by Nedra Weinreich | Oct 22, 2007 | Blog, Cause Marketing, Social Marketing
The Carnival of Nonprofit Consultants is in full-swing. Come on into the tent and peep at the best posts of the week related to social marketing and nonprofits.
Craig Lefebvre of On Social Marketing and Social Change addresses the recent New York Times article ripping social marketing efforts selling bed nets for malaria control. He does a thorough job of explaining the many problems with the objections, and even follows up with a summary of the responses to the article. My favorite Senator, Tom Coburn, shows again what an advocate of public health he is with the line in the NYT article, “We knew social marketing doesn’t work.”
Britt Bravo of Have Fun * Do Good offers four steps to start using the social web for social change: consume, join, participate and create. She has great lists of examples and resources for each step.
Beth Kanter of Beth’s Blog demonstrates yet again how effective social media can be for personal fundraising, raising $1,000 in 24 hours to send a young Cambodian woman to college and (as of this writing) at least half more of that to sponsor a young man as well. There’s still time for you to donate!
Paul Jones of Cause-Related Marketing makes the interesting observation that the pink ribbon for breast cancer awareness has become the equivalent of an open-source charity icon. This is a double-edged sword, as not only can breast cancer-related nonprofits use the symbol, but so can for-profit entities (who may not be as protective of its charitable meaning).
Sandy Beckwith of Build Buzz gives her take on how Ellen DeGeneres’ dog adoption story should have played out differently, from a marketing point of view. (And her follow-up on what animal rescue organizations should do to take advantage of this publicity opportunity.)
Nancy Schwartz of Getting Attention makes the case for making search engine optimization part of your marketing strategy. It’s really not that scary.
Katya Andresen of Katya’s Non-Profit Marketing Blog lays out ten steps to finding and winning a corporate partner for your outreach efforts. As an added bonus, Joe Waters of Selfish Giving offers his own riffs on Katya’s points.
And for the host post, I’ll share the beginning of my case study about using a Facebook Group for building a grassroots advocacy campaign for suicide prevention-related legislation. We’re up to 82 members, and if you’re on Facebook, I hope you’ll join us.
Next week the Carnival will be at Donor Power Blog. If you would like to participate, go to BlogCarnival.com to submit your post using the form there or send an email to npc.carnival AT yahoo DOT com with your name, your blog’s name and the URL of the post (not your blog homepage). The deadline is Friday, 8:00 p.m. ET.
Technorati Tags: carnival, nonprofit, consultants, marketing
by Nedra Weinreich | Oct 9, 2007 | Blog, Resources, Social Marketing
Consummate bookworm CK has announced the next round of the Marketing Profs Book Club, and the featured book is one of my favorites for nonprofits who want to do social marketing — Robin Hood Marketing by Katya Andresen.
You might remember that I did a review of the book last year and thought it was a great guide to developing a marketing mindset in your nonprofit communications. For more on the book, read CK’s interview with Katya. I’m looking forward to many stimulating online discussions at the Book Club, which will start November 13. Sign up by October 12 to be part of the Book Club, and you will be entered to win one of 50 free copies of Robin Hood Marketing!
I was honored to be asked by CK to put together a short introduction to social marketing as a bonus to be offered to all Book Club participants. This free eBook, Social Marketing at Your Fingertips: A Quick Guide to Changing the World, is now available for download. It briefly explains what social marketing is and isn’t, outlines the social marketing mix, offers an abridged review of Robin Hood Marketing, and provides a list of resources for more information. I hope you find it helpful!
by Nedra Weinreich | Oct 8, 2007 | Blog, Professional Development, Social Marketing
I’m excited about the 3rd Social Marketing University training that I’ll be leading next week (October 15-17) here in Los Angeles.
I have a few excellent guest speakers, who I think will add a lot to the program. Dr. Deborah Glik, the director of UCLA’s Health and Media Research Group, will be sharing a case study of a social marketing program she developed. Hendre Coetzee, the CEO of MobileCause, will give an insider’s view on how to use mobile marketing to bring about behavior change. And at the Next Generation Social Marketing seminar, Brian Humphrey of the Los Angeles Fire Department (who I wrote about here) will be sharing how he has used social media to extend the reach of his messages and engage the community in his department’s mission.
We still have some spaces available, so if you would like to join us, please register as soon as possible!
by Nedra Weinreich | Sep 5, 2007 | Blog, Social Marketing, Social Media
Recently on the Social Marketing listserv, we’ve had an interesting discussion of Facebook and other social networking sites. Brian Cugelman, who is with the Statistical Cybermetrics Research Group at Wolverhampton Business School in the UK, made what I thought was the best case I’ve seen for why social marketers need to consider using these sites in their programs. I asked Brian if he would do a guest blog post on this, and he graciously agreed…
Why Web 2.0 matters to social marketers
Some quick thoughts by Brian Cugelman, MA
I’d advocate using FaceBook, along with a few of the other Web 2.0 sites for the simple reason that they provide a small number of websites with the largest outreach potential. In fact, Alexa ranks YouTube, MySpace and FaceBook in the top 10 of all websites in the world.
Moreover, by moving through networks of friends, interest groups and geographic cliques, it’s possible to zero in on target audiences in ways that are not as easy in regular Web 1.0 environments, unless of course, you’re paying for advertising. Newsweek recently published an article about a research project, by Danah Boyd, that showed some demographic differences between FaceBook and MySpace. In short, FaceBook has an older and more educated network (the reason why it’s worth so much to potential buyers), while MySpace has a younger, more sub-cultureish network with many musicians having their online presence there.
The Tipping Point/Linked/Viral Marketing/Word of Mouth/Dell Hell/6 Degrees of Kevin Bacon fad has created interest in any online environment that allows people to directly connect to others, be it email, blogs, or social networking sites. The idea is that the people become the media–so it’s not MySpace that is the media per se, but rather the people themselves. The sites just connect people and reduce the social transaction costs required to interact, which means it’s easier for people to share digital objects of interest. No doubt, by building a large network of social media relationships for any campaign, campaigners will be able to better increase their chance of triggering a viral buzz, which amounts to your message being spread further—which saves you time and money. And by being sent through personal networks, it is perceived to be more credible, and consequently, I believe this can fast-track the formation of social norms while increasing the odds that people act on the messages.
If the medium is the message, then it’s worth considering the media effect of having an online presence in these major online networks. I think the media artifact of social media is the appearance of cool and hip, which you may wish to present depending on your target audience. I suspect in a few years, this media effect will be negligible as the competition has been swooping in on these popular sites for some time and they’ll soon become commonplace.
It’s one thing to set up a FaceBook account and quite another to do the leg work to engage your constituency. The question of whether or not to use these sites is a quantifiable one: is the effort worth the impact? Though it may not be easy to answer this question, it’s possible for campaigners to test out their online campaigns by tracking the impact of their Web 2.0 outreach, and measuring online behavioural goals against references in order to start evaluating the gains versus resource expenditures.
An ethical consideration that faces Web 2.0 social marketers is the question of whether they’re being intrusive or dishonest. Although some social networking sites have policies against companies advertising, a number of organization operate on these sites; they’re upfront about who they are and what they stand for, without any hidden agenda. Several months back, I met a number of Greenpeace activists at FairSay’s eCampaigning Forum. One coordinator told me she had volunteers working around the clock to build relationships on MySpace, and she was working on trying to move the relationships from MySpace to offline activism–they have over 67,000 friends. And it’s not just activists—I believe all the US presidential candidates have MySpace accounts and a few months back, reports emerged about ‘who had the most friends in MySpace’. These well run social media campaigns provide a good template for how to conduct business in these sites in an up front way.
Also, an interview by Andy Sernovitz, the Word of Mouth Marketing Association’s CEO provided a number of insights about trust, ethics and spreading word of mouth messages. He distinguished between word of mouth marketing and stealth marketing, drawing an ethical line between honest and dishonest e-marketing. On the honest side, Andy’s description of word of mouth marketing boiled down to all the techniques companies employ to respectfully engage customers by joining the online conversation about their brands, products or services. In practice, this means representatives have to respect netiquette conventions and honestly declare who they are. On the dishonest side, he described stealth marketing as the unethical practice of deceiving customers by inserting their views into customers’ online conversations through misrepresentation and forcing their way into the conversation.
By reading a social media’s terms of use; examining the practices of well established and respected organizations; being upfront about your campaign and who you are; following conventions of netiquette; and respecting the golden rule, you’ll be acting in an honourable way and chances are, your potential audiences will respect you for it. And if your message rings with their values while meeting their needs, chances are you’ll be social marketing online.
by Nedra Weinreich | Aug 27, 2007 | Blog, Professional Development, Social Marketing
I am a little late on getting the next Tip Jar published, but here are a couple of quick items:
The CDC’s National Conference on Health Communication, Marketing, and Media will offer live webstreaming of the opening plenary, keynote, and closing plenary sessions. Though my panel will not be broadcast, here are the sessions that will be:
Wednesday, August 29
8:30 am – 10:15 am (EDT)
Opening Plenary Session
Using Metaphor to Understand and Communicate to Your Audiences
Mary Beth Jowers, Managing Director of Olson Zaltman Associates
Self-Invention and Self-Care: A Yankelovich MONITOR Perspective on Understanding Health Consumers In the Emerging Era of Consumer Empowerment
Dr. J. Walker Smith, President of Yankelovich, Inc.
Thursday, August 30
8:00 am – 8:45 am (EDT)
Special Keynote Session
Applying Social Marketing Strategically: Lessons from England
Dr. Jeff French, Director of the National Social Marketing Centre in London, England
Thursday, August 30
1:30 pm – 3:00 pm (EDT)
Closing Plenary Session
Reaching Consumers
Health Communication Challenges in the Digital World
Dr. Esther Thorson, Professor and Associate Dean for Graduate Studies, Director of Research, Reynolds Journalism Institute, University of Missouri – Columbia
Developing a Collaborative Distribution Channels Strategy
Dr. Robert Spekman
Tayloe Murphy Professor of Business Administration, Darden School of Business, University of Virginia
Also, just a quick reminder that the early registration discount for the next Social Marketing University training in Los Angeles ends on August 31st. Register by Friday, and you’ll get $100 off of the registration fee. We have some special guest speakers who I will announce very soon. Hope to see you there!
by Nedra Weinreich | Aug 2, 2007 | Behavior Change, Blog, Social Marketing
Often, people want to take healthy actions, but don’t have the ability or opportunity to do so. Public health professionals trying to prevent obesity in the inner city have long lamented poor neighborhoods’ lack of availability of fresh produce and healthy food choices at reasonable prices. When there is nowhere nearby to buy healthy food, it often doesn’t get bought.
People are very receptive to suggestions. That is a fact and people who have spent so much time in marketing knows this. Even CEOs of companies give themselves daily reminders like canvas prints on the wall (visit PrintSuccess for this) to keep the motivation going and keeping the focus towards the goal.
Public radio show Marketplace had a story today about how British supermarket chain Tesco plans to open a hundred stores in the Western U.S, many of them in low income neighborhoods that the local supermarkets have stayed away from. The piece highlighted the dire state of food shopping in a Downtown Los Angeles market:
The market’s single aisle is too narrow for us to walk side by side. We squeezed past a display of lettuce greens turning sickly shades of brown.
The refrigerators are stocked with sugary yogurt, lard, packets of American cheese slices, and gallons of milk — just about to expire — for $4.
Tesco will be opening a dozen “Fresh and Easy” markets in the LA area, which will offer fresh produce, meats and prepared meals. Fresh and Easy’s marketing director, Simon Uwans, found that
almost irrespective of the type of household we went into, people were telling us what they wanted was fresh wholesome food and they wanted it to be affordable and they wanted it to be in their neighborhood.
Local health educator Rosa Giron is quoted as saying, “This community is an emergency for obesity and diabetes for childrens, because they don’t eat right.” And based on the infrastructure, a communication program telling people the benefits of eating more fruits and vegetables would not get very far.
Had Tesco not decided that this was a commercial marketing opportunity, perhaps social marketers could have figured out a way to change the shopping environment to facilitate the purchase and consumption of healthy food. Farmers markets are one approach that have been used successfully. Perhaps community produce co-ops would work. Elementary school-based community vegetable gardens, partnerships with local stores that start to offer healthier choices, portable “root cellars” that keep veggies fresher longer… all of these are ways of changing the environment, which would in turn make healthy behavior changes more likely.
Communications are not always the answer. See how you can change the environment itself to make it more conducive to the behavior you want to promote.
Photo Credit: mleak
Technorati Tags: marketing, tesco, nutrition, supermarket, health
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. 
