Tradition!

by Nedra Weinreich | Nov 27, 2006 | Blog, Marketing

As we sat around the table at Thanksgiving, eating the same food we eat every year (not that I’m complaining!), on the same pilgrim placemats my 10-year old nephew made years ago in preschool, at the same strange time (who eats dinner at 4:00?), with the same wonderful people, I started thinking about the power of tradition. As someone who observes just about every major and minor Jewish holiday with all the requisite flourishes, believe me – I know about tradition.

What is it about tradition that is so important to people? Why do we all have to eat turkey at the same time — millions of turkeys across the country — on this one day? (Though my first year in Boston for grad school, I had Thanksgiving with my elderly landlady who could not stand turkey so we had cornish hens — it just felt wrong!)

I think tradition is especially important to us because when so many things constantly change in our lives, the things that remain the same keep us linked to the past, to our roots, to our family. It’s comforting to experience the same tastes, smells, sounds and sights that are connected to positive emotions and feelings of happiness, belonging and love (though sadly this is not true for everyone). Children especially cling to traditions and get upset when they are not followed (what do you mean you didn’t put marshmallows on top of the sweet potatoes this year????).

While we generally think of traditions as something that is passed down through the generations, they can also be started anew just by doing the same thing for two years in a row. About 5 years ago, I volunteered to bring a different version of the standard cranberry sauce (a jalapeno-spiked relish – delicious!) that is now a dish I bring every year. Or on a non-holiday note, my husband and I got together a few years ago with some good friends we don’t see very often on what happened to be the winter solstice. Since then, we make it a point to at see each other at least twice a year — on the winter and summer solstices. The tradition ensures that we will maintain our friendship.

Not all traditions come from history, religion or family. Some are manufactured by those with a financial or social interest in the tradition’s accoutrements and are adopted widely by a community or culture. Recently I read in the Wall Street Journal (subscriber access only) about Pepero Day, an unofficial holiday in South Korea in which friends and couples exchange the chocolate-coated Pepero cookie sticks (four of which look like the holiday’s date — 11/11). Sales of the snack have skyrocketed since Pepero Day supposedly started in 1994, when girls at a middle school exchanged Pepero sticks, wishing each other to become as tall and slender as a Pepero (though it may be a story dreamed up by the marketing team).

Similarly, Kit Kat bars have become popular in Japan as a way of wishing someone luck on their school exams. This tradition was orchestrated by the marketers in a way that made it seem organic and is based on the similarity between the candy’s name and the Japanese phrase kitto katsu, which means roughly “I hope you succeed!” Now Japanese moms wouldn’t think of sending their children to take their exams without their lucky Kit Kats.

Is this any different from the Hallmark holidays of Grandparent’s Day and Secretary’s Day or the obvious commercial tradition of having yearly blowout sales on the day after Thanksgiving (my own private vision of hell is going to the mall that day)? In fact, social marketers do this type of thing all the time, with this Friday being World AIDS Day, next week being National Handwashing Awareness Week and dozens of other national health observances for all days, weeks and months. These observances might be traditions for people working in these fields, but they haven’t quite caught on with the general public yet.

How can we create new positive health and social traditions that will be adopted by the people who will most benefit from them?

• Tie it to a seasonal occurrence – For example, fire prevention programs promote the semi-annual campaign to encourage people to change the battery in their smoke detectors when they change the clocks for daylight savings time.
• Make it about friends and family – Every October, my stepfamily participates in the Hirshberg Foundation’s Walk/Run to raise money for pancreatic cancer research because their father died from the disease. It’s a way for them to come together and do something positive in their father’s memory.
• Incorporate the new tradition into already-existing traditions – Perhaps that pumpkin pie can be made in a way that is lower in fat and calories or the family can go on a post-Thanksgiving dinner walk around the neighborhood. One of the best examples of a social marketing program done on a small budget I’ve seen is a campaign by the state of Georgia to prevent outbreaks of bacterial infection by a couple of small changes to the way mostly older African American women prepare the traditional dish of chitterlings (pork intestines).
• Incorporate other cultures’ traditions into your own – We have a culture that thinks nothing of eating nachos on Cinco de Mayo and drinking green beer on St. Patrick’s Day. Perhaps there are other more healthful or socially beneficial traditions from other diverse groups that can be extended to the larger culture. For example, the Mediterranean diet, which centers around olive oil, unrefined grains, fruits and vegetables, and a moderate amount of wine, has been shown to increase longevity and could be touted as part of a Greek festival day. The Chinese New Year could be an occasion for promoting the healthful effects of drinking tea.
• Institutionalize something as a tradition by doing it annually – Once something has been done two years in a row, it could loosely be considered a tradition. Take advantage of that fact and start referring to your annual event as a community tradition. Boston Medical Center’s Halloween Town seems like it could be heading in this direction after just two years. Your community’s annual health fair might be the occasion that people look forward to each year to get their blood pressure checked and talk to a health educator about their latest health concern.

Traditions can be big or small. Starbucks is making a little too much of the fact that it rolls out red cups for the holiday by creating an entire website called It’s Red Again that is all about holiday traditions. But they are definitely smart to try to tie their product to something that resonates deeply with people — tradition.

Technorati Tags: thanksgiving, tradition, marketing

CIA Recruiting Disaffected Youth

by Nedra Weinreich | Nov 2, 2006 | Blog, Marketing

Driving in my car this afternoon, flipping the channels, I came across the tail end of a radio ad promoting a career at the CIA.  Given that it was on alternative rock station KROQ (a classic LA station that is not known for attracting a particularly pro-government audience), I kept waiting to find out that it was a parody ad.  But no, it was for real.  It made me wonder whether they had done their research on the station’s demographic.

I tried to find the ad online and only found this TV spot, but the words are basically the same.  It was an odd juxtaposition with the Green Day song that came on right after it.

Technorati Tags: cia, kroq, green day

Carnival of Nonprofit Consultants – Marketing Edition

by Nedra Weinreich | Oct 22, 2006 | Blog, Marketing

Technorati Tags: carnival, nonprofit, consultants, marketing

Dove Soothes Our Fragile Egos – Unless We Are in China

by Nedra Weinreich | Oct 18, 2006 | Blog, Marketing

We women are awful to ourselves. A man sees an attractive woman walk by and instinctively thinks about sex. A woman sees another woman walk by and she automatically compares herself to the other, often in a negative way — who is prettier, slimmer, has nicer hair, has better fashion sense? We can usually find something “wrong” with the other woman to make ourselves feel better — she has a little roll of skin hanging over the top of her low-cut pants, her teeth are crooked, her roots are showing. This negative self-comparison is especially true when looking at pictures of celebrities or models, but it’s harder to find the compensating imperfections in the professional photos (that’s why the National Enquirer and other checkout line tabloids are so popular – they show you what the celebs look like when they are being “real people” without makeup and airbrushes).

And this is why I’m fascinated by the latest entry in the Dove Campaign for Real Beauty, a short time-lapse film that shows the transformation of a somewhat plain everywoman to a gorgeous billboard model through makeup and Photoshop. I’ve watched it several times and find it reassuring to be reminded that the manufactured images of perfect beauty that surround us are not real — we cannot and should not compare ourselves to those pictures.

And beauty is such a cultural construct. The Dove campaign in China is quite different than in the US. Compare the women on this billboard in Shanghai (as photographed by Brian Sack of the humor site the Banterist, whose series of China travelogue posts was gut-bustingly funny and worth checking out)…

…with the American version:

Notice anything different about the Chinese “real women with real curves”? Chinese women must have a very different perception of what is beautiful and what is unattractive, assuming the campaign was coming from the same angle as the American one. But the Chinese campaign is enough to make even slim American women feel inadequate all over again.

Technorati Tags: dove, beauty, china, women

Grand message. You require to read.

by Nedra Weinreich | Oct 16, 2006 | Blog, Marketing

This morning I received a hot stock tip with the title above as the subject line. Here is a representative paragraph from that e-mail:

Hip Hop superstar Sean “P.Diddy” Combs sees a huge possibility for his company in cooperation with Goldmark inc. Sean “P.Diddy” Combs tells that it is enjoyably to deal with these guys. They as anybody else know entertainment industriousness and exactly know what is required for the American spectators. He also emphasizes exclusivity of his fresh album Press Play and tells that the appearance of this album on october 17 will make an result of the blasted bomb.

Apparently Goldmark Industries “moved rapidly in taking on the already triumphant and growing star in an violent attempt to stay ahead of the game.” Don’t tell anyone I told you, but they “will promote that st0ck till the end of the year and the price will lift . People will buy it and they will earn big cash. Don’t miss that and buy it now cause the price is low. After the 18 October the price will grow up to 1000%. Take it now!!”

Yes, there is a social marketing lesson in this amusing piece of mangled marketing. If you do not fluently speak the same language as your audience, do not rely on Babelfish or an English-Croatian dictionary to piece together your communications. Spend the money to hire a good translator who is fluent in both languages and then test your materials with people who are fluent speakers of that language to make sure the wording is both accurate and effective. Otherwise you might make an result of the blasted bomb.

Technorati Tags: marketing, translation, diddy

Whack Your Creativity

by Nedra Weinreich | Oct 3, 2006 | Blog, Marketing

For many of us who tend to think in a linear, structured way (especially process-oriented me), thinking creatively does not come naturally. It takes guidance and suggestions that encourage new ways of thinking or seeing an issue from another perspective. That’s why I was happy to read in David Armano’s Logic + Emotion blog that Roger von Oech, the author of A Whack on the Side of the Head, has started his own blog.

Back when I was starting in social marketing years ago as an intern at Porter/Novelli in DC, everyone in the company received a copy of his book, plus the accompanying Creative Whack Pack — a deck of cards with a different creative technique on each. I’ve used the book and pack when I’ve needed some inspiration to spark my creativity.

As an example, the picture above is on a card titled “Change Its Name”:

If an architect looks at an opening between two rooms and thinks “door,” that’s what she’ll design. But if she thinks “passageway,” she may design something much different like a “hallway,” “air curtain,” “tunnel,” or perhaps a “courtyard.” Different words bring in different assumptions and lead your thinking in different directions. What else can you call your idea?

If you need a little creative pick-me-up, check out Roger’s blog and get whacked.

Technorati Tags: creativity, marketing, social marketing