The Above the Influence website created by Fleishman-Hillard for the Office of National Drug Control Policy’s Youth Anti-Drug Media Campaign has just won a Webby Award in the youth category. Take a look at it as an excellent example of a social marketing campaign using the internet to reach a youth audience.
Next Sunday we will be celebrating Mother’s Day with a very special Carnival of Marketing hosted right here at Spare Change. You are invited to submit your marketing-related blog posts (especially anything related to mothers or social marketing) to me (weinreich at social-marketing.com) by Saturday night 5/13. Per carnival rules, I will be selecting seven of my favorite submissions and posting them here.
You can check out this week’s Carnival of Marketing at the Fast Growth Blog.
An amazing case study in progress shows how social change can happen quickly within the MySpace generation.
From Leadernotes (via Seth Godin): How to Raise $500,000 from Middle Class White Kids (and Why the Red Cross Never Will)
Three 20-something kids with a video camera wind up in northern Uganda. They see incredible horror and encounter heartbreaking suffering, most especially among children.Instead of turning their backs, they can’t stop thinking about it. They decide to do something about it.
What can three white kids do to stop 20 years of horror and war? They decide that alone they can’t do much, but if they can mobilize enough other youth, they can influence the powerful.
They know their audience – other youth. They use multimedia, they use rock music, they use myspace, they make music videos, they portray things raw and gritty and honest and authentic.
…They make their message viral and easy to share. Buy a DVD of their documentary and they send you two – one to share with someone.
They brilliantly merge online content with offline activities, such as house parties and private screenings. They provide materials to allow people to host their own house parties.
People who sign up online get regular updates on their Ipod to motivate and give them insider information.
The organization is dedicated to ending the war in Northern Uganda where children are abducted and forced to fight with the rebel army as child soldiers. For fear of being hunted by the LRA (Lord’s Resistance Army), these children commute on foot every night to find safe places to sleep in their town centers. To date, more than 30,000 children have been abducted and forced into war.
The Invisible Children campaign that they started is sponsoring a nationwide event this Saturday April 29th in 130 cities. In this Global Night Commute, participants will walk to their cities’ designated locations and sleep outside on behalf of the invisible children of Northern Uganda. It will be interesting to see if they are able to get mainstream media coverage of this event, or if it will remain under the radar except to the youth population.
This Sunday April 30 is the Save Darfur Rally to Stop Genocide on the National Mall in Washington DC. Other rallies will be happening in cities around the country on that day. If you are able to attend one of the rallies, speak up for those who have no voice. If you cannot attend a rally in person, you can be there online via the Virtual March for Darfur — sign your name and be counted.
About a year and half ago, I started speaking at Los Angeles-area schools to raise students’ awareness about the situation in Darfur and slavery in Sudan. I was amazed at how engaged the students became with this issue, with many of them selling green bracelets to raise funds and getting involved with local events. In fact, they formed a group called “Teens Against Genocide” with students from 20 different area high schools and held their own rally in front of the Federal building last Sunday.
If you would like to learn more about the situation in Darfur, which is particularly poignant on this Holocaust Remembrance Day, take a look at information from the Save Darfur Coalition and/or watch this movie from Physicians for Human Rights. Then check out this list of 10 Things You Can Do Right Now from the Genocide Intervention Network.
“Never again,” which is what the world said after the Holocaust, and again after Rwanda, has to mean that we do something when we know that genocide is happening. We take action. We’re already too late for 400,000 people murdered by their own government. Millions more refugees are counting on us to help them. Let’s be their voices.
Social marketing campaigns seem to be keeping the rubber hand manufacturers in business this week. Here are two campaigns featured by Adfreak:
The first is a campaign from Amnesty International that uses rubber hands hanging from a grate in the street to highlight the plight of political prisoners who are put in jail because they hold the wrong opinion:
UNICEF used the same idea to raise awareness of children who are imprisoned simply for living on the street:
And this campaign from Brussels Airlines, as seen on Advertising/Design Goodness, makes clear the ease with which pickpockets can put their hand into someone’s bag without them noticing.
As these campaigns show, the only limit to the types of promotional methods you can use is your own creativity (and your budget too, I suppose). It’s interesting that all three of these campaigns came up with the same idea independently. Perhaps there was a sale on rubber hands at Hands ‘R’ Us. On the other hand…
Last week, the Pew Internet & American Life Project released a report called “The Internet’s Growing Role in Life’s Major Moments.” According to their 2005 survey, people are more and more using the internet as a primary source of information when either helping someone else with a major illness or health condition, or when looking for information for their own health issues.
Here are some of its key findings:
And from a previous Pew report, from which this data is drawn:
In a social environment based on networked individualism, the internet’s capacity to help maintain and cultivate social networks has real payoffs. Our work shows that internet use provides online Americans a path to resources, such as access to people who may have the right information to help deal with a health or medical issue or to confront a financial issue. Sometimes this assistance comes from a close friend or family member. Sometimes this assistance comes from a person more socially distant, but made close by email in a time of need. The result is that people not only socialize online, but they also incorporate the internet into seeking information, exchanging advice, and making decisions.
The Joslin Diabetes Center is a good example of an online community providing support to individuals with a given health condition (you can login as a guest to take a peek around). A study of the effectiveness of the Joslin discussion boards, as an example of internet-based discussion groups found that they made a big difference in the lives of many who used them:
Nearly 75 percent of respondents to the study’s 2004 survey rated participation in the discussion board as having a positive effect on coping with diabetes. As one woman commented, “I have found an oasis where I can be encouraged, inspired and educated by people who sincerely understand my struggles.”What’s more, 71 percent of respondents stated participation helped them to feel more hopeful. One user, a representative of many, found the discussion board to be an online lifeline. “Here in Spain, I have no support,” she commented. “I honestly don’t know what I would do without the support I find here. It really has transformed my life and had a positive influence on the way I cope with diabetes.”
If you have the information people are looking for, or if you can provide the framework on which these online communities and social networks can form around health issues, your organization can play a major role in the decisions people make about their health. But if you don’t have an online presence, you won’t even be part of that conversation.
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. 
