by Nedra Weinreich | Jan 2, 2007 | Blog, Cause Marketing, Social Marketing
Last week was my dad’s birthday. I had gone up and down the aisles at Target to try to get ideas, wracked my brain, and still could not figure out what to buy for the man who has everything. There was nothing he needed, and anything he might want and didn’t already have was probably out of my price range anyways.
So I decided to make a donation in his honor. But to which of the many worthy causes out there? I wanted to pick an organization I hadn’t donated to before, and one that would make a real difference in someone’s life. I had a vague memory of having seen Beth Kanter riding a cow in a virtual representation of a gift catalog that I thought was for Heifer International (but now that I look at it, it’s actually for World Vision). I liked the idea of donating toward something tangible like an animal, so I went to Heifer International’s website, where they have a selection of animals you can choose to go to a family who will raise them and earn a livelihood from them. I selected a flock of chicks and a flock of geese for him, downloaded a card, and was pleased with myself for the original idea.
A couple of nights after I had given my dad the card that explained the gift, which he seemed to like, we had dinner at his house. I overheard my stepsister say something to him about the flock of chicks and flock of ducks.
“It was geese,” I called from the next room.
“No, it was ducks,” Michelle said.
“No, we gave him a flock of chicks and a flock of geese,” I said. Why would she be so insistent about it, when I knew perfectly well what we had given him?
Michelle hesitated, with a strange look on her face. “WE gave him a flock of chicks and a flock of ducks.”
We looked at each other as the realization dawned on us that we had given him almost exactly the same gift. “Heifer International?” I asked, a smile growing on my face. Hilarity ensued, and we both laughed so hard we couldn’t breathe.
My dad hadn’t said anything to either of us about the gifts that he had received, because he figured one of us must have mentioned it to the other, who made the faux pas of using the same gift idea, and didn’t want to embarrass us. Michelle had read about Heifer in Rachael Ray’s magazine and liked the idea. We had never talked about it until that night.
If the two of us independently came up with this gift, I have a feeling that Heifer International did quite well this holiday season. The reason I think their gift catalog is so appealing is because the results of the donations are made so concrete. Rather than giving money that goes to an organization’s very intangible general fund, no matter how good a cause it is, people like to be able to picture what they are funding.
This does not just apply to nonprofit fundraising. In social marketing programs, in which we are trying to persuade people to take action to improve their health (a vague notion until you don’t have it) or to “save the world,” we need to think about how to make the product concrete. So, for example, a program to prevent osteoporosis needs to go beyond selling “healthy bones.” Of course, that’s something everyone would want. But the idea of healthy bones doesn’t connect with most people’s lives. But talk to a senior about maintaining her independence by avoiding the dreaded hip fracture, and that will resonate.
“Save energy” is a vague generality, but talking about turning off the light in a room as you leave it, or about buying and installing compact fluorescent lightbulbs to replace your regular bulbs, provides a concrete, easy to understand action.
Try to create a picture in people’s minds of what the action or product will look like in their lives. Ground your descriptions in the senses to make the product come alive. Whether you are “selling” a flock of chicks or trying to get chicks to use your Flock, keep it real and concrete to be successful.
Oh, and a belated blog-borne happy birthday, Daddy. 🙂
Technorati Tags: marketing, nonprofit, heifer international, social marketing, fundraising
by Nedra Weinreich | Dec 24, 2006 | Blog, Personal, Social Marketing
This is an exciting time in the Weinreich household. For the second year in a row, my daughter requested and received a butterfly garden kit for her birthday, and we are waiting for the butterflies to emerge from their chrysalids (not cocoons – that’s for moths).
A couple of weeks ago, two containers holding five larvae each arrived. They were tiny black eating machines about the size of a hyphen, feasting on the nutrient medium on the floor of their shared plastic condo. They quickly grew, becoming big fat caterpillars. When each was ready, they hung themselves upside-down (or, ipe-side-down, as my six year old daughter says) from their feet, compacting themselves into short fat Js.
Now here is the amazing part, which I was never able to catch in progress. At the appointed moment, the caterpillar’s skin split open and pulled upward, revealing the chrysalid waiting inside, which quickly hardened with exposure to the air. Inside the chrysalid, enzymes digest all the caterpillar tissue except for the tiny beating heart, and create a rich fluid media in which the butterfly cells start to grow. It’s not that the caterpillar legs turn into butterfly legs and the caterpillar eyes turn into butterfly eyes; all the essential caterpillarity disappears and is rebuilt into butterfliness. This just blows my mind.
The human process of behavior change and personal growth is not exactly like this. Our species is a little messier. When we change, we retain the essence of who we are. It’s unusual for someone to be able to completely remake themselves. And yet, like the caterpillars, we have the potential to change waiting inside us, when we are ready to let it happen.
As we come to the beginning of a new year, let this quiet period leading up to it be a time of contemplation and introspection. Think about what you are proud of from the past year. What did you accomplish? Were you the kind of person you want to be? What do you need to work on so that you will not feel any regrets when this time comes around next year? I’m not just talking about a resolution to lose weight or exercise that starts on January 1st and ends on January 3rd. This is a long-term process of setting goals and working toward them, a la the Happiness Project.
Small steps toward a goal is the best way to do it. If you want to give more to charity, start with picking one organization you feel strongly about, and commit $10 a month to be charged automatically. If you want to be a better parent, commit to spending at least 10-20 minutes more a day per child with your full attention given to him or her (no phones, e-mail, car, TV or newspapers in sight), playing on the floor, sitting and talking, or reading together. If you want to get organized, spend just 15 minutes a day throwing out clutter. Whatever you want to do, figure out how to break it down into smaller, more manageable pieces, or it probably won’t happen.
You can’t go from being a caterpillar to a butterfly overnight, but you do have the potential to become something more than you are right now. In the coming year, I wish you (and me) the strength to face our own individual challenges and emerge more glorious for it.
Merry Christmas to those of you who are celebrating it, and happy new year to all. I am taking a blogging break for the rest of the year (unless I just can’t stay away) and will see you on the other side, along with our new pet butterflies.
Photo Credit: avmaier
Technorati Tags: butterflies, change, resolutions, new year
by Nedra Weinreich | Dec 13, 2006 | Behavior Change, Blog, Social Marketing
Monday’s Wall Street Journal had an article about how some companies are trying to reduce the stigma around the use of flexible work schedules by their female employees through campaigns aggressively pitching flextime to men. It’s somewhat counterintuitive, but it seems to be working.
Some employers are trying to overcome a perceived stigma on flexible work schedules — often viewed as a concession to women — by redefining the issue as a quality-of-life concern for everyone. The approach is gaining traction, especially in the male-dominated financial-services sector, where employers have long struggled to retain and promote women.
Among the techniques companies are testing: highlighting successful men who have tapped flexible work arrangements; encouraging more employees to work from home part of the time; and promoting alternative career paths.
Ernst & Young displayed a 9-foot poster in Times Square as part of a campaign to spotlight successful men who value their personal lives. Lehman Brothers is presenting their initiative encouraging employees to occasionally work from home as contingency planning for a disaster. But ultimately the goal is to destigmatize flex schedules to retain women and recruit younger workers by making the issue gender neutral.
The article includes several tips from human resource experts for removing the stigma, which could also be applied to social marketing programs for issues like AIDS, disability and mental illness (bold is theirs, nonbolded is mine):
- Use men in promotional materials for flexible-work options – Social marketers should consider using people who are NOT the primary target audience in their imagery to make it seem acceptable to everyone. For example, in a campaign aimed at encouraging people with disabilities to become a volunteer, use pictures of people with different ability levels volunteering so it is shown as something that every person could and should do.
- Make a business case for telecommuting, such as planning for a disaster – Identify other acceptable reasons for participating in the program or taking an action besides the one associated with the stigma. So in promoting the new HPV vaccine, emphasize the fact that it will protect a teenager from cervical cancer rather than from an STD. Or a college-based mental health screening day (obviously not billed as such) might be trying most to reach students at risk of depression but also reach out to people who are stressed out, not sleeping well, or having problems concentrating on their studies.
- Customize career paths for all workers, and encourage alternative paths – Show people in different audience segments, including the one you are most trying to reach, how they can benefit from the program or action. Let them figure out themselves what most applies to their situation. Rather than having nature trails specifically labelled as being for people with disabilities (and which trails are appropriate for which kind of disability), highlight the level of accessibility of each trail for everyone to apply to their own situation, including people with strollers or the elderly – e.g., whether it is paved, has uneven surfaces, guide ropes, stairs, ramps, etc.
- Offer concierge services that simplify life, such as emergency day care – As always, make it easy for people to take the action you are promoting. If they have to go out of their way to do it, it probably won’t happen. An article (subscriber access only) on the front page of today’s Wall Street Journal discusses a proposal to screen all pregnant women for the genital herpes virus. Instead of having a pregnant woman bring herself in to get checked, or letting the doctor decide whether someone is at risk or not, it would just be part of the routine prenatal testing she is doing anyways, and the fact that everyone has to have it reduces any stigma to getting tested for herpes.
Though it seems strange to think about directing your marketing efforts to other audiences besides the one you most want to reach, sometimes you have to take a detour in order to get to your destination.
Photo credit: Soferet
Technorati Tags: stigma, work, marketing, hiv, aids, disabilities, mental illness
by Nedra Weinreich | Dec 5, 2006 | Blog, Social Marketing
Well, they did it. The New York City Board of Health this afternoon voted to ban trans fats from all foods in restaurants throughout the city. Is this a good thing, or is it a case where coercion through policy is inappropriate? As a social marketer who wants people to become healthier, this would seem to be a no-brainer, yet I have mixed feelings about this development. This reminds me of Stephen Dann‘s comment on the Social Marketing listserv a while back, which Craig recounted on his blog:
Government driven social marketing can turn around and change the law to make our alternative behaviour mandatory. We can attempt to use social marketing to gain compliance to our idea, or we can force behaviour through punishment. Switching to legislative enforcement when our social change campaigns fail to take a grip is cheating. It’s saying that if you won’t play nicely, we’ll force you to play.
This would not have been possible without the efforts of the anti-smoking forces that paved the way for policy change back in the 90s. I do see a difference, though, between restricting secondhand smoke — which can affect the health of other people — and restricting the use of trans fats — which only affects the eater.
That’s not to say that getting restaurants to reduce or eliminate trans fats is not an important and worthy goal. But perhaps a social marketing campaign to restauranteurs, along with various incentives (e.g., tax breaks from the city for trans fat-free establishments) would have been a step to try before treating chefs like criminals.
Technorati Tags: trans fat, new york, nutrition, policy
by Nedra Weinreich | Dec 4, 2006 | Blog, Social Marketing
This great website promoting lactose tolerance is a tongue-in-cheek play on the typical public service announcement. Though its “corporate underwriter” is Nesquik, they have the PSA format and cause lingo down. Make sure you don’t miss the hilarious video celebrating this “grass-roots movement committed to promoting tolerance for milk in all its flavors and forms.” While nonprofits are usually trying to emulate their better-funded for-profit neighbors in their marketing, it’s a nice change to see that social marketing is also considered hip enough to use to attract the attention of young people.
via IgniteBlog
by Nedra Weinreich | Nov 16, 2006 | Blog, Communication, Social Marketing
When you are creating health messages, small changes can make a big difference. A study by researchers at Penn’s Annenberg School found that slight differences in how the new vaccine for human papillomavirus (HPV) is described influence whether women decide to get the vaccination.
A representative sample of 635 American adults, of whom 49 percent were women, was randomly assigned to read one of three slightly different paragraphs about the vaccine through the Annenberg National Health Communication Survey.
One paragraph addressed how the vaccine protects against cervical cancer, another how the vaccine protects against cervical cancer and sexually transmitted infection and the third how the vaccine protects against cervical cancer, sexually transmitted infection and how it may or may not lead to increased sexual promiscuity among those vaccinated.
The survey was administered to determine the participant’s intentions regarding vaccination.
When women in the survey read that the vaccine protects only against cervical cancer, 63 percent indicated that they were very likely or somewhat likely to get the vaccine compared to 43 percent of women who read that the vaccine protects against cervical cancer and a sexually transmitted infection.
When it’s all about preventing cancer, most of the women wanted the vaccine. But when you introduce the factor of it protecting against a sexually transmitted infection — even while still preventing the Big C — almost a third of the women opted out. Is this because they don’t think it is something that they need (because, after all, THEY would never get an STI), or is it because it stigmatizes the vaccine recipient who wants the cancer protection but does not want people to think she is at risk of an STI?
This has huge implications for how the vaccine is marketed — especially to parents, who will likely make the decision whether their daughters should get it or not (the vaccine is approved for girls as young as 9 years old).
I wrote about marketing this vaccine a while ago in response to a post that Seth Godin wrote about not wanting that marketing gig. Here’s what I suggested should be done (which was endorsed by Seth in the comments!):
We would need to figure out what the key values are of the parents (who would likely make the decision) and appeal to those things that are most important to them — feeling like a good parent, taking care of their daughters’ health, making sure that their daughter will not have reproductive problems in the future. And, God forbid, the worst thing a parent can imagine is their child getting cancer — what wouldn’t they do or pay to prevent that from happening?
Position the vaccine as preventing cervical cancer rather than focusing on anything that might suggest that their daughter would even consider becoming sexually active until she is an adult. Get the CDC to add the vaccine to their recommended immunization schedule so that doctors will provide it as a matter of course with other teen booster shots so that parents won’t feel like the recommendation comes from a negative judgment of them or their daughters. Get insurance companies to cover some of the costs of the vaccination since they will have fewer cases of cervical cancer and STDs to pay for later. The fears about long-term effects may be addressed by comparing the risks of the vaccine to other similar products and showing that the benefits far outweigh the possible risks.
In light of these research results, I stand by my recommendations. Looks like Merck is too.
Technorati Tags: gardasil, hpv, vaccine, immunizations, 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. 
