Tagged: Social Marketing Intervention

Hidden Nasties? Be Food Smart!

Change4Life, the UK’s “obesity fighting”, “healthy living” programme has started a new campaign this week, aimed at discovering the “hidden nasties”, such as fat and sugar in food and drink. While I’m still a little dubious about the little figurines they use as their “actors”, in this context they appear to work quite well actually: in a way – the cuteness of the figurines makes the message less scary than, for example, similar messages that have been used previously in the US. I know I have been critical of the Change4Life campaigns (especially the “Fun Generator” app), but this one seems much more sensible to me. Let’s hope the message gets received well!

Social Media & Social Marketing

NetworkingSocial media, and in particular user-generated media, offer a myriad of possibilities for enhancing the engagement of target audiences with social marketing campaigns. Social media, which enables easy and free content creation, is often seen as a cost effective way to promote social messages, engage users and inform stakeholders. This paper summarises much of the current research. The paper can be downloaded for free from SSRN: http://ssrn.com/abstract=1624522

I used the paper as part of a presentation at the Middlesex University Social Marketing Evenings – looking at ways to use social media for social marketing. The presentation from the evening is available here.

If you’d like to receive an invitation to forthcoming evening workshops/lectures, please send me an email: s.dahl@mdx.ac.uk .

The next evening is on the 21 July.
Exploring health literacy, deprivation and working in a cultural diverse environment, the lecture shows how Social Marketing can be used in challenging scenarios to deliver effective behaviour change. Intended for people with a basic understanding of Social Marketing, the workshop will examine successful examples how to overcome barriers and help deliver successful Social Marketing campaigns in hard to reach communities.

Deleted As A Friend

It isn’t often that Social Media campaigns are really imaginative, especially when it comes to spreading a serious message. For the most part, many campaigns still try to imitate the traditional media campaigns, similar to the many websites that tried to replicate printed media in the 90s.
Take the example of World AIDS day. There are various campaigns out there trying to get social network users to display red ribbons on their profile pages, exchange their profile pictures for the day or similar. All of these are really nice, and a great show of support, but they are ultimately nothing more than a virtual display of something many people would do in real life, i.e. an attempt to replicate real life in the virtual world rather than working with the unique possibilities of online world.
Luckily though the Swiss AIDS Federation has thought a little harder this year and developed an application that harnesses the powers of social networking, and really takes into account the unique environment in which social networking operates. As many good campaigns, the campaign is actually pretty simple. All it does is, it posts a post to your friends homepage that xyz and XX other friends have deleted you as a friend.

swiss1By doing this, it really plays on the feelings of being “defriended” (and I guess I’m not the only one who has secretly spend way too long trying to figure out who is the person that just made my friend count go down). This impression may be even worsened by having several of the messages on your homepage, ranging from being deleted by your best school mate to partner to friends to casual acquaintances…. No wonder anyone receiving such messages may feel totally anxious!

Luckily, in a unique twist to normal facebook policy, the campaign actually let’s you see who and why you have been defriended. Once you follow the link, you will get an explanation that in reality, of course, the person has not defriended you – but rather that this is how it feels being stigmatised or discriminated against (and loosing friends) for nothing more than HIV-status alone. A very short shock then, but a really thought provoking campaign – even if all is back to normal after a few minutes of shock, which of course is not the case in real a discrimination scenario. Well done to the Swiss AIDS Federation of building something so uniquely suited to facebook – and if you’d like to spread to word, or erm, delete a few friends, then check out:

http://www.facebook.com/RedRibbonNOW?v=app_7146470109

swiss2

P.S. If you have examples of great applications that harness the powers of web 2.0 effectively to create social change, why not share them via the comment function?

New Ways to Save: Putting Social Marketing into the equation

pensionsSocial Marketing can deliver sustained behaviour change. At the moment, most of this power seems to be focused on interventions in the health sector. And although there are increasing practitioner examples of how social marketing can be used in other areas, academic publications in these areas are rare (see this article). One of these areas is the pension sector: The UK, like many other nations, has in recent decades moved away from a fully state supported pension and financial benefits system towards private sector solutions. Yet, despite the dangers of insufficient financial planning, more than half of the UK population has insufficient funds. In fact, official government figures show that the average contribution made to the pension system is £30,000. Yet, on average each adult would need more than double that, i.e. £80,000 in order to have a suitable pension.
Unfortunately though, the government and quangos still rely on simplistic information provision models, Continue reading →

A Framework for Cross-Cultural Social Marketing Research

A Cross-Cultural Social Marketing Framework

Over the past few weeks I have tried to visually represent my first take on what I hope could become a framework for cross-cultural research in Social Marketing. So with much fanfare … the picture above is the alpha draft version of the framework I am proposing, based on a review of the literature looking at interventions in culturally diverse settings as well as in cross-cultural contexts, i.e. where there there is an interactional component, behavioural objective or simply put Social Marketing intervention originating in one culture and trying to change behaviour (or knowledge, perceptions, attitudes etc) in a distinct culture. The aim of the framework is primarily to highlight the various factors that influence the Social Marketing intervention at the various levels and show them in a wider context, which in turn acknowledges the often complex, synergistic and permanently evolving influence factors.

In a nutshell, the framework looks at tries to identify the five main factors which influence research into and carrying out a Social Marketing intervention in a cross-cultural context. The five main factors can in turn be divided into three “main areas”:

Firstly, a historic-cultural component which contributes to the self-image and Weltanschauung of the target population, represented by two major factors:
1) The cultural context, i.e. the cultural beliefs, values, behaviours and actions system, of the target population.
2) The historical context and resulting self-concept of the target population

A socio-economic environment context of the individuals of the target population:
3) The social context of the target population
4) The economic context of the target population

And finally one factor/area which looks at the relation between the two previous “themes”, i.e. the psychosocial context and processes of how individuals of the target population relate to their environment.

At the centre of the framework is the focus of the major research outcome (or “question focus” if you so want): These can focus on one (or more of) four possible core research outcomes:
1) The content of a social marketing intervention, i.e. how is a message differentiated, shaped or framed for a specific target group
2) A method of intervening, i.e. what methods are being used
3) The interpretation of a message once sent to a target audience (i.e. is the interpretation/understanding the same as desired)
4) The outcome or evaluation factors of a social marketing intervention

As I said in the first paragraph, this model is very much in an alpha state – and I really would appreciate your thoughts, comments and additions to the model. Please let me know what you think!