by Nedra Weinreich | Mar 8, 2006 | Blog, Social Marketing, Social Media
Kudos to Charlene Li and her colleagues at Forrester Research for changing the name of their previously titled “Social Marketing Boot Camp” to the “Social Computing Boot Camp” (official title – “Social Computing: Tapping Into the Power of Connected Customers”).
After my recent post bemoaning the fact that the term “social marketing” was being co-opted by bloggers and others talking about peer-to-peer and consumer generated media, Charlene agreed that the dual use of the term could be confusing. Thanks to her example, and hopefully others like her out there, we may yet win the war of words, keeping the meaning of the term “social marketing” free from confusion.
And I think the term “social computing” describes what she is doing perfectly.
by Nedra Weinreich | Mar 8, 2006 | Blog, Social Marketing
The Word of Mouth Marketing Association highlights tips from the Prostate Net’s Virgil Simons on how he used a grassroots-based word of mouth campaign to increase the number of men in underserved communities getting screened for prostate cancer. Working with a volunteer force of over 300 barbers who went through his training, his project has reached over 10,000 of the participating barbers’ customers and detected a whopping 452 cases of prostate cancer.
This campaign was right on the mark in so many ways:
- It reached men at a place that every man needs to go on a regular basis — the barbershop.
- It utilized people who were trusted in the community, who already had personal relationships with each customer — the barbers.
- It worked with local hospitals and other partners to have free screening tests available for the men referred by the barbers.
- It jumped on an incredibly timed opportunity for exposure by tying in the campaign with the movie “Barbershop 2,” which was released during that period.
- It provided ongoing incentives and recognition for the barbers who were involved with the effort.
- It was such an unusual type of campaign that it was able to get extensive news coverage, and even a mention on the Jay Leno show.
For more information, you can see Virgil’s presentation at the WOMMA conference (pdf).
by Nedra Weinreich | Mar 6, 2006 | Blog, Marketing
This week’s Carnival of Marketing is now up, hosted by Jack Yoest at Yoest.org. It has several very interesting articles on various aspects of marketing.
Also, forgot to link to the Carnival last week, which was hosted over the course of the week by Larry Bodine at the Professional Services Marketing Blog. Here is the link to the first day of posts, which started off with yours truly (it says “Day Two,” but the first day was just the introduction). Follow the links at the tops of the pages to see each day’s post.
by Nedra Weinreich | Feb 28, 2006 | Blog, Resources, Social Marketing
Britt Bravo (I just love her name – she sounds like a superhero!) tagged me to participate in a new meme [definition] that’s going around. I guess this is the blogger equivalent of a chain letter, minus the threats to my health and fortune if I don’t pass it along. But this is actually a topic that I would want to post about at some point anyway, and I think most other bloggers would as well.
The question is, “What five resources – online or otherwise – would you point people to, if you wanted to give them an entry into your field of expertise?”
So here are five useful resources I would recommend to those who want to learn more about social marketing:
1. Bill Smith of the Academy for Educational Development is one of the best minds in the social marketing field. He has compiled a number of his articles and presentations on social marketing into an e-book called Social Marketing Lite (pdf), which is written in an easy-to-read and conversational style.
2. Tools of Change is a great website that offers specific tools, case studies, and a planning guide to implement social marketing programs.
3. The annual Social Marketing in Public Health Conference is hosted by the University of South Florida in Clearwater Beach, FL each May or June, and is the best place to get up to speed with the current state of social marketing knowledge and practice. They offer a preconference introductory training for people new to the field, the conference itself with both plenaries and in-depth workshops, and a field school the following week for those who wish to receive training in specific social marketing topics. I always highly recommend this conference for anyone who is interested in becoming a social marketer, whether or not their focus is on public health issues.
4. The Turning Point Social Marketing National Excellence Collaborative is a Robert Wood Johnson Foundation-funded project that offers numerous downloadable publications about social marketing, information on training, free CDCynergy social marketing planning CDs and more.
5. And for the latest news and cutting edge thinking on the topic, I go to R. Craig Lefebvre’s blog On Social Marketing and Social Change. He always has something interesting to say.
For those who want to get into more depth after checking out these five resources, I have compiled many other useful social marketing-related links and articles on my website and Squidoo lens.
And now, who to tag to continue this chain? I will pass the torch to some of my favorite bloggers whose fields do not overlap too much with me or each other:
Rohit Bhargava to list 5 resources for becoming an interactive marketer
Robert Avrech to list 5 resources for becoming a screenwriter
and I’ll take a big chance and invite Guy Kawasaki to list 5 resources for becoming a product evangelist.
by Nedra Weinreich | Feb 23, 2006 | Behavior Change, Blog, Social Marketing
A new study from Ekant Veer at the University of Auckland highlights the importance of distinguishing between educational approaches and motivational ones in developing messages for a particular target audience. While social marketing does not equal public education, sometimes you need to raise awareness and educate people about an issue before they can move to the next stage of behavior change.
The study, designed to identify the most effective approaches to prompt overweight children to want to lose weight, tested two types of messages — educational and motivational. The research first identified four distinct groups within the high school population, as described by Veer:
“Firstly we have those who are ‘Unaware and Don’t Care’,” he says. “This group know that they are not their ideal size, but don’t think about weight loss enough. However, subconsciously they want to lose weight.
“Then there are the ‘Blissfully Unaware’ who don’t think about their size and, when prompted, say they are happy with the way they look. This group subconsciously doesn’t want to lose weight.
“Our third group is students who are ‘Ready to Go’. They don’t like their current size and are consciously looking to lose weight.
“Finally we have the ‘Beautifully Big’ who love the size they are and consciously do not want to lose weight.”
Not surprisingly, each group responded uniquely to the different approaches, when shown advertisements designed with the two types of messages. Here are the results:
“Students in the ‘Blissfully Unaware’ group were 30 percent more likely to lose weight when they were shown both types of advertisements rather than just an educational one. ‘Beautifully Big’ students were 15 percent more likely to respond to the educational advert than the motivational one.“The differences weren’t so marked for the ‘Unaware and Don’t Care’ students who showed a slight preference for the motivational advertisements.
“As expected, the students in the ‘Ready to Go’ category were 22 percent more likely to lose weight than the other groups, and had no preference for either type of advertisement. This is probably because they had already made the conscious decision to lose weight and advertising was unlikely to increase their desire. Most important for this group is that they have access to feasible and effective weight loss programmes.”
Overweight high school students are not a monolithic market segment. Beyond their demographics and medical stats, good social marketing research identifies the key attitudinal and behavioral characteristics that determine how the audience will respond to a given approach. What do they think about their weight? Do they want to lose weight? Have they tried losing weight on their own? What do they need in order to help them move to the next step on the path toward behavior change?
Incorporate this 14 day fitness challenge, will sculpt your muscles while helping you to burn fat! Getting your heart rate up is key to boosting metabolism as well as calorie-burn.
Craig Lefebvre recently posted on what to consider as you segment your target audience for a social marketing program. He says that your segmentation scheme needs work if (among other things):
- It reads like a page from a census document.
- It is overly concerned with the consumers’ identities to the neglect of which behavioral features matter to current and potential audiences (for physical activity – what types of activities, under what circumstances, for how long, when and with whom are some of the features that can be considered).
- There is too little emphasis on the actual behaviors of the audience (these are the audience profiles where you feel all ‘warm and fuzzy’ about the audience but don’t have a clue about what they do when it comes to engaging in the target behaviors or any of the possible competitive ones).
- There are no obvious implications for how to position the desired behavior versus competing ones, what incentives to offer, what barriers to address, where and when to provide opportunities to try and/or engage in the behavior, and what promotional strategies and messages may be most relevant for the audience.
So, before everything else must come an understanding of who your target audience is and what makes them tick. Only after you know this can you determine whether an educational or motivational approach (or a combination) will work. And even then, you will still need to test the messages with the different segments of your audience to make sure you’re right.
Don’t make assumptions about who your audience is and how they will respond — they may surprise you.
by Nedra Weinreich | Feb 21, 2006 | Behavior Change, Blog, Personal
Last year, I decided to learn to play the cello. Although I had studied piano for at least a dozen years as a child, I was bored with that instrument (though I still shlep my kids to piano lessons). I’d always loved the mellow sound of the cello, and promised myself that when I retired and finally had extra time, I would take cello lessons. But after seeing Yo-Yo Ma play at Royce Hall at UCLA last year, I decided that there was no point in waiting; if I thought I would enjoy playing, I should start getting the pleasure now and make time for it.
I knew that a string instrument would be very different from the piano. But I didn’t know just how difficult it was to produce notes that sounded like they came from a cello rather than an injured goose. Even now, almost a year into lessons, I still constantly wince at the squeaks and squawks that I make.
I’m lucky to be someone for whom most things come pretty easily. In school, at work, in life, I have not had to work very hard to master things I have to or want to do. But learning the cello has made me more humble. I’m finding it a major challenge, and something I have to work at over and over to develop the skills I need in fingering, bowing and reading music written only in the bass clef. I’m enjoying the process, but boy is this hard work.
This reminded me of a story told to me by a good friend of mine, who was an elementary school teacher for many years. She went to a continuing education class for teachers in which the instructor insisted that, as part of the class, each student must learn to juggle by the end of the course session. My friend had no experience juggling and her first attempts were laughable. She was frustrated and did not want to continue. But as she and her fellow teachers spent more time learning from a patient juggling expert, she saw herself get better and better. Finally, as part of the final exam, she had to demonstrate that she had learned the juggling skills, which she did (mostly). At the end of the last class, the instructor explained that the frustration they had felt in having to learn these difficult skills was similar to what a child struggling with a learning disability might feel when asked to read a paragraph of text. The point was that the teachers should have empathy with the children they are asking to learn new and complex skills.
And yes, this all ties back into social marketing. Think about the sorts of things we ask our target audience to do. Eat a healthy diet, tracking everything from fiber and salt to fat, carbs and antioxidants. Figure out how and where to get a colonoscopy. Carve out 30 minutes a day in their nonstop lives to exercise in between getting the kids ready for school, working long days, doing the grocery shopping, chauffeuring the kids to their afterschool activities, making dinner, doing laundry and collapsing into bed. These require skills that do not come easily to everybody. And many social marketing behaviors must be done several times a day or week, which is unlikely to happen if someone does not feel confident that they are capable of doing them.
For my cello teacher, who played in the LA Philharmonic for over 30 years, playing Bach comes as second nature. But I, who can barely scratch out Clair de Lune, need lots of help developing my skills. As you develop your social marketing program and figure out what you will be asking the target audience to do, make sure that you either do not ask them to do something that’s beyond their current capability or that you help them develop the skills they need to be able to accomplish the behavior. What comes easily to you might be a huge barrier for someone else.
Now, back to practicing.
UPDATE: Photo Credit: eforto
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. 
