in the country to give patients a glimpse of what is possible in their new life.
So, yes, I liked the movie. But I am even more impressed with the way Participant Productions is promoting it (as they seem to do with most of their movies). They have created a campaign called “Get Into the Game” that ties in a disabilities awareness theme with a cause marketing piece. They are distributing free screening kits so that organizations or groups of friends can screen the movie and raise money for the US Paralympic team for wheelchairs for needy athletes. The kits include the DVD, discussion questions and tips for having a successful screening. They have also provided a way for people who get involved with the campaign to create a blog talking about what they did and to become part of a community that is addressing this issue. And they are bringing in bloggers (like me) who write about social change to spread the word as well.
These are all things social marketers could do, related to any movie or TV show that positively portrays the kinds of messages we are promoting in our programs. Besides the communities of people who are affected by the issue, this would be a good opportunity to reach the fans of the show or actors in the movie to educate them and involve them in your strategies. Are there any entertainment programs or movies out there that you can tie into your own campaign?
In the spirit of raising awareness and spreading the word about this movie, I will be passing along my copy of the Murderball DVD for others to watch. So, (and here’s the catch!) the next person to register for Social Marketing University will get the Murderball DVD. Don’t all crowd on at once!
by Nedra Weinreich | Jun 13, 2006 | Blog, Storytelling
Toby Bloomberg (aka Diva Marketing) is collecting stories about how blogs have touched people’s lives in her Blogger Stories project. She asked me to contribute my story, which has just been posted, so if you’re interested in a little background on how I got into blogging you can read it there.
Around the same time she asked me for my blogger story, Rohit Bhargava told me about Ogilvy’s global discussion blog about HIV/Aids on the 25th anniversary of the discovery of the disease. They want to gather as many personal stories as they can about the disease, to encourage people to keep the dialogue going and “just talk about it.” Here’s more about it from Rohit’s blog. Read the stories and contribute your own experiences.
And I also recently came across the March of Dimes’ website, Share Your Story, in which parents of premature babies and babies in the NICU can tell their stories and get support from others going through the same thing.
This approach of gathering personal stories about an issue for raising awareness or changing attitudes — whether it’s to show the soul behind the technology or the human faces of a health problem — plays off an essential part of what makes us human. We tell stories to each other to make connections. We learn from hearing about other people’s experiences. We give and get comfort from each other. We find universal truths in the individual details.
The best marketing tells a story and makes a connection with the audience. Without that connection your issue is just another faceless subject among many. What story can you tell, and how can you make your audience care about that story?
by Nedra Weinreich | Jun 11, 2006 | Blog, Professional Development, Social Marketing
I am very excited to announce that I will be offering a two-day social marketing training in Los Angeles on September 18-19, 2006. The training will take place at the UCLA Conference Center on the beautiful University of California, Los Angeles campus in Westwood. The reason why I am so excited about this is that until now I have done many private workshops for various organizations and conferences, but this is the first training I am opening up to the public. That means that you can come to learn about how to use social marketing to create health or social change on your issues, whether you are ready to develop a comprehensive program now or you just want to broaden your skills for future projects.
The focus of this training is to create a social marketing strategy for your own program, as well as to provide you with the knowledge and skills to help you implement it once you return to your office. We’ll cover:
- How social marketing uses commercial marketing tools to create behavior change
- How to think like a social marketer
- How to segment and understand your audience
- How to develop a strategy using the 8 Ps of the social marketing mix
- How to follow the social marketing process to develop an effective program
- How to use audience research techniques to build and test your strategy, including an in-depth discussion of focus groups
- How to design effective messages and materials
- How to work with the media to get your message out through news and entertainment programming
- How to use cutting-edge technologies to put the new media to work for you
- How to get the most out of your social marketing budget — even if it’s small
You will receive a copy of my book, “Hands-On Social Marketing: A Step-by-Step Guide,” and other great benefits during the two days. And if you register before July 31, you will receive a $100 discount off of registration. Each additional person from your organization who registers will receive another $50 off of the registration fee — have your whole team come together for a more productive strategy session. Students also get a huge discount.
For all the details about the training, fees and housing accommodations, see the Social Marketing University information page or go directly to the registration site.
I hope you’ll join me there!
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. 
