Along the lines of my post last week, here’s an example of an organization making an explicit connection between religious values and an environmental issue:
And in case you don’t know about it yet, the blog I found this on, Houtlust, is an amazing source for examples of social marketing campaigns from around the world.
And I’m back… Apologies for the not so brief hiatus, during which time I went to Israel and England for my brother-in-law’s wedding to an amazing Brit. Upon my return, I was knocked out by a killer sinus infection, from which I’ve only just recovered. And I’m about to disappear again for a few days while I join millions of other observant Jews around the world in the culmination of the annual cleaning frenzy to prepare the house for Passover, which starts Wednesday night. Every inch of the house needs to be cleaned to make sure no crumbs of leavened food remain, to recreate the Jewish people’s experience in the journey to freedom after being enslaved in Egypt. It’s a beautiful holiday (once the cleaning and cooking are done!).
As I was taking all the food out of my cupboards and scrubbing away a year of accumulated shmutz (dirt), I reflected on the power of faith to motivate people to engage in behaviors that involve hard work, inconvenience, no immediate benefit, and a substantial monetary cost (sound like some of our social marketing behaviors?).
Believing that something is a religious obligation — whether it is keeping kosher, spending time in a far-off country as a missionary, or making the hajj — can be a major motivator for members of that religion to take on that behavior. What are the benefits? They may vary from person to person, depending on their reasons for being part of that religion in the first place, but they could include believing that you will go to heaven as a result, feeling included in the community, imparting your values to the next generation, feeling the satisfaction of doing what God expects of you…
There are many religious values that are consistent with other health and social values we as social marketers might want to tie in. For example, many Jews and Christians believe it is a religious obligation to tithe their income to charity — how can your nonprofit relate its fundraising pitch to that religiously-motivated giving? The Torah holds the value of pikuach nefesh (saving a life) above just about every other commandment — in a campaign trying to increase organ donation, this value might resonate with a Jewish audience. I have been involved with a campaign by the American Anti-Slavery Group relating freeing modern-day slaves to the concept of freedom at the center of the holiday of Passover.
Of course, I am using examples from what I know, but you can think about the religious values of your own faith and figure out ways to make connections with various social marketing issues. Faith is a powerful motivator, and you may be able to harness its power for your own program.
To my Jewish readers, chag sameach v’kasher (a happy and kosher Passover). To everyone else, a wonderful and productive week.
I have a new article up on MarketingProfs.com called Strategic Social Marketing for Nonprofits.
If you run a nonprofit, you know that marketing is essential to your mission. To many nonprofit managers, marketing equals fundraising and nothing more. But your organization exists for more than just bringing in donations. By using social marketing methods, you can boost the effectiveness of programs and activities that are the reason your organization exists in the first place—to make a difference.Social marketing uses the same tools and techniques of commercial marketing, but its purpose is to bring about positive health and social change. Rather than focusing on sales or funds raised as the ultimate outcome, social marketing’s bottom line is behavior change…
I hope you’ll read the rest for what I think is a good basic overview of social marketing.
From the WOMMA newsletter, we get a glimpse into the power of Mom WOM for influencing the entire family. Lucid Marketing’s Kevin Burke gives us five reasons for targeting mothers for word of mouth campaigns:
Tip #1. Moms are your customers
Recent data suggests moms control 80 percent of household spending, and they are typically buying for themselves, their husbands, and their kids. Capture “Mom WOM” and you capture a huge market of valuable consumers for nearly every consumer business.Tip #2. Moms are busy and discerning
Moms have more choices than in previous generations. They are pressed for time and often juggle a work-life balance. Moms multi-task skillfully because they have to. They’re on the lookout for solutions to make life easier, which is one reason why they strongly embrace the internet. If stranded on a desert island and can only have one medium, they chose email over all others.Tip #3. Moms are not classical influential profile
Moms value relationships to a greater extent than anyone else because they experience the strongest relationship anyone can have — a mother and child. Moms are good at building relationships and enjoy sharing know-how. You can see relationships growing and word of mouth happening at ball games, bus stops, birthday parties, etc.Tip #4. Moms are extremely credible with peers
Moms are big influencers in mom-to-mom dialogue. They are more likely to make personal recommendations to other moms, and they rank WOM from other moms as the most trusted means of finding out about new products and services. The thought process is as simple as, “she’s like me and knows what I face!”Tip #5. Moms have widely differing behaviors
“Typical” mom activities? There are no such thing. Their busy lives lead them to all different places and experiences.
As a mom of a 5 and an 8 year old, this definitely matches up with my own experience. I make 90% of all purchasing decisions for the family (#1), hugely prefer to use e-mail over other forms of communication because it’s quick and efficient (#2), spend my day jumping between different relationship contexts (#3), will definitely trust the opinions of other moms I know about things related to the kids as well as products/services that will make my life a little easier (#4), and rarely have one day that’s the same as the next (#5).
I am WOMMY, hear me roar!
Billboardom has some great examples of creative billboards and outdoor media against drinking and driving. It’s fun to see social marketers thinking outside the 30-second PSA box.
Pharmaceutical companies are amazingly effective at convincing doctors (and patients) that their products are the solution for particular health problems. What can we learn from the marketing techniques that Big Pharma uses, to apply to the social marketing issues we are addressing?
Today’s Wall Street Journal features a front-page article
(available only to wsj.com subscribers) called “As Drug Bill Soars, Some Doctors Get An ‘Unsales’ Pitch.” The article describes how the state of Pennsylvania has funded a team of “unsalespeople” to get doctors to consider alternatives to expensive brand-name drugs — things like cheaper generic drugs, over the counter remedies, and even lifestyle changes. Pennsylvania hopes to reduce the $3 billion a year it spends on drugs for state employees, poor people on Medicaid and elderly people on the state drug-assistance program.
Pharmaceutical companies spend billions of dollars a year on their marketing efforts to make sure that doctors think of their brand-name products when they write a prescription. They employ more than 90,000 salespeople in the US, who are known as “detailers” because they can recite drug facts from memory. Every day they roll from doctor’s office to doctor’s office, handing out everything from pens and notepads to clocks and tissue boxes emblazoned with their brand logos, hoping to get a few minutes with the docs to deliver their sales pitch.
Pennsylvania’s “unsales” force does not have fun promotional items to hand out, but they do have something the drug reps don’t have: credibility. They carry a letter of introduction from the Harvard professor coordinating the program and offer free copies of books by Harvard doctors. In addition, Harvard has certified the content of its reps talks as educational, so that doctors who listen to the material and pass a short quiz afterward receive continuing medical education credits (CMEs).
For what types of social marketing issues could we use this distribution model? Research has found that for some health issues, people are much more likely to take action if they are told by their doctor to do something — for example, getting a mammogram, quitting smoking, losing weight, etc. However, many doctors do not address these issues unless the patient brings it up himself.
A group of rheumatologists I worked with in Mexico explained to me that only a very tiny percentage of Mexican patients with rheumatological conditions like arthritis ever see a specialist. Most people do not know that the field of rheumatology exists, and their primary care physician never refers them to a specialist. They were interested in using social marketing to promote their profession, primarily to general practitioners who should be referring certain types of cases to a rheumatologist. This type of issue, which involves building awareness of available resources with the common goal of improving outcomes for their patients, could also be “sold” through face-to-face meetings with primary care physicians. Ironically, this meeting was part of a conference at an all-inclusive resort near Cancun sponsored by a major pharmaceutical company introducing a new use for one of their drugs.
Most social marketing programs cannot afford to fly in doctors from all over the country to wine and dine them with a fancy vacation while pitching their product, but perhaps your program could identify the largest medical practices in your community and conduct some lunchtime educational sessions while offering CMEs. Visit medical offices to try to get a few minutes of the doctors’ time to promote your product, and make sure that your message is one that will resonate with a physician; focus on facts and effectiveness based on research. Provide tools that will help them do what you are asking them to do: ready-made handouts, referral slips, a stamp or sticker to add to each patient’s chart. You have something of value you can offer to physicians — a way of helping them improve the health of their patients. It may not be a branded gym bag, but you have credibility and objectivity on your side.
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. 
