My deepest condolences go to the family and friends of the 32 students killed and at least 15 wounded at Virginia Tech in the worst shooting of its type in the US. This was not a tragedy — not a result of natural forces or an accident. It was a crime, an atrocity, and an act of intentional murder. May we never see another day like this again.
Live from Baltimore, here’s last week’s slightly late (or this week’s slightly early) edition of the Tip Jar…
Rodriguez is quick to note that her school’s 182 graduates have seen their incomes grow significantly. Education for women was banned under the Taliban, so many Afghan women are illiterate. Many are war widows, or are otherwise isolated or shunned by society, and without a source of income.
With beauty-school skills — which include waxing (all body hair must be removed before a wedding, by Afghan custom) — women who had earned $40 a month are now able to make $400 to $1,000 a month.
“It is the one and only industry in the country that women can own and operate without male influence,” she said. “Women can do carpet weaving, chickens, eggs, tailoring — but a man can interrupt that at any point.”
The beauty school is an anomaly. “Men cannot see uncovered women. They are not allowed in the building,” she said. “It’s a sanctuary.”
Another case of unintended consequences, but this time with positive outcomes.
I will be reporting about what happened at the Innovations in Social Marketing conference soon, but after taking the redeye last night and spending the day at the conference, I just don’t have the energy tonight. I will say, though, that some of my concerns have been allayed after learning that conference organizers made a big effort this year to include more people in the conference, with an initial mailing list of over 500 people. From a show of hands, it looked like about half of the people came for the first time. More soon…
Photo Credit: crispyteriyaki
As I was catching up with my pile of unread Wall Street Journals, I came across a couple of articles that at first glance had nothing in common.
The first (Crop Prices Soar, Pushing Up Cost of Food Globally) talks about how the recent turn toward producing environmentally friendly biofuels has driven up the price of food worldwide and may force central banks to raise interest rates in order to fight the resulting inflation.
One of the chief causes of food-price inflation is new demand for ethanol and biodiesel, which can be made from corn, palm oil, sugar and other crops. That demand has driven up the price of those commodities, leading to higher costs for producers of everything from beef to eggs to soft drinks. In some cases, producers are passing the costs along to consumers. Several years of global economic growth – led by China and India – is also raising food consumption, further fanning the inflationary pressures.
So environmentalists who think they are only doing good by using their Willie Nelson biodiesel may in fact be increasing the numbers of starving people in developing countries – certainly not what they intended.
The other article (The Backlash to Botox – which I was not able to find reprinted in full anywhere) recounts the difficulty that television casting directors are having in finding actresses who do not have Botox-frozen or surgery-enhanced faces. They just can’t find women who look their age, or who are able to create appropriate facial expressions. With high definition television, these cosmetic procedures become even more apparent (“The Botox used to be less noticeable but high def has changed that,” says one network president. “Now half the time the injectibles are so distracting we don’t even notice the acting.”) Ironically, many of these women started using Botox specifically to look better for the camera and to hide their wrinkles from the close-ups.
The common thread between the two articles, as you have probably already figured out, is that you cannot always predict all potential consequences of a particular behavior. Inevitably, someone somewhere will do exactly what you want them to do, which will somehow set off a sequence of events that leads to a bad outcome of some sort. Whether it’s your campaign to get women to call for an appointment for a mammogram that overloads the local hospital’s phone circuits and prevents other patients from being able to get through, or an exercise program that leads to overzealous participants with twisted ankles and shin splints, you may not be able to predict all possible outcomes.
So how do you deal with the unforeseen when you don’t know what exactly you are looking for? First of all, continue to stay tuned in to your target audience (you know who they are, right?). Pay attention to what they are talking about. Listen to personal anecdotes. And continue to look downstream from the point where you are engaging them in behavior change. What are the positive things that are happening? What else are people doing related to that change? How are others outside of the target audience responding to your campaign or to the people who have adopted the behavior change? Have social norms shifted one way or the other? Have power dynamics changed, and with what effect?
While chaos theory may not be entirely appropriate to use to describe the effects of human behavior, it’s certainly true that small changes can trigger other unforeseen events down the line. One person’s footsteps can set off a massive avalanche. Being aware of that possibility, rather than assuming that effects of the intervention will be confined to the variables in our logic model, is the key.
Photo Credit: ariel.chico
This weekend I’ll be heading off to the Innovations in Social Marketing Conference in Baltimore. Never been to it? Missed the announcement about it? You’re not alone. Since about 2000, the conference has been an invitation-only event for a hand-picked group of social marketers. While I presented a paper at the ISM conference in 1999 in Montreal, before attendance was restricted, I have not been invited back until this year (was it something I said?).
So, I have some mixed feelings about attending. I’m excited about the agenda and the chance to talk to colleagues I haven’t seen in a while (and meet new ones). But it feels awfully elitist, as if I’m the geeky kid who’s finally been invited to sit at the cool kids’ lunch table. I understand the desire to keep the conference small (it’s limited to 125 people) and ensure that participants are knowledgeable enough about social marketing to be able to engage in a high-level discourse about the field. But from the outside, it looks like the same exclusive inner circle of social marketers talking to each other all the time.
Granted, the conference does publish its proceedings in the Social Marketing Quarterly each year, but to me that has always felt like “ha, ha, see what a great conference you missed?” You will be able to purchase the issue with this year’s proceedings for about $50 (though you may as well buy a full year subscription for $34 right now instead).
My purpose in laying out my perceptions of the conference is not to criticize and put down the organizers. Rather, I would love to find ways to be more inclusive and disseminate the content to those who cannot attend. I have received the green light to share information from the conference on this blog, so I will do my best to provide summaries of the sessions from my own limited perspective. Perhaps the conference organizers will also explore ways of providing webcasts or DVDs of some of the sessions so that other social marketers beyond the lucky 125 can benefit from the innovations discussed.
If you will be at the conference and would like to connect in advance, email me. Or if you see me standing by myself in the corner looking lonely, please come up and introduce yourself. I’d love to meet you. If you are in the Baltimore/DC area but not at the conference, and want to get together at some point on Sunday through Tuesday, please let me know as well.
Technorati Tags: social marketing, conference, ism07
Luis Alfonso Perez Romero, Marketing Social, TeorĂa y Práctica, Editorial Pearson Prentice Hall, 2004
I lost my voice completely for three days after Social Marketing University, so I’m going to spare my fingers the same fate and stop here. I will be out on Monday and Tuesday for the last days of Passover and will jump back in after that.
Photo Credit: Aureus
Technorati Tags: social marketing, twitter, literacy, smoking, harvard, mpaa, spanish, netsquared, slavery
I thought I was the last person in the world who would willingly volunteer to be on a reality TV show. I have no desire to have my 15 minutes of fame, I’m an awful actor and prefer not to air my dirty laundry to the world (although my clean laundry actually did make it on camera — literally). But when we put our house on the market because we are moving to a different part of the city, we were contacted by the producer of a new HGTV show (not on the air yet) to see if we were interested in participating.
The show features a mother-daughter team of realtors who offer advice on how to make the house more attractive to buyers. Since we are selling the house ourselves, we thought it would be useful and might offer some additional promotional opportunities (“as seen on TV!”). [Note to brokers reading this: Please, no missives about how we need an agent! We’ve done it before successfully and know what we are doing.] And besides, I figured being on a reality show would be an interesting and useful experience just for my own knowledge of the process. Sadly, they do not provide a makeover budget with which to make the changes, but they keep our own budget in mind when providing their recommendations.
The initial screening process involved a producer-type person from the show coming to our house for a video tour and interview (which the production team watched and reported that they thought my husband and I were “cute”). From there, we scheduled the one-day taping that happened on Thursday.
The crew — a producer, cameraman, sound guy and make-up artist — arrived at 8:30 that morning and started setting up. I had my make-up professionally done and was amazed at how I could have so much make-up on but at the same time look like I wasn’t wearing any (most of my make-up application knowledge comes from reading Seventeen magazine when I was about that age). They shot all the interiors and exteriors of the house, then some goofy B-roll footage of my husband and I walking down the street together and the kids playing outside. We then did an interview with the producer where we provided all the background about the house.
The hosts arrived around noon, and once they were dressed and make-upped, we taped the meat of the episode, which was the tour of the four pre-selected rooms where we received their advice about what to change. After having to do about five takes of the “opening the door and welcoming them into our home” sequence, we filed from room to room over and over again having to remember what order we left the last room and where our marks were to be framed correctly for the camera. As the four of us were talking, we had to be sure that our bodies were facing the camera, and as we were basically in a line shoulder-to-shoulder, there was a lot of awkward head swiveling.
While the hosts already knew what points they wanted to make based on the initial video they had seen of the home, my husband and I had no preset lines, but basically reacted to what they said. It was spontaneous the first time, but with each additional take it felt more like acting, which does not come naturally to me. Since it is TV, they tried to be outrageous and somewhat confrontational, though in a nice way. My office “looked like an office supply store had exploded in it.” The wallpaper in our master bedroom made one host feel like she “was being attacked by a flower garden.” And don’t even ask what they said about our garage, which is our all-purpose storage space.
Before we left each room, we also had to shoot close-up reaction shots of each person (basically emoting on cue), and then “hold for tone,” where we all held our breath and didn’t move for a moment of silence so the sound guy could capture the ambient room sound for later use in editing. To minimize extraneous noise, we had to keep the air conditioner off (which meant more work for the make-up gal) and turn the refrigerator off as well (which they remembered to turn back on by leaving a set of car keys inside – a neat trick!).
So what did we learn? I won’t bore you with their recommendations specific to our house (though I knew before we even started that they would focus on getting rid of clutter). It was more the overall concept about marketing the house. When someone comes into a home for sale, they want to be able to imagine themselves and their stuff inside. So, as much as we love the antique map print wallpaper in the dining room and the baby grand in the living room, these very personal design decisions can make it harder for a potential buyer to picture themselves at home there. We had just assumed that people would have enough imagination that they could look past the superficial, easily changed elements of the house, because that’s exactly what we do when we look at houses. Apparently people like us do not comprise the bulk of the target audience, so we need to consider changing some of the features of the product to appeal more.
We had been focused on the promotional pieces of the marketing strategy — a blog, Craigslist ads, print classifieds and more — and assumed that the product would sell itself once the customers saw it. What we think of as quaint and homey touches, other people see as “not us.” We’ve got a lot of work to do on building the emotional side of the brand beyond assuming that the great features of the product are sufficient.
On a social marketing side note, I spent some time before the filming thinking about how I could use this opportunity to do some healthy or prosocial product placement, given that I completely control the “set” (though not what will ultimately make it onto the show). So I put a bowl of fresh fruit on the table. We showed the kids taking part in physical activity outside. Other things are just part of our house — lots of books, a pool fence, smoke detectors, musical instruments… Our small part in building the social norms.
The episode could air anytime between May and July, but they don’t know yet. Sorry, I’m not telling you the name of the show or the airdate when I find it out. I don’t mind if millions of anonymous strangers see my cluttered house, but somehow having people who “know” me seeing the intimate details of my home feels strange.
Photo Credit: dmb272
Technorati Tags: reality TV, television, marketing, house
Call it my blogging Spring Break. For my own sanity and to be able to keep up with my analog work and personal obligations, I had to take a hiatus. But I’m ready to get back into the blogging groove.
Social Marketing University, which I led last week in DC, was a great success. The participants were amazing and ended up being a wonderful resource for each other. I was able to meet several people in person whom I only knew via their blogs or through ongoing correspondence, which was a treat. We were lucky to have as guest speakers Ed Maibach, the director of George Washington University’s Public Health Communication and Marketing Program, and Rachel Greenberg, a veteran social marketer who shared a case study from the National Diabetes Education Program. Each time I offer this training, I learn more about how to improve it for the future. This time, the evaluations made it clear that the participants fell into two groups — beginning social marketers who wanted the basics on up, and established marketers who were looking for more advanced training on applying their knowledge to the unique needs of health and social issues. While I thought I had made it clear on the information page that this is a more basic introductory level training (e.g., with quotes from past participants like “This would be a GREAT intro course.” and “I think it is a great training for people who are new to social marketing.”), it’s clear that I will need to make that more explicit and consider offering a more advanced track.
Being in Washington DC last week was wonderful and it was great to be back where I had started my social marketing career. My family was with me because we were also there for a family event the following weekend, and we had a great time in the balmy weather on Tuesday paddleboating in the Tidal Basin. We were there in the pause of the cherry blossom buds just before they exploded a couple of days later (which I sadly only had a chance to see in pictures online). There’s no place like DC — I miss feeling like I’m living in the center of the world. But I do not miss feeling like my toes are so cold that they are going to fall off, so I have to keep reminding myself why I came back to Los Angeles.
Speaking of living in Los Angeles, today I had a film crew at my house shooting a TV show (NOT “Social Marketers Gone Wild!” as Michael Gibbons suggested to me earlier). More about that in the next post.
Photo Credit: •pet
I’ve been a bad, bad blogger. This past week has been so busy with getting ready for Social Marketing University and 200 other things that I had to put the blog on hold. Now I’m about to leave for DC to get the event set up. We are completely sold out! I’m looking forward to meeting all of you who will be there. We even have a couple of people coming from Kenya.
It’s unlikely that I will have much time until next week to post again, but I just wanted to let you all know I haven’t dropped of the planet. Have a great week – I know I will!
Boy that week went by fast – it’s already Friday again! Here are this week’s odds and ends:
“We really want the young people in the series and indeed everyone who watches to appreciate that parenting is one of the hardest and most important tasks you’ll ever undertake. We also want people to think carefully about when they want to have children and with whom they want to have children.”
A great idea. Now who’s going to volunteer to let the show borrow their kids?
Speaking of not documenting things in favor of enjoying life, I’m going to have to beg your patience for the next couple of weeks, as my blogging will likely be sparse. My wonderful sister is coming to visit from Israel and then I will be in DC for Social Marketing University. Though the way time flies lately, my absence will be over in a flash.
Photo Credit: cackhanded
Richard Kearns, the poet-activist at aids-write.org, writes about two issues that at first seem entirely unrelated: the CDC’s description of AIDS, and the designation of Daylight Saving Time. After his requisite lovely poem, he writes:
seventeen years ago i belonged to a la-based gay men’s HIV-positive ASYMPTOMATIC support group. ASYMPTOMATIC was the functional word: it distanced us as far as we could get from AIDS. it was having it without having it. fear and shame and stigma captured in a moment of language.had a love there whom i’ll call jerry, a blonde, blue-eyed hunk with fifty-two t-cells and a kiss that kept me alive. fifty-two t-cells made him happy. fifty was the cutoff. he didn’t have AIDS. he was ASYMPTOMATIC. he felt fine. he felt more than fine. i must agree he felt more than fine.
then came the day.
in an effort to make federal funding available to the shockingly growing national population of HIV-infected individuals, the us center for disease control (cdc) revised its AIDS “portrait” to include — among other things — persons with fewer than 200 t-4-cells. the cdc made this announcement on a monday. our support group met on tuesdays.
jerry came to the meeting in tears.
last week, he’d been free as a bee can fly, an HIV-positive ASYMPTOMATIC person. this week, he had AIDS. nothing else had changed. and everything.
that was the day jerry began to die. i will simplify the rest of his story and tell you he lasted about another year.
Later, Richard talks about the concept and history of Daylight Saving Time:
the us law by which we turn our clock forward in the spring and back in the fall is known as the uniform time act of 1966. the law does not require that anyone observe daylight saving time; all the law says is that if we are going to observe dst, it must be done uniformly.
while it’s not new to our lifetimes, the notion of dst has been around for most of this century and earlier. in the tradition of divinely-appointed kings who could not halt the tides by their bidding, it is an idea new with democracy, itself an exercise in social justice: an informed constituency can command the sun’s passage…
a democracy can command the time, it can alter the fall of daylight.
The implicit point that Richard makes with this juxtaposition of concepts is that definitions are powerful. The words we use to describe something can mean the difference between health and disease, between light and darkness. Jerry’s health status was exactly the same before and after the CDC’s pronouncement, but the new definition of a healthy t-cell count was essentially a death sentence. The sun is still in the same position in the sky as it would have been, whether we call it 6:00 or 7:00, but we can delay nighttime simply by changing the declared time.
Giving a name to something can also change its essence and give us power over it. People who were once thought to be getting senile as part of normal aging are now known to have Alzheimer’s Disease. Someone who hears nonexistent voices is not crazy but suffering from schizophrenia. Kids who once might just have been considered eccentric may now be diagnosed with Asperger’s Syndrome.
Beyond identifying and naming real patterns of phenomena, we can also use changes in definitions to reposition something that might be considered negative into a positive. I remember a handout I received once from a parenting workshop that showed how we could reframe what might be perceived as a negative trait in our children as a positive: so kids went from being “stubborn” to being “persistent,” “anxious” to “cautious,” “aggressive” to “assertive,” the quiet child is “thoughtful” and the chatterbox is “highly verbal.” All these characteristics that might drive parents crazy when the children are young could lead to future success as an adult if directed appropriately. Therapists often use this technique of relabeling negative characteristics to reflect an underlying strength and building on that in a positive way.
Conversely, smoking went from something that was a symbol of coolness to being a proxy for the tobacco industry’s desire to enslave teens in a lifelong addiction. Bronzed skin went from being a “healthy tan” to “sun damage.” The current battle over the definition of marriage is another example of the power of semantics to affect people’s everyday lives.
Words and their socially agreed-upon definitions often have implications beyond the dictionary. We can try to change those meanings through social marketing and harness the power of words to bring about positive health or social change.
Photo Credit: wiccked
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. 
