The Tip Jar – 8/6/07

by | Aug 5, 2007 | Blog, Resources

Social marketing-related tips from across the planet converge in this very spot…

  • Use walkscore.com to rate the “walkability” of your home or work. The site looks at how many places like restaurants, grocery stores and shopping centers are within walking distance, based on information found in Google Maps. Hungry Girl (a fun newsletter geared toward people watching their weight) points out that the average resident of a walkable neighborhood is seven pounds lighter than someone who lives in an inconvenient neighborhood. I checked my old and new addresses, and found that my new neighborhood in the city scored a 60, while the old house in the suburbs only scored a 37. Living in walking distance to places I would have driven to previously is definitely making a difference in my activity level.
  • Lest I feel too good about my newly walkable state, a report has come out from environmentalist Chris Goodall, author of “How to Live a Low-Carbon Life,” that walking does more damage to the environment than if I were to drive the same distance. He says that the increased physical activity would require more calories from food that creates more carbon emissions to produce than driving a car emits. If you are not a vegan, apparently the ideal is to just sit at home without moving, though preferably not in front of the TV. Hmmm…I wonder how much carbon is emitted during coronary bypass surgery.
  • And in other related news, television’s Jack Bauer will be fighting global warming on the next season of 24. And while he’s fighting terrorists threatening to walk to the store rather than drive a Prius, the Fox network will also be taking steps to reduce and offset the carbon emissions of the show’s production. They will be switching to a biodiesel blend in the show’s vehicles and generators, purchasing renewable-energy credits as part of its electricity bills and sending scripts and other documents via e-mail rather than hand-delivering them by car. The show’s website features a PSA by star Kiefer Sutherland and tips for how viewers can take action.
  • Bibliomulas are a very old instrument of very new change in Venezuela. The “book mules” are essentially four-legged libraries that take books into remote communities, coordinated by the University of Momboy. Schoolchildren and farmers are learning to read as a result, and the mules are also bringing technology to the villages they visit. Though the villages are isolated, they are becoming connected to the world around them through the efforts of the university and its book-mule-biles.
  • Stanford’s Persuasive Technology Lab put together a list of seven categories of how mobile texting can be used to promote health that I think are useful to get your mind thinking about how you could use it for your issue. They are:
    1. Remind you to do health behavior
    2. Collect data from you
    3. Offer you words of inspiration
    4. Keep you on schedule/routine
    5. Alert you to health issue or crisis
    6. Send you lab results
    7. Give you health info on demand
  • Pachelbel as police aid? The city of Tacoma, Washington has started to pipe classical music into its transit center to keep away criminals who make drug deals at the bus stop or use public transportation to go cause trouble. They are trying to change the environment to make it inhospitable to the people who are engaging in undesirable behaviors. Whether hearing the soaring strains of orchestral music will be so grating to criminal ears that they decide to stay home is yet to be seen. I have a feeling it will not be as effective as playing rap music would be in keeping classical music lovers away from a particular place. Though perhaps an increased level of music appreciation will emerge and serve to soothe the savage breast.
  • The nonprofit presence in Second Life continues to flourish even as the hype and hoopla about the virtual world continues to fade. I think this means that those who came into SL for the right reasons (i.e., collaboration, learning, connection) are still there, while those who jumped into the world expecting that this latest shiny object would automatically sell more of their widgets (the old-fashioned kind) were disappointed. Nonprofits now have a brand-new dedicated space in the Nonprofit Commons, where 32 organizations have virtual offices. They will be having a grand opening celebration on Tuesday, August 14 at 5:30 pm PT/SLT at the new virtual location as well as live in San Francisco and at participating nonprofits. Attire is “avatar fabulous.”

Until next time…

Photo Credit: nicolemperle

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The Tip Jar – 7/29/07

by | Jul 29, 2007 | Blog, Resources

The Tip Jar makes its triumphant return after a hiatus of almost a month. Here are some of the latest finds from the world of social marketing…

  • If you are a health educator inspired by my or others’ recent pandemic flu-blogging, take advantage of this free training opportunity. The Society for Public Health Education (SOPHE) is partnering with CDC and DHHS to host a 1-1/2 day workshop for health educators on Crisis and Emergency Risk Communication for Pandemic Influenza, on September 20-21, 2007 in Chicago, IL. Up to 100 travel scholarships will be awarded to health educators to participate in the workshop, covering the cost of travel, lodging, and registration for the workshop. You don’t have to be a SOPHE member to participate. The catch is that the deadline to apply is this Tuesday, July 31st. Get the application form and more information on the SOPHE website.
  • ChangeFan is a new Digg-like web community that offers a place to share information about “changing the world.” Recent featured links include articles on plug-in hybrids, poverty & education, and philanthropy. It’s similar to CThings and I’m not entirely clear on how much they differ from each other. But they are both good places to find interesting news stories.
  • Changemakers, in partnership with the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, is sponsoring a competition for solutions that merge computer and video games with health and health care. You can read the competition entries as they come in, and consider submitting your own entry by September 26. If you need inspiration, the latest issue of the Drum Beat focuses on Games for Change, with related case studies and resources.
  • Though the website is in sore need of some explanatory information, the Netroots Network provides an interesting way of viewing various issues on a map. You can view the distribution of things like alleged voter fraud, anti-war protests, and incidents of corruption in Texas. The display is crude, but holds promise as a way of helping to provide context to issues and identify trends.
  • Robert Marshall, a Fullbright scholar from Rhode Island spending 6 weeks in England, is documenting his experiences at and exchanges with the UK’s National Social Marketing Centre on a blog. He gives an American perspective on how social marketing is being practiced in the UK, as well as insights he gleans from his colleagues there about what can be learned from the state of social marketing in the US. He also provides an enjoyable travelogue, including his encounter with the Broad Street Pump, considered the birthplace of modern epidemiology.
  • The Ad Council and Kaiser Family Foundation hosted a forum called The Digital Opportunity: Using New Media for Public Education Campaigns. Speakers included Dan Solomon of Mindshare Interactive Campaigns, Tina Hoff of Kaiser and its Entertainment Media Partnerships, and Jeff Berman of MySpace. The webcast and a transcript can be downloaded from the site.
  • From the “And you thought your social marketing program had tough opponents” file… Staff at Green Star Social Marketing, an NGO in Peshawar, Pakistan that does work in family planning and maternal and child health, were the intended victims of an explosive device planted in the NGO’s vehicle. Luckily, the defused device was found not to be capable of exploding, but it came with a pamphlet that said, in part, “The next time nobody will stop us and we will plant a real bomb instead of this small sample.” The terrorists identified themselves as members of Jihad-e-Islami and said that family planning was the equivalent of genocide of Muslims. We shouldn’t forget that social marketing can be powerful, and because of that may provoke powerful detractors.
  • Social marketer Bob Belinoff has a thought-provoking article in LA Yoga magazine in which he advocates that sometimes it’s better to do nothing than to jump in to try to solve major social problems. While that idea goes against many of our initial instincts, he likens the approach to Ayurveda and other types of natural medicine in which you do very little but remove the blocks to letting the problem solve itself. It’s an idea worth exploring. Or maybe just watching to see what happens.
  • Thanks to Chris Forbes for the pointer to a great roundup of articles and resources about marketing with Facebook. I’m still finding that Facebook doesn’t hold much attraction for me the way a professionally-oriented social network like LinkedIn does. Perhaps it’s because I feel a need to have a specific purpose rather than a more open-ended place to hang out. But just because I don’t personally spend time on my Facebook page doesn’t mean that the target audiences I may need to reach feel the same way. Marketers definitely need to get up-to-speed on using this and other social networks.
  • On the off-chance that you didn’t see the recent study showing that obesity is contagious, this concept of behaviors as contagioמ is intriguing. When the people around you are engaging in a particular behavior, it becomes more acceptable to you and increases the likelihood of you doing it as well. This has been well-known regarding youth who smoke, and it makes a lot of sense in regards to obesity and its related behaviors of overeating and a sedentary lifestyle. Craig and Seth had the most interesting takes on the report, with Craig looking at it as confirming the power of social networks and Seth discussing how to get your ideas to spread contagiously.
  • And another study of interest recently found that the more exposure middle school students have to certain anti-smoking ads, the more likely they are to smoke. The ads causing this opposite effect tended to use an authoritarian “just say no” type of message. The researchers found that messages most effective in preventing smoking were those that gave the perception that their peers were not smoking — changing the social norms made avoiding tobacco contagious, in effect.

Photo Credit: BrittneyBush

The Tip Jar – 7/3/07

by | Jul 3, 2007 | Blog, Resources

This week’s Tip Jar is full of bicentennial quarters and an occasional $2 bill:

  • I’ve been playing around with Facebook lately, though I think LinkedIn is much more useful as a grown-up. If you want to learn more on what all the fuss is about, take a look at the Beginner’s Guide to Facebook. Wondering whether your audience is more likely on Facebook or MySpace? Danah Boyd discusses how class plays into self-selection onto the various social networking sites: Facebook attracts the popular, “good kid” crowd, while MySpacers are more likely to be the socially ostracized kids who don’t quite fit into the popular cliques. As Anastasia says, it sounds like the makings of a John Hughes movie (“Pretty in Pink Flashing Pixels”?)
  • Oxfam’s online advocacy campaign to help the Ethiopian farmers who grow coffee for Starbucks was a success, with 96,000 people participating in various ways. This campaign is a great case study for how to recruit and engage supporters via social media and email. I first learned of it through the Flickr petition in which people posted pictures of themselves holding a sign that said “I support Ethiopian coffee farmers.” But they also used YouTube, blogs, email networks, and more traditional methods like faxes, phone calls, postcards, an on-site protest and in-person visits to Starbucks. The resulting agreement will ensure that Ethiopian farmers get a fair share of the profits for their coffee.
  • From the Communication Initiative comes an announcement of what sounds like a fascinating workshop called Sensing on Everyday Mobile Phones in Support of Participatory Research. The workshop will “focus on how mobile phones and other everyday devices can be employed as networkconnected, location-aware, human-in-the-loop sensors that enable participatory data collection, geotagged documentation, mapping and other case-making capabilities.” If anyone wants to send me to Sydney, I’d be happy to liveblog the session for you.
  • If you are story-impaired like I am, you may be interested in the Center for Digital Storytelling’s Digital Storytelling Cookbook. The book helps people who want to mine stories from their own and others’ lives and personal media archives. You can download the first five chapters, which introduce how to find stories and tell them in a meaningful way. The rest of the book focuses on the technical aspects of digital media. Using stories to illustrate your points can be so effective, but the process of developing those stories is not always obvious. (via the same CommInit email as above)
  • A new study found that teens engaging in web-based multi-player role-playing games are reaping benefits from opportunities to explore the world around them, albeit virtually. They can have conversations with people of different nationalities and races they would not normally come in contact with, they can become entrepreneurs with online businesses, they can experiment with their identities (aren’t virtual noserings so much better than the real thing?) and venture into interactions with members of the opposite sex. Sounds good, as long as the online time isn’t replacing hang-out time with real-life friends. (via MarketingVOX)
  • A recent campaign from New South Wales Roads and Traffic Authority in Australia takes a refreshing departure from the usual fear appeals to try to keep young men from speeding. It hits the perpetrators below the belt, with the tag line, “Speeding – No One Thinks Big of You” and hot girls wagging their pinkies in a gesture clearly meant to suggest that the speeders are trying to compensate for other inadequacies. I haven’t seen anyone here making this gesture before, so I wonder if it’s an Aussie-American cultural difference or a new thing. Watch the spot and tell me if you know.
  • Speaking of fear appeals, Seth Godin writes about how some marketers use fear to sell their products. He gives social marketers a pass, saying that some items, like seatbelts, can’t be marketed without fear. I agree that fear appeals can be powerful when done right (though more often than not they backfire) but there are many other powerful values that could be tapped into to motivate safety-related behaviors (see item above).
  • Knowing that the media would create a massive frenzy around the launch of the iPhone, a savvy nonprofit called Keep a Child Alive found a way to transfer some of that major media coverage to their own cause. Someone from the organization staked out the first spot in line at the Apple Store in Manhattan, thereby ensuring interviews with every media outlet around, and an open mic for their message. While they initially intended to auction just the iPhone to raise money for their organization, as a result of their widespread exposure they received a slew of additional items to auction off from celebrities and companies. This serves as a reminder to keep your eyes open for random opportunities to get your message out, which may net you more exposure than the rest of the marketing activities you’ve been planning for months.
  • Happily, Sadly, Ironically, the CDC’s wonderful Verb yellowball campaign to get 9 to 13 year olds physically active, which was discontinued by Congress last year, took several top honors at the Cannes Lions advertising awards. Arc Worldwide, who created the campaign, won Gold for “Best Integrated Direct Campaign,” Silver for “Best Direct – Charities, Public Health & Safety and Public Awareness Messages” and Bronze for “Best Media – Charities, Public Health & Safety and Public Awareness Messages.” The campaign also won a Clio this year. It was a well-done campaign, and found to be effective in bringing about behavior change, so of course the obvious thing to do was to get rid of it. Bring back Verb!!!

I wish a very happy and safe 4th of July to my American readers, and a great Wednesday to everyone else.

Photo Credit: Tip Jar Dan

The Tip Jar – 6/23/07

by | Jun 23, 2007 | Blog, Resources

Translation from Hebrew: “Another tip and I’m in India”
  • I have mixed feelings about Israel’s latest anti-drug commercial, which features an Israeli teen saying goodbye to his family in a video styled after a suicide bomber’s last testament. It’s certainly shocking and would grab attention, but I haven’t decided whether it’s in poor taste or an effective approach. I would love to know whether they tested it with teens. Its in-your-face aesthetic is nearly diametrically opposite of the US Office of National Drug Control Policy’s current campaign (in which a cartoon dog tells its pot-smoking owner “You disappoint me.”) In any case, it will definitely get people talking. What do you think, Israeli readers?
  • The New York Times had a fascinating slideshow with photos of people next to pictures of their online avatars. My favorite was this man boy who is hooked up to various medical devices with his very sleek and strong armored Star Wars Galaxies avatar. It’s just another reminder of how freeing virtual worlds can be for people with disabilities, who can have superhuman abilities and still be no different from everyone else online.
  • Vigilante bike activists in Toronto have taken matters into their own hands, with the city two years behind schedule in installing bike lanes on busy streets. Armed with hot pink spray paint, the Other Urban Repair Squad is painting in its own ad hoc bike lanes around the city, which the city then removes. The transportation department claims it will complete 30 km of the 1,000 km bicycle network planned by the end of the year, but in the meantime why don’t they just work with these activist groups to get it done quickly and efficiently?
  • Nokia and Vodafone have launched a wiki-based website for NGOs to share ideas on how to use mobile communications for social change. The site, www.shareideas.org, includes case studies and how-to’s that can be expanded by other organizations over time.
  • There’s a lot of social marketing going on down under in Australia and New Zealand. The New Zealand Herald ran a thoughtful story on social marketing, calling us “behavior engineers.” Sounds nice and scientific – maybe I’ll put that on my business card.
  • Via MarketingVox, Google just launched a public policy blog, which will cover US legislation and regulation issues related to its business. Their intention is to open a window into their policy positions and advocacy strategies to get input and ideas from their users. Andrew McLaughlin, Google’s director of public policy and government affairs, says they want to do public policy advocacy “in a Googley way.” It will be interesting to see whether other companies follow suit to make their lobbying activities more transparent. Or should I say “Googley”?
  • New York City will be trying a new approach to bring residents out of poverty — bribing them. Piloting a program that has been used effectively in countries like Brazil and Mexico, poor residents will be rewarded with cash for engaging in good behaviors. For example, possible rewards include $25 for attending parent-teacher conferences, $25 per month for a child who maintains a 95 percent school attendance record, $400 for graduating high school, $100 for each family member who sees the dentist every six months and $150 a month for adults who work full time. While it makes sense to use the incentive that will best get people to act, it goes against everything I’ve learned as a parent about the effectiveness of bribes. If the external rewards stop coming, will people continue their positive behavior, or will the program have to go on indefinitely? And if people continue to be paid for years and years, is that okay and worth it if we get the behaviors we want from them?
  • Finally, I just wanted to share my favorite new online tool. Jott is a free service that lets you call a number from your mobile phone, leave a voice message, and have it transcribed and sent to your own or someone else’s e-mail. I have it preprogrammed in my cell phone, so whenever I’m driving and suddenly remember something for my to-do list or have a flash of brilliance, I can just leave myself a message and have it waiting in my email when I return to my computer. It’s a lot safer than fishing around for a pen and paper to write myself a note in the car. (Sorry, it’s only in the US and Canada now.)

Photo Credit: miss pupik

The Tip Jar – 6/17/07

by | Jun 17, 2007 | Blog, Resources

Welcome to the Father’s Day edition of the Tip Jar, which is dedicated to all you fathers out there, and especially my own daddy (who is off camping in Glacier National Park) and my kids’ daddy (who spent the day getting showered with homemade gifts, cards and “special recipes”).

  • Though at this point it’s too late for this Father’s Day, Joe at Selfish Giving highlighted what I think is a brilliant product — the DadGear Diaper Vest. Dads of babies certainly don’t want to be seen lugging around a purse-like diaper bag. The diaper vest is essentially a wearable diaper bag, with three pockets for wipes, bottles and diapers, a hidden pocket on the back that holds a changing pad, and smaller pockets for things like phones or keys. If this were out when my kids were babies, I would have snapped it up — know any new parents you have to buy a gift for?
  • The World Bank has created the BuzzMonitor, “an open source application that “listens” to what people are saying about the World Bank across blogs and other sites in order to help the organization understand and engage in social media.” It aggregates content across different languages and platforms and make it easier to make sense of the information. You can download it to use for your organization as well.
  • If you want to learn more about teens’ and/or tweens’ use of technology, or are just interested in seeing how an online focus group works, sign up for the online research webinars from C&R Research’s TeensEyes division (tweens – 6/27, teens – 6/28). This live interactive query research will have a trained youth researcher moderating each session with a panel of tween or teen consumers who will be talking about the technology they’re using, where they go online and what they do there. A great opportunity to be a fly on the wall.
  • A study recently published in JAMA shows the counterintuitive results that physicians trying to help patients change more than one behavioral risk factor may be more successful if they address changing several behaviors at once, rather than doing them sequentially. It seems like it would be overwhelming to have to make so many changes at once, but perhaps with more than one message the chances of at least one sticking are increased.
  • We knew that the Los Angeles Fire Department was technologically advanced, but now it seems the the LA Police Department is trying to catch up. The LAPD will be installing a system to accept video, photos and SMS messages sent from 911 callers’ cellphones into the 2 million calls now handled by the emergency dispatchers. Hopefully idiots won’t turn it into a nonstop lolcats photo stream (Im in ur dispatch sistem, cloggn ur lines).
  • Are there some risks we shouldn’t try to prevent? The Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents in the UK says that the normal bumps and bruises of childhood provide kids with lifelong lessons that will help them avoid more serious injuries later in life. By letting children play outside and take reasonable risks, they will learn their own limits and develop their own risk assessment skills. This common sense advice reminds me of the best book on parenting I’ve ever read – Wendy Mogel’s The Blessing of a Skinned Knee.

And with that recommendation (and a reminder to myself that I need to reread that book), our Father’s Day feature comes to an end.

Photo Credit: NoNo Joe

The Tip Jar – 6/10/07

by | Jun 10, 2007 | Blog, Resources

After searching the social marketing universe far and wide, here is this week’s Tip Jar…

  • The George Washington University School of Public Health & Health Services has just published its first issue of Cases in Public Health Communication & Marketing. This online journal is edited by graduate students, and grad students are also the lead authors of the peer-reviewed cases (in partnership with practitioners and their academic advisors). The journal also features commissioned and sponsored cases (not peer-reviewed). A sampler of some of the many cases in this issue include the campaign launch of Donate Life California (an online organ donor registry), using targeted health messages in a state colorectal cancer screening program, process evaluation in the “Be Under Your Own Influence” media campaign and the birth of the “truth” campaign.
  • John Brian at Beaconfire gives some advice on how to use the Facebook Causes application to make your organization stand out from all the other causes on Facebook.
  • How do you help someone wrap their mind around a huge number like the 106,000 aluminum cans that are used in the US every 30 seconds or the 8 million trees harvested in the US each month to make the paper for mail order catalogs? Artist Chris Jordan has created a series of large-scale “statistical art” prints that depict these numbers literally, such as a reproduction of Seurat’s Sunday Afternoon on the Isle of La Grande Jatte comprised of 106,000 cans of Pepsi, Coke, Orange Crush, V-8 and other drinks. It’s a visual form of what media advocates have termed “creative epidemiology.” (via PSFK)
  • Chris Weber, a PhD student at Stony Brook University, is asking for your help in his dissertation research. He says, “Increasingly, Americans are turning to the web for news about politics. This is a survey about online news coverage of the immigration issue. We are interested in your thoughts on this important political controversy. If you decide to participate in our survey, you will start off by answering a few questions about yourself and your political attitudes. Then you will watch a short news clip of an immigration story. After the clip, we will ask you some questions about your position on immigration policy. In total, the survey should take about 15 minutes to complete. The survey is completely anonymous and you can skip any questions you do not wish to answer.” Take the survey here:
    http://www.ic.sunysb.edu/stu/crweber/TAKESURVEY/videohuddy.htm. If you have any questions, contact Chris Weber at crweber@notes.cc.sunysb.edu.
  • SAT prep giant Kaplan has joined forces with TOKYOPOP to teach vocabulary to high school students in a manga format. From the release: “This series is the newest trend in teen reading and the fastest growing segment in the publishing industry. Appealing to teens interested in a good read filled with exciting plots, the manga platform represents a fun method of vocabulary review, allowing the reader to decipher the context of the word not only from the surrounding text on the page and the definitions in the margins, but also from the graphic element of the story.” Great idea – now how about some health manga? (via Ypulse)
  • Seth Godin has some ideas for updating the way we elect presidents to fit with our 21st century technology. For example, he suggests six-hour long debates once a week, with the highlights sliced up and disseminated through online and offline channels; voting by ranking all the candidates, which leads to better results; voting at ATM machines; and other ideas that would make the process more interesting and convenient.
  • In Jordan, where weddings are often celebrated with gunfire into the air (yep, real “shotgun weddings”), the law of gravity usually prevails and sometimes results in deaths and injuries of celebrants. A man named Ali Zenat (WSJ subscription required) is working hard to convince family and friends of the bride and groom to forgo the celebratory gunfire. He persuaded printers to include a line in wedding invitations that says “gunfire is forbidden” or “our wedding will be more beautiful without gunfire.” (I think Miss Manners would approve.) Mr. Zenat has distributed posters featuring a young woman who walked into a wedding and left as a paraplegic. He also persuaded about 10,000 influential individuals, including the ranking members of big clans, to sign a pledge to stop this practice. Slowly, he seems to be making progress.
  • Another example of an individual taking on an established cultural custom and prevailing is Cyril Ebie, a young Cameroonian who stood up to his parents and village elders to speak out against the practice of female genital mutilation. Although his two older sisters had already undergone the procedure, when he heard it condemned on a national radio debate, he tried to convince his parents that his younger sister should not have it done. He fled with his sister to a nearby city, and his protest set off a series of events that led to his village putting a stop to the practice. He just won the BBC World Service’s Outlook program’s Stand Up for Your Rights competition. One person can make a big difference.
  • On the other hand, here’s someone who was supposedly making a difference but ended up being part of the problem rather than the solution. Hector Marroquin, who is the founder of the gang-intervention group No Guns, was arrested for selling silencers and weapons to an undercover ATF agent. He had received $1.5 million from the City of Los Angeles for a program to keep youth out of gangs. Marroquin is an alleged associate of the prison-based Mexican Mafia, and police searches of his businesses recovered gang photos and journals. His son, who also worked for No Guns, is an admitted gang member who has been indicted on charges of home invasion robbery. Um… maybe they were just helping the youth dispose of their guns and gang paraphernalia?
  • Text messages on mobile phones can be a good way to warn people of an impending hazard and to coordinate disaster response. But just as inaccurate email messages about cancer-causing antiperspirant can propagate quickly from person to person, not all text messages can be trusted. In Indonesia, a hoax text message warning of an tsunami was widely circulated and resulted in thousands of people fleeing their homes in panic, though the warning had no basis in fact. Looks like we need an SMS-Snopes.

Photo Credit: samk

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