by Nedra Weinreich | Mar 7, 2007 | Blog, Entertainment, Social Marketing
Yesterday while I was waiting for my daughter during her ballet class, a well-known celebrity who is currently on a popular TV show walked in to pick up his daughter. Not so unusual, living in LA, but I wouldn’t have even noticed if another mom had not said something. He looked kind of bloated, his skin was blotchy and he was wearing a shlumpy sweatsuit. He was perfectly pleasant to the others in the room, cooing at babies and making jokes, but I found myself looking forward to telling my friends about how awful this guy looked in real life.
As I was on my way home, I realized that what at first seemed like a perfectly normal reaction was really quite a nasty impulse. Why should I expect him to make himself look good (put on make-up?!?) when all he was doing was picking up his daughter. To be fair, he could have said the same negative things about my own clothes and appearance. I decided not to reveal his identity here, as tempting as it is, because I realized that he should be allowed to have a private life.
This got me to thinking about our society’s love/hate relationship with celebrities. While sports figures, musicians and Hollywood types are considered by their fans to be role models, heroes and generally amazing people, there are even more people who delight in seeing those same celebrities brought down a notch. Whether it’s our fascination with Britney Spears’ public meltdown, Mel Gibson’s drunken ranting or pictures of Jessica Simpson’s cellulite in the supermarket tabloids, we crane our necks for a glimpse of a chink in the perfectly polished armor worn by a celebrity.
Why is it so important for us to see an imperfection, to get proof that actors/models/singers are only human? Does it make us feel better about ourselves, how we look, how much money we make? The Dove Evolution video went a long way toward taking away some of the mystique behind beautiful models, and so perhaps we want to be reassured that the person behind the make-up and airbrushed photos is no better than ourselves.
What do you think? Why do paparazzi get thousands of dollars for pictures of celebrities going about their daily lives? Why was Britney’s rehab status updated on the news daily? Is it schadenfreude or are we just a bunch of insecure celebrity worshipers?
And if the celebrity associated with your cause goes from being loved to hated, you have a big problem.
Photo Credit: Heartdisk
by Nedra Weinreich | Feb 8, 2007 | Blog, Entertainment
Last night I attended a panel discussion in Hollywood on the State of Teen TV coordinated and hosted by Anastasia Goodstein of Ypulse. It’s always fun to meet a blogger whom I read regularly, and Anastasia was even more fun in person than on her blog. You can read her summary of the event, but I’ll also give you some thoughts on what struck me most.
The panelists included:
- Rob Thomas – creator and exec. producer of the CW show “Veronica Mars“
- Rajiv Mody – director of franchise development for MTV’s Virtual Laguna Beach/The Hills
- Dixie Feldman – editorial director of The N (the network with the #1 concentration of the teen/young adult demo)
- Amanda Zweerink – director of community at Current TV
- Kelli Feigley – partner at Dreaming Tree Films
The overall theme that emerged is that television as we know it is changing, and that some of the players involved are more willing or able to adapt to this new world, which is not all that different from the online world that teens already live in.
The ethos that is evolving is that teen audiences want “to be able to live the show and share it with their friends,” as Rajiv described how his virtual worlds tie into the TV-based programming. Fans can go online and mingle with the cast members, participate in events tied to the latest episode, and feel like they are part of the show. Dixie (whose bio contained one of the best lines of the night: “She puts the broad back in broadcasting.”) described how when one of the characters in the N show Degrassi died, fans lit candles at a virtual vigil and put armbands and veils on their avatars. The network facilitated the expressions of grief by providing clips of sad scenes and sad music for use in creating video tributes.
The other part of it is that teens want to have a voice in the content that they watch. Current TV contains about one-third viewer created content, and they also give a lot of latitude to the producers they call on to create content. They are looking for ways to make it easier for people to contribute content, such as submitting short pieces of footage for editing rather than a long finished piece. As mobile technology improves toward broadcast quality, impromptu videos of newsworthy events will become a major source of content. For a younger audience, Samsung Fresh Films (part of Dreaming Tree) runs a program to help teens create their own professional-quality films.
One of the most interesting parts of the evening was when Rob and Dixie spoke about how they approach dealing with hot-button topics on their shows. Rob lamented that the show that just aired with some references to the abortion pill got hate mail from both the left and the right. He emphasized that as a writer, he’s not trying to be topical and teach life lessons, but he is interested in “putting a moral and ethical dilemma in front of Veronica and seeing how she responds.” Another episode coming up will have one of the characters active in the Invisible Children campaign.
Dixie talked about some of the many issues that had come up on The N’s shows. There was an abortion episode on “Degrassi,” which ended up being pulled by Viacom (MTV’s parent company). Another character got gonorrhea of the throat. In the show “South of Nowhere,” an episode centered around a girl who was attracted to another girl. They took a lot of heat for that, but they also got a positive response from a lot of teen girls. She and Rob both said that they had not had the network execs object to or censor an episode, but their battles have been more with the standards and practices people who get into niggling details like how many times they can use the word “boner” in one episode or whether it’s less objectionable to show a girl eating a popsicle, lollipop, banana or corn dog in a particular scene. On the positive side (from my perspective, at least), Dixie said that because their audience is primarily teens and preteens, the S&P folks are more emphatic about the need to portray consequences and provide context for decisions made by the characters.
Rob had some interesting predictions about where TV is heading. He thinks there will be more specificity of viewing, with fewer “big tent” shows that appeal to everyone and more shows for niche audiences. In the future, we may buy particular shows a la carte rather than subscribing to cable or satellite channels. He also speculated about the interesting things they could do with a virtual universe based on Veronica Mars.
The worst term of the night that I’d never heard before was “vomenting,” which means adding text or audio commentary to shows a la MST 3000. The N provides a “video mix masher” for teens to use with scenes from the shows to create their voments. (I hope this term doesn’t catch on!)
So it sounds like television and online content will continue to mash themselves together until eventually there will be no distinction between the two. Teens want to interact with the programs, create their own content, and do this all on their own terms. Our challenge as social marketers now is how to facilitate teens doing this with content related to our health and social issues, whether on TV, online or both.
Anastasia will be uploading the recording of the event on her blog soon.
Technorati Tags: television, TV, teens, youth, ypulse
by Nedra Weinreich | Jan 8, 2007 | Blog, Communication, Entertainment
Nowadays you can’t go a week without hearing some celebrity talking about a health or social issue — either their own medical problem or one they feel is important enough to comment on. Generally, this is a good thing because it raises awareness, which may lead to changes in public behavior. Laura Bush recently publicized her own bout with skin cancer, which will hopefully have the effect of increasing awareness of skin cancer prevention and screening. Lance Armstrong may have singlehandedly caused hundreds of cases of testicular cancer to be caught early (pun not intended!), by speaking out about his own experience and encouraging men to screen themselves. Katie Couric felt so strongly about the importance of being screened for colon cancer after her husband died from it that she had an on-air colonoscopy on the Today Show, increasing nationwide testing by 20%.
But what do you do when celebrities make public statements about an issue that are just plain wrong, and even worse, detrimental to your cause? Tom Cruise’s spoutings off about postpartum depression being merely the result of insufficient exercise and vitamins may have prevented women suffering from the condition to avoid antidepressants or psychiatric treatment that would help them. Anna Nicole Smith endorsed weight-loss drug TrimSpa, for which its marketers were recently fined millions of dollars for deceptive advertising claims. Madonna certainly brought attention to the issue of child adoption, but should she serve as a model for potential adoptive parents? (Angelina Jolie doesn’t think so!)
Bob Brody of Ogilvy has a useful guide on how to create celebrity health campaigns. But how do you do damage control when a celebrity not affiliated with your program spouts off nonsense? For better or worse, when celebrities speak, people listen. Certainly not everybody cares what Paris Hilton or Brad Pitt has to say, but perhaps it’s more likely to be those who do not have the basic health or science knowledge to realize that the beautiful people are speaking bunk.
A British organization called Sense About Science is taking on these celebrity self-appointed advocates and armchair scientists who claim to know the real truth (Tom Cruise: “Here’s the problem. You don’t know the history of psychiatry. I do… There is no such thing as a chemical imbalance.”), by offering good science and promoting respect for evidence on issues ranging from alternative medicine to bird flu, stem cell research and genetic modification of crops. (via Instapundit)
The incorrect statements need to be countered with logic and peer-reviewed research, indeed, but social marketing efforts can take advantage of the celebrity’s status to get out accurate information. Using the story of what the celebrity said as a news peg for your own information gives a reporter both the lure of being able to write about that celebrity again and to cover the conflict and controversy — especially if yours is a well-respected organization taking on a popular personality. And don’t just talk to the media, but contact the person who is spreading the inaccurate information and offer the benefit of your expertise so that if they truly do want to be an effective advocate, they will be able to speak from a position of real authority rather than the flimsy spotlight of the red carpet.
Right now, I’m reading a book sent to me by the publisher called When Illness Goes Public: Celebrity Patients and How We Look at Medicine by Barron H. Lerner, which I think will speak to some of these issues. I’ll revisit this topic once I’ve had a chance to get through the book.
Photo Credit: nicklee
Technorati Tags: social marketing, celebrity, lance armstrong, katie couric, laura bush, tom cruise, anna nicole smith, madonna, angelina jolie, paris hilton, brad pitt, sense about science, health, ogilvy
by Nedra Weinreich | Dec 1, 2006 | Blog, Entertainment, Gaming
Here are a few semi-related interesting tidbits related to online entertainment and games:
- Today I met Fabio Gratton and Jeff Rohwer of Incendia Health Studios. They are doing a lot of interesting work at the intersection of health, entertainment and the internet. Their Live With It animated series of webisodes on living with HIV is excellent, they are building an advocacy community around breast cancer to let women share their stories, they’ve created an online interactive television network around Hepatitis B and are working on several other similar projects. They have an interesting business model of building the content and then finding sponsors (usually pharma companies).
- The CDC is not just in Second Life, but also in Whyville, a virtual world for children and teens ages 8-15. In support of National Influenza Vaccination Week, the CDC joined forces with Whyville in a campaign to immunize its citizens against the virtual “Why-Flu.” This simulated version of influenza is transmitted by contact with other infected avatars and results in uncontrolled sneezing that interrupts the ability to chat as well as ugly red boils on the avatar’s face. By purchasing a virtual vaccination, Whyville citizens are protected from this problem and learn about the importance of early vaccinations in the process. (via Ypulse)
- Second Life and other online role-playing games like World of Warcraft and the Sims can be used to create mini-movies called machinima. Over at the GamePolitics blog, there is a post on using machinima for social change. While he focuses on issues like politics and historical events, machinima can also be used to create short videos on health issues or medical simulations (for example, this Alcoholics Anonymous meets the Matrix video or this heart murmur simulation).
- Finally, the Games for Health website has just made 12 presentations from their September conference available on their website, with more to come including a video from the conference.
That’s it for now. I’ll just leave you with the little teaser that I’m planning the next Social Marketing University training, which will take place in Washington, DC on March 28-30, 2007 (with the last half-day focusing on Next Generation Social Marketing — those who are already seasoned social marketers will be able to register just for that day). More details will be available soon, and if you would like to receive an announcement of this and future trainings, just send an e-mail to training@social-marketing.com.
Technorati Tags: entertainment, gaming, health, whyville, flu, machinima
by Nedra Weinreich | Nov 14, 2006 | Blog, Entertainment
If you were inspired by my last post on working with Hollywood writers to do social marketing “product placement,” you’re in luck. The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation has just published a report called Your Issue Here: Working with Hollywood to Deliver Your Message to Millions (download pdf or order hard copy).
Based on interviews with many of the Entertainment Resource Professionals Association members, writers Karen Brailsford and Andy Goodman have identified 14 principles to guide causes that want to reach out to the entertainment industry. Briefly, they are:
- Build your Rolodex and work it relentlessly.
- Deliver a strong pitch by keeping the facts hard and the sell soft.
- Immerse yourself in the Hollywood community.
- Become an indispensable research assistant.
- Let the writers do the writing.
- Even when they say yes, be careful.
- Look beyond the Nielsen Top 20.
- Keep it light to shine a light.
- Partner with proven experts in entertainment outreach.
- Aim high by approaching networks, not just specific shows.
- Capitalize on network initiatives already in play.
- Make the most of storylines that touch on your issue.
- Put a very recognizable face on your cause.
- Reward the entertainment community.
Read the report yourself to get the meat behind these tasty bites and benefit from this collected wisdom.
Technorati Tags: rwjf, television, health, marketing, media
by Nedra Weinreich | Nov 13, 2006 | Blog, Entertainment
A couple of weeks ago, some of my friends and colleagues from the Entertainment Resource Professionals Association (ERPA), of which I am a member, were interviewed by a reporter at the LA Times. The article just came out, and is an excellent introduction to how health and social advocates are facilitating their issues’ portrayals in the plotlines of daytime and primetime television shows.
Why is this tactic in the social marketing toolbox important?
The CDC analyzed U.S. health survey data in 1999. Researchers concluded that of the 38 million Americans who regularly watch daytime soap operas, almost half said they learned something about diseases and how to prevent them. Even better, about a third of viewers said they took some action based on what they saw on a soap opera, including 7% who visited a doctor and 6% who did something to prevent a health problem.
A year later, the CDC looked at prime-time television. It found that of Americans who tuned in twice a week or more, 52% said they trusted the health information they see to be accurate, and 26% said that prime-time TV was among their top three sources for health information.
Getting your issue on TV is not as simple as sending a fact sheet to the producer of a show. People who are working in this field have developed relationships over time with writers, researchers, producers and others in the entertainment industry. They are trusted not to push an agenda or a specific plotline, but to provide accurate facts and ideas that writers can then weave into their storytelling.
Now there is a growing industry in Hollywood made up of advocates who are neither entertainers nor insiders, but who want their disease or issue to get dramatic play before a mass audience. Similar to product placement, it’s a kind of ideas placement. A group called the Entertainment Professionals Resource Assn. pulls dozens of these groups together, including the American Cancer Society, Down Syndrome in Arts and Media, the American Heart Assn. and the Mental Health Media Partnership.
“We’re trying to shift the norm,” says Deborah Glik, director of the UCLA Health and Media Research Group, who is affiliated with the entertainment group. “When you’re going to portray a health issue anyway, and you’re working with a platform that reaches millions of people, you should do it accurately.”
Members make themselves available with scientific facts and a bank of real citizens willing to tell their stories. They carefully push their causes, knowing they walk a delicate line between sparking creativity and triggering annoyance.
David Sampson, director of media relations at the American Cancer Society, has learned that it’s better if his organization stays away from pitching specific plots. Policy wonks, it turns out, aren’t so good at recognizing the germ of a compelling story line. “Writers come to us,” he says, “and almost invariably, they’ll pick up on some bit of information that we had no intention of relaying.”
But the society doesn’t hesitate to advise, when asked. When Alexis on the soap opera “General Hospital” was diagnosed with lung cancer despite being a nonsmoker, Sampson heard that writers wanted to attribute her disease to asbestos exposure. “About 4,000 non-smokers a year come down with lung cancer,” he says. “But short of working in a mine, you only get lung cancer from asbestos exposure if you’re also a smoker.” Exposure to second-hand smoke, the society suggested, was a far better explanation.
The idea is to present entertainment insiders with powerful real stories, inundate them with facts, and then sit back and hope the creative juices take over. “I believe the writer is king or queen,” says Lisa Allen, director of the Media Project, which provides entertainment industry professionals with information on reproductive issues. “We don’t preach, we don’t proselytize.”
So the next time you see Jack Bauer get into his Ford Expedition on 24, you’ll probably also see him put on his seatbelt, thanks to the work of health advocates and their receptive Hollywood audience.
If you’re interested in more on this, here are other posts I’ve written on this subject:
Technorati Tags: television, product placement, entertainment, health, social, marketing
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. 
