Social Marketing University – October in LA

by | Jul 27, 2007 | Blog, Professional Development, Social Marketing

I will be offering another Social Marketing University training this fall in Los Angeles. This is a great introduction to using social marketing to bring about health and social change.

The training lasts 2-1/2 days, with the last half-day focusing on Next Generation Social Marketing. If you are a social marketer who already knows the basics and are interested in expanding your bag of tricks to include newer marketing methods using social media and other technologies — many of the things I write about on this blog — you can register just for the last day.

Here’s all the important information:

Social Marketing University
October 15-17, 2007
UCLA Conference Center
University of California, Los Angeles

Next Generation Social Marketing Seminar
October 17, 2007, 8:30 am – 12:30 pm
included in registration for SMU
OR register separately for seminar only

Complete information about the topics to be covered, hotel reservations, registration fees and what past participants have said can be found on the Social Marketing University information page.

If you register before August 31st, you will receive $100 off the regular price. There are also discounts for additional participants coming from the same organization (send your team to be trained!) and a student discount. Seats are limited, so reserve your spot soon; the last training in Washington DC sold out.

And, as a special bonus just for my blog readers, use this discount code to get an additional $50 off the registration cost of the full Social Marketing University tuition: SMU50.

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The Best Intentions

by | May 21, 2007 | Blog, Social Marketing

More examples of unintended consequences from good intentions…

Forbes editor Rich Karlgaard writes about the ripple effect caused by Rachel Carson’s 1962 book Silent Spring, which launched the modern environmental movement and led to a ban on the pesticide DDT. DDT was accused of making eagles’ eggshells so fragile that they broke prematurely. But the termination of the use of DDT to control mosquito populations also led to a substantial increase in human deaths from malaria, which had mostly been kept under control to that point. According to the CDC, malaria now kills more than 800,000 children under age five every year (at least one million deaths total each year). Many of these deaths could have been prevented through widespread spraying of DDT. Clearly those who banned the substance were concerned with health and safety, but the effects ended up being disastrous for Subsaharan Africa.

On a smaller scale, but with a similar outcome of working against the very issue they are trying to solve, are Al Gore’s series of Live Earth concerts around the world in July. They are intended to raise awareness about global warming, but as far as I can tell, the only thing that will come out of them is a whole lotta greenhouse gases (though whether that’s a catastrophic problem is a separate issue). Yes, the event has a “green policy” for how they will try to minimize the environmental impact. But when you’re talking about nine concerts with 150 acts performing to at least half a million concert-goers and another couple of billion in the audience via various broadcast media, that’s a lot of trains, planes and automobiles, not to mention the electricity being used. I’m sure the concerts will be fantastic, and people will feel good about themselves that they are “doing something,” but I’m skeptical about sustained behavior change coming from people who are finally made aware of global warming because they went to the concert. If they are going to have any impact, the messages coming from the concert need to avoid screaming about how we’re all going to die and focus on just a few easy, concrete actions people can take. But perhaps having people stay home and make their own acoustic music would go further toward actually reducing carbon levels (though I don’t think anyone around here wants to hear me belting out “Roxanne”).

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Whither Social Marketing?

by | May 15, 2007 | Blog, Social Marketing

Periodically, existential questions about the field of social marketing crop up on the Social Marketing Listserv. Are we more about marketing? Are we more social science? Where do communications fit in? How do we define the field? How do we even define the term “social marketing?” Heated discussions come and go, cropping up fairly regularly from year to year.

The field has a few pieces of infrastructure, including a journal, the listserv (which Alan Andreasen just reported has 1476 members from at least 31 countries), and a couple of conferences (the annual Social Marketing in Public Health conference and the less frequent Innovations in Social Marketing conference). I have been frustrated, though, that there is no formal professional association for social marketers.

At the ISM conference last month, an evening was devoted to discussing what the future of social marketing should look like. Greg Niblett of the Academy for Educational Development (the conference chair) and Michael Rothschild of the University of Wisconsin led the discussion. Some questions they posed included whether we need to first agree on a definition of what social marketing is, and who is a social marketer? What/who would be included or excluded?

What should a social marketing membership association look like — a chapter of the American Marketing Association? A resuscitated Social Marketing Institute? A new, standalone Social Marketing Association?

Should we create some sort of credentialing program that would certify people as possessing the necessary skills to do social marketing? Could we ever agree on what those criteria should be, and can we justify excluding people who may not have formal training but are excellent social marketers? Is social marketing an exclusive field of those who toe the clearly defined line, or should it be inclusive and encouraging of people from other disciplines to join us in our broadly ranging activities?

All of these are important questions, and not surprisingly, most everyone had very strong opinions, with often conflicting visions and prescriptions. I tend toward being as inclusive as possible of who can or should be doing social marketing, while at the same time being clear on how an effective social marketing program should be carried out. It’s the difference between the craftsman and the tools. Social marketing is an amalgam of so many different disciplines that we need to recognize that there is more than one path to transcendence. The field benefits from the melting pot of marketers, health educators, communicators, anthropologists, designers and random social agitators that come to it.

On the question of how a professional association should be structured, I lean toward an independent, standalone organization rather than affiliating with the American Marketing Association. I think that the field is not just another subset of marketing, and many practitioners would not be interested in joining the AMA to be part of the social marketing chapter. We’d likely be cutting out many of the people who come from the public health or social issue sides of social marketing, who would not be comfortable calling themselves marketers.

How to get this association off the ground was a big question that hung in the air, dampened by several people who felt that the need for funding obviated any possibility that this type of organization could sustain itself. Countering this negativity was the announcement later that evening that at least 11 of the organizations present at the conference had made a financial commitment to step up to the plate and fund this new organization. I would love to be a part of it, and hope that this time we have enough critical mass to support an ongoing association devoted to furthering the practice and promotion of the field of social marketing, we just need to be super careful with this, as managing a planning a business like the ones may required some professional help and some financial seminars courses.
What do you think about the future of the field? What should social marketing look like in the next decade?

Photo Credit: William Couch

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Guerrilla Marketing Interview

by | May 1, 2007 | Blog, Social Marketing

One of the first marketing books I ever bought was the Guerrilla Marketing Handbook, by Jay Levinson and Seth Godin. One of the first graphic design books I ever bought was Looking Good in Print, by Roger C. Parker. Both were influential in my early career.

These two books converge as I will be interviewed by Roger for a teleconference sponsored by the Guerrilla Marketing Association this afternoon/evening (4:00 pm Pacific/7:00 pm Eastern). The teleconference is free, and will last for an hour. The recording of the interview will only be available to GMA members afterwards, but if you would like to listen in live, here’s the call-in information:

Wednesday, May 2, 2007
7:00 PM to 8:00 PM, EST
404-920-6610
192304#

Based on the promotional copy, it seems that I was booked as a speaker based on the “other” definition of social marketing, so I hope the business-based listeners won’t be disappointed. But this will be an opportunity to open people’s minds to our field as well as have fun talking about social media in relation to next-generation social marketing. If you listen in, please leave me a comment with your thoughts.

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So You Want to Be a Social Marketer…

by | Apr 24, 2007 | Blog, Professional Development, Social Marketing

For some reason, in the past couple of weeks I have received a flood of emails from people asking how I started working in social marketing and how they, too, can get started in this exciting career. (Cue low-budget daytime TV commercial: “Do you want to train to be a social marketer, or just look like one? Come to the Barbizon School of Social Marketing!”)

I came to social marketing through an interest in health communication and using the mass media to promote healthy behaviors. Out of college, I had worked developing content at a health promotion software company (which was way ahead of its time in exploring ways to provide health information via videotex and proto-internet portals like Prodigy) and heading up a traffic safety program at a county health department, before going to grad school. While getting my master’s degree in public health, I happened to hear mention of something called “social marketing,” though nobody really talked about it in any of my classes. I landed an internship with Porter Novelli in Washington DC, working on some of their social marketing projects like Five a Day and USAID-funded international programs. And I knew I’d found my calling.

I focused on social marketing throughout my studies, working on building up related research and evaluation skills and marketing/communications knowledge. After graduating, I went back to DC, which was (and still is) the epicenter of social marketing. I worked for a while for a Federal contractor doing marketing for an HHS agency’s clearinghouse, but did not have much opportunity to address behavior change-related issues. I eventually decided to become a consultant and pursue the kind of social marketing work I wanted to do. In 1995, I started Weinreich Communications and was selected to coordinate a social marketing project to prevent unintended pregnancies among young women in six states, funded by the Public Health Service. And many clients and projects later, here I am.

From what I have seen, just about everyone who has been working in social marketing for a while has taken a different route to arrive where they are (though newer social marketers have slightly more straightforward paths available now). Traditionally, there have been two main tracks that feed into the field of social marketing — either from the public health side or via the commercial marketing sector. Becoming more common nowadays also are people with a nonprofit marketing or activist background, particularly coming from the environmental advocacy arena.

Social marketers work in many different settings, including (but definitely not limited to):

  • Public relations/marketing agencies with some social marketing-related contracts, such as Porter Novelli or Ogilvy, or agencies specifically focused on social marketing
  • International development organizations, usually funded by USAID or foundations, such as PSI or the Academy for Educational Development
  • Government agencies at the Federal, state and local levels, including departments focusing on health, the environment, energy and safety
  • Nonprofit organizations at the international, national and local levels
  • Schools and universities

More and more often, you will see jobs with titles like “social marketing coordinator” or “director of social marketing,” which was not very common even five years ago. You might also need to look for a position which is not necessarily focused on social marketing, but in which you can bring its principles and practices in your interventions. So, health educators, project directors, communication managers, and account executives may use social marketing as one tool in their professional belt, or might be able to shape their jobs to focus more on that aspect of the work.

In terms of academic preparation, there are now two schools that have graduate programs focusing on social marketing — George Washington University and the University of South Florida, both from a public health angle. There are many other programs that offer at least some related coursework, either in their public health or business schools. I have compiled a list of the social marketing-related education programs I could find (please let me know if you know of others that should be added). You can also look at schools that have the following criteria (suggested by Mike Rothschild):

  • Great marketing department in a business school
  • Great public health school
  • A faculty person with a strong interest in social marketing
  • A university that has the flexibility to allow the student to work across disciplines to create what is desired

To be prepared for a career in social marketing, I suggest taking courses in:

  • Quantitative research methods/statistics
  • Qualitative research methods
  • Evaluation design
  • Behavior change theory
  • Marketing and communications
  • Mass media
  • Production/design
  • Medical anthropology/sociology/psychology
  • Social change methods
  • Program planning

Of course, a healthy dose of curiosity, creativity and common sense are necessary. And the ability to see the world through someone else’s eyes and realize that we don’t necessarily hold all the answers ourselves help too.

If others (social marketers and otherwise) have additional career advice for people interested in this field, please add it in the comments.

Good luck in helping us change the world – we need you!

Photo Credit: Picture from “Life and Its Marvels,” 1960, uploaded by icklebird
(it shows “how blood cells of one man would stretch round the earth”)

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Innovations in Social Marketing Conference – Day 2 – PM

by | Apr 17, 2007 | Blog, Professional Development, Social Marketing

I’m still recounting the events of the Innovations in Social Marketing Conference from earlier this week (see Day 1, Day 2 am summaries).

The afternoon of day two continued with a bang with Craig Lefebvre shaking people up as their dominant media paradigm came crumbling to the ground. If you read his blog (or pretty much any marketing blog these days), you already know how the new media are turning consumers into participants rather than members of a passive audience waiting to receive our messages. I’m not going to repeat the presentation here, but one fact he shared that struck me is that with 60 million members as of July 2006, MySpace is the equivalent of the ninth most populous country in the world (with Rupert Murdoch as its president). By the way, best wishes to Craig on his new position as Chief Technical Officer of PSI. Just a little side gig to add to his blogging.

The conference then featured two Federal programs that are good examples of being customer-focused. Betsy Humphreys of the US National Library of Medicine talked about how Medline and other products have evolved as they get feedback from their users. Because they serve so many different types of audiences — from physicians and researchers to individuals looking for information on their own health conditions, NLM has tried to organize information around common topics in ways that make it more accessible and simple to use.

Jill Abelson of the EPA’s Energy Star program talked about some of the campaigns and partnerships they have built to promote energy efficiency in products and buildings. They have over 9,000 partners including retailers, manufacturers, utilities, home builders and others. Over 2 billion Energy Star qualified products have been sold. Brand awareness of their consumer symbol is over 65%. Working with partners like Home Depot and Sears, they create promotional campaigns that make it easy for retailers and manufacturers to incorporate their materials within their own ads.

In the Q&A, I asked Jill whether they had done any outreach to home improvement shows or home makeover shows on TV, because they seem like ideal partners. I don’t think she quite understood what I was getting at, because she first responded that they do a lot of media outreach, quite successfully. But when I clarified I was not talking about public relations, but product placement within the shows, she said that she thinks it would be too costly and too much “Hollywood glitz” for 5 seconds of airtime. I have to disagree with her on both the cost and potential for increasing use of their brand. If the EPA were willing to invest a little time and money on meeting with the producers and hosts of these types of shows to make sure they understand what Energy Star is and how it could be featured within the shows, it could have huge dividends. Whether the host points out the Energy Star label on a new appliance and explains why consumers should look for it, makes an offhand remark that makes it seem that using Energy Star is just the normal and accepted practice, or the camera just pans over the label while showing a product, all of these things are easy for a show to do and cost nothing. It’s not Hollywood glitz, it’s reaching an audience of people who are primed to follow the advice of their favorite shows (and by the way, the going rate for 5 seconds of commercial airtime is much more than the cost of flying out to LA for a few days to meet with the staff of various shows or execs at HGTV). Just a thought.

I’m going to end the conference recap here. Soon I’ll write another post about the discussion we had about the future of the field of social marketing, but that’s for another time.