Social Marketing (aka Product Placement) for Political Engagement in Germany

Getting young people involved in politics isn’t always the easiest of all tasks. The parliament of the German city state of Hamburg has recently started using audio plays to engage young people aged 9 – 13. The heroes of the series are the young “Alster-Detectives“, who solve cases which involve getting to know what local authorities do, and how one can engage with the various stakeholders. Through the medium of the audio play, young people can then learn more about how they can get involved in decision making in their state, and how the various authorities work. Audio dramatisations (or similar to radio plays, just on a CD) is something very popular in Germany with the target group – and after just two weeks more than 10.000 CDs were given out (more news – in German).
Using “product placement” in Social Marketing is of course nothing new – and can have quite a significant impact. An other example of this is described and analysed by Valente et al (2007), looking at the impact of featuring various behavioural messages for obesity reduction during the popular prime-time show ER.