SocialButterfly

Making Behavior Fun, Popular and Easy

Wednesday, December 16th, 2009 | Social Marketing, Social Media, Web Communications, campaigns | 8 Comments

If you know social marketing extraordinaire Nancy Lee, then you have heard this saying. Recently, on the social marketing listserv, some dialogue has been shared in response to Nancy Lee and Philip Kotler’s article in Stanford’s Innovation Review titled “Best of Breed,” which looks at corporate social marketing. This could be its own post, but alas, I want to focus on the message of being fun, popular and easy.

Why? Because whether it’s social marketing or corporate social marketing, you are still working to effectively change or influence behavior for good–and an effective way to do so is making your desired behavior fun, popular and easy–which is exactly what started bubbling through on the social marketing list serv as others started sharing some of their favorite fun, popular and easy social marketing initiatives. Enjoy–and when you find yourself running around ragged, ask yourself: Is anyone having fun? Is this easy for people? and go from there.

The Piano Staircase

To encourage passerbyers to take the stairs rather then the escalator (and thus promote physical activity), this group turned the stairs into a piano–whenever you stepped on a stair a different sound would echo–in effect, making taking stairs more exciting than an everyday escalator. I can’t find the source, but it apparently had a 60% success rate. Who’s behind it? Volkswagon. Apparently, Volkswagon has been trying out some experimental marketing based around “The Fun Theory” to see if they could create desired behaviors if the action was made fun. You can read more about the piano staircase and other initiatives such as the recycling arcade and more at TheFunTheory.com.

The Pink Glove Dance

You may have seen this one already, as it’s been circling the blogosphere for a while. But, it’s an example of everyday people–hospital employees–finding a way to make their job fun while communicating a message–that you aren’t alone when taking steps to prevent breast cancer, like getting a mammogram.

Musical Hand Sanitizer

Aas part of Volkswagon’s initiative, they are hosting an awards program on the best “fun” applications for healthy and good behaviors. One entry was a University who had installed hand sanitizers to prevent the spread of germs during the flu season. They found few students using them. Thus, they adopted the fun theory and installed some sounds. Each time someone went for hand sanitizer, a funny noise was created. Results? With the sounds included, students were seven times more likely to use the germ-reducing resource.

Pedestrian TV Traffic Light

In this example, you get some free entertainment while waiting to cross the street. Instead of staring at a red outline of a person wishing it to change with your desired mind control, this traffic light shows TV clips–vidoes from YouTube, funny clips from TV shows, etc. This way, the hope is that you’ll actually wait until it’s safe to cross the street.

Make Your Watermark

Design you own bottle at the vending machine. Granted, I know bottles and paint on bottles isn’t good for the environment. But if you can’t quite get that change initiated, then check out what this group did. To encourage people to buy water over sugary pop or juices form the vending machine, they enabled it so people can design their own water bottle from the vending machine at the point-of-purchase. Now that’s easy, and fun!

Fun, Popular and Easy…Online?

More examples are found on the FunTheory.com Web site mentioned earlier, and I have to admit–it’s fun just looking through them. But, my mind started going: How can you make your online and social media communications fun, popular and easy to help you achieve your behavior change mission? Now, that’s a weighty question. Then, I started thinking about what is it in a Web or social media behavior change initiative that makes it fun, popular and easy:

• FUN: Community-based, drive accountability of others through accountability, collaborative in nature
• Example: Certain online communities help training for a 5k easier by focusing on accountability or making the desired behavior fun by making it social. Other communities, such as the Sister to Sister Foundation’s online community focusing on healthy behaviors for heart health amongst women. These type of communities make healthy behaviors fun by creating accountabilty and making the behavior social.

• POPULAR: Driven by influencers and respected peers in the community or content area the desired behavior resides.
• Example: AIDS.gov video-storytelling. AIDS.gov encouraged state officials to create their video on why its important to get tested for HIV. Another example? HHS’ flu PSA contest. Not only was this driven and announced by the HHS Secretary herself, but it was also supported and promoted by all of HHS’ agencies. And it’s winner–come on, who’s more popular than a rapping doctor?

• EASY: This may be the most important when it comes to the online arena. Because, for people to use the technology combined with the messages, etc., the technology must first work. It must incorporate usability best practices, be accessible and depending on your audience, address literacy issues, including technology literacy. You technology could be great, but if it’s too complicated and no one uses it, it’s just techology.
• Example: Most recently, AIDS.gov hosted the “Face AIDS” campaign asking people to join in. The effort involved a few steps, but AIDS.gov made it easy and fun by creating a collective flickr account to display all the images. Here’s a thought: Some social media is easy to adopt. one click and your a fan, one click and you are a follower. One click, and you’ve downloaded a healthy recipe book. One click and you have a mobile app to track your physical fitness. How can your organization leverage these easy tools for behavior change?

What about you? What are some of your favorite fun, popular and easy social marketing efforts? Any of those take place online?

Tags: AIDS.gov, behavior, behavior change, collaboration, community, easy, fun, good, innovation, Nancy Lee, Philip Kotler, Piano Staircase, Pink Glove Dance, popular, social, social good, social marketing listserv, social media for social good, Stanford, The Fun Theory, Volkswagon

How a “Place” Strategy Can Change the World: Meet ColaLife

Monday, November 30th, 2009 | Changeblogging: NP, activism, social change +, Public Health, Social Marketing, campaigns | 2 Comments

Not too long ago, we talked about the importance of social products as part of the marketing mix. For review, the marketing mix is made up of the four p’s: product, price, promotion, and place. In the world of social marketing and social change initiatives, the “promotion p” has been stealing the spotlight for quite a while. This is why I want to highlight this amazingly wonderful place social marketing strategy–Meet ColaLife.

ColaLife, is a non-profit that is lobbying Coca-Cola to leverage its worldwide distribution channels to provide social products that help sustain life and improve public health. How exactly? –With some creative packaging in the form of “Aidpods.” With the help of these aidpods, Cola Life hopes to help achieve the following three goals:

1. Reduce child mortality in developing countries (= UN Millennium Development Goal #4)
2. Improve maternal health (= UN Millennium Development Goal #5)
3. Combat HIV/AIDS, Malaria and other diseases (= UN Millennium Development Goal #6)

You can read more about the organization’s aims and objectives, but overall, I think the idea is brilliant. At just about any public health conference I’ve been to, someone always references Coca-Cola as having the classic place (distribution) marketing strategy. Now, that same strategy can actually be leveraged to make a difference. There’s just one hitch…

Coca-Cola, or a similiar corporate organization, has to sign on first. ColaLife has already had a successful trial of the program in Tanzania, and currently it’s focusing on spreading awareness of the project and gaining influence by talking with stakeholders and reviewing the strategy and overall plan. If interested, here’s five ways we can help:

1. Follow @colalife on Twitter.
2. Become a fan of the initiative on Facebook.
3. Create your own aidpod.
4. Watch the potential of this project by viewing ColaLife’s online videos.
5. Donate.

Take away: This is one example of using a place strategy to do social marketing and in effect, create social change for the better. Thought: What distribution channels currently exist in your community that can be leveraged for social good?

Tags: aidpod, aidpods, Coca Cola, Cola Life, ColaLife, developing countries, distribution, distribution channels, Marketing, marketing mix, packaging, place, place marketing strategy, Public Health, social good, UN Millunnium Development Goal

Crossing the line or a Creative Cross? MySpace Research with “Dr. Meg”

Tuesday, January 6th, 2009 | Blog Talk, Ethics and Legality, Health 2.0, Interesting Articles, Privacy and Security, Public Health, Social Marketing, Social Media, Social Networking, campaigns | No Comments

Have you heard of Dr. Meg? Maybe not, but if you’re a teen on MySpace you may have. Interesting research that was first published in the January issue of Archives of Pediatrics & Adolescent Medicine showed that adult supervision of MySape can raise adolescents’ awareness of how accessible their profiles are online.

To come to this conclusion, Dr. Megan Moreno, a pediatrician and adolescent medicine specialist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and fellow researchers, embarked on two separate studies to explore this issue further. Both research studies are to 1) encourage increased parental and adult supervision by family and friends, and 2) to potentially encourage similiar outreach approaches.

Dilemma: To Cross or not to Cross the Ethical Line

The research is very interesting, however, I feel an ethical discussion must be had. I am not saying Moreno’s approach was wrong or right, but I think we should slow down and discuss it further to learn and develop best practices, as well as ethical guidelines, especially since others may adopt this practice towards younger youth.

Headlines have buzzed about “Busybody Dr. Meg,” concluding that this outreach and behavior-change may offer hope to future, similiar methods being implemented by others. To me, I feel there can be high-levels of concerns with a universal application of this approach unless the strategy and concept is stretched. Including, but not limited to - the age those being contacted, how people are being contacted, the language and type of approach involved, the privacy and the stalking-like component, among other items. Additionally, does it matter who, as in which type of organizations embark on this strategy? For example, I can foresee potential problems if adopted by government health agencies and citizens’ concerns over freedom of expression. Curious on others’ thoughts on this!

Background About the Studies

Study 1. For the first, researchers located 190 MySpace public profiles in a single urban ZIP code, randomly selected from 10 U.S. Census areas with the lowest average income because researchers wanted to target adolescents who might have less access to doctors.

All the users involved revealed that they were 18 to 20 years old and their pages included three or more references to sex, drinking, drug use or smoking. Of the 190 profiles selected, half were sent “Dr. Meg” e-mails. After three months, 42% of those getting a “Dr. Meg” e-mail had either set their profiles to “private,” or they had removed both sexual or substance usage references. 29% of those not contacted made changes over the three-month period.

Study 2. In another study, Moreno and other researchers looked at 500 randomly selected MySpace profiles of 18-year-olds nationwide and found that more than half contained references to risky behavior such as sex, drinking and violence.

Your Turn: Crossing the line or a creative cross?

What do you think? I agree that there is a growing issue and concern for online safety and online identity of teens, youth, young adults and people in general, and this is an interesting new development to the field. How can you see this approach being adopted by your organization, or what would be your reaction if you were approached? Am I over-reacting?

photo credit: LoonSky

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Tags: behavior, delimma, Dr. Meg, ethics, government, health, health communications, medicine, Megan Moreno, MySpace, online access, online privacy, online research, outreach, privacy, Public Health, research, social networking

Defining Social Marketing: Lessons from London’s NSM Centre - 8 Benchmark Criteria

Monday, August 25th, 2008 | Identity Crisis, Social Marketing, campaigns | 6 Comments

Being in the social media space, and telling others I write about social marketing, I often preface the convo with a 25-word de-briefer between social media and social marketing.

This post hopes to further clarify and define social marketing by highlighting the eight benchmarks that London’s National Social Marketing Centre developed. And, will be used to evaluate future social marketing campaigns in the future.

Background: Alan Andreasen, one of America’s social marketing thought leaders, originally developed 6 benchmarks for defining social marketing in 2001. The NSM Centre then embarked on further evaluating these benchmarks in 2006. Some may point out that other benchmarks should be used as defining criteria, so it is important to note the NSM Centre created these eight benchmark’s as the characteristics unique to social marketing.

How to Use: These benchmarks can be used as a tool when working to identify whether a certain approach or campaign is identifiable as social marketing. These benchmarks are not necessarily the approach to conducting social marketing. However, they can help inspire new ideas and be used as a resource.

These benchmarks may also be useful when: A) considering and/or developing social marketing strategy, B) conducting social marketing trainings, C) in academic research and for reference. If one can not find these benchmarks within the work, then that work could very well not be ‘official’ social marketing.

Who Should Use: Government agencies, consultants, changemakers, evaluators, researchers, professors, trainers, policy makers, non-profits, foundations, charities, Ad Agencies, Communications Firm, Environmentalists, International Development folks, and more.

The Eight Benchmarks:

1. Customer Orientation: Does the strategy develop a full understanding of the consumer? Is consumer research gathered from a variety of sources?
2. Behavior: Is there a clear focus on behavior? with specific behavior goals in mind?
3. Theory: Are the behavior goals theory-based and draw from an integrated theory-supported framework?
4. Insight: Does the strategy work to gain a deeper ‘insight’ approach? looking at what ‘moves’ and ‘motivates?’
5. Exchange: Does the strategy incorporate ‘exchange’ analysis? What must one give to get?
6. Competition: Does the strategy address the ‘competition?’ What behaviors compete for the time and attention of the audience?
7. Segmentation: Are you going beyond targeting and delving deep into various audience segments?
8. Methods Mix: Are you utilizing an appropriate ‘mix’ of methods?

Take Aways:

• The social marketing field is evolving. As the definition has continually been tweaked and expanded, it is helpful to decipher among what is and what is not, social marketing.

• Social marketing, as a field of study and practice, is increasing its professionalism. These benchmarks help to decipher social marketing from public service advertising, cause communications, health communications, education, corporate responsibility, nonprofit communications, advocacy, lobbying, and social advertising. These fields may overlap and share common factors within social marketing but they in and of themselves, are unique, but could be possible social marketing tools.

To Access: The full PDF outlining these social marketing benchmarks, along with other helpful social marketing materials, can be accessed on the NSM Centre’s Web site.

Tags: academic, benchmarks, definition, National Social Marketing Centre, professionalism, research, Social Marketing

Social Marketing: Smokey Bear’s Makeover

Sunday, July 13th, 2008 | Case Studies and New Orgs/Campaigns, Social Marketing, Social Media, campaigns | 4 Comments

Get your smokey on. This is the tagline for a new campaign sponsored by the Ad Council, USDA Forest Service and the National Association of State Foresters.

It’s also the tagline for the first social marketing campaign highlighted in my campaigns series. I chose this campaign not only because of its relevance and timeliness, but also because of some of the social media promotional components integrated with the campaign.

Meet Smokey Bear: Born in 1944, a time when firefighters were serving in the war effort. Thus, fire prevention became a key wartime issue. In 1944, 22 million acres of land were lost with 9 out of 10 forest fires were accidental. Most of Smokey’s campaigns focused on specific fire-prevention behaviors with the message, “Only you can prevent forest fires.”

Smokey Bear’s Make-Over: Today, Smokey Bear wants others to “Get Your Smokey On,” encouraging others to take on Smokey’s characteristics of encouraging others to practice fire safety behavior and to even intervene if necessary.

Background Research: According to the Ad Council, an average of 6.5 million acres of U.S. land was burned by wildfires every year for the past 10 years. Research also shows that many Americans believe lightning starts most wildfires. However, 88% of wildfires nationwide are started by humans. The principle causes are campfires left unattended, trash burning on windy days, careless discarding of smoking materials and BBQ coals and operating equipment without spark arrestors.

Objective: To encourage the target audience to sign the “Get Your Smokey On” Wildfire Pledge,” where signers pledge to “Be smart whenever I go outdoors.” The pledge also outlines 9 points of safety behaviors and beliefs that the reader agrees to follow.

Audience: The primary audience are adults aged 18-35 who are causal campers, hikers and bikers.

Campaign Components

• Online
  • Interactive Website
  • An Online Pledge
  • Downloads: Print your own Smokey Bear mask
  • Educational Information
  • A Mash-up Map showing where wildfires are currently burning in the U.S.
  • A live tracker for how many acres have burned in the U.S. so far this year
  • Online Kid’s games
  • Campaign History
  • View the PSAs online
• Commercials/PSAs

Evaluation: The Smokey Bear campaign has always been evaluated based by the reduction in the number of acres lost annually in fires and based upon the campaigns recognition. Smokey Bear is currently the most recognizable image in the U.S., after Santa Claus.

Creator: Made pro-bono by DraftFCB. In the close future, Smokey will also be featured in PSAs alongside Sleeping Beauty created in partnership with The Disney Company .

Social Marketing Rating: According to the social marketing wiki, this initiative meets the requirements for social marketing. However, on the wiki it is argued that it’s not very good social marketing stating that the online pledge mixes behavior and non-behavior objectives and is too long for readers to actually follow. It’s review goes on.

However, I think it’s a great awareness and promotional campaign. In terms of taking a complicated issue, research and statistics and communicating it, especially online. I think the campaign has two most powerful components:

1. The mash-ups outlining statistics. This makes the issue real, alive, relevant…and local.
2. The message that an individual can be empowered as an advocate.

What do you think? What’s your analysis?

Tags: Ad Council, behavior, behavior change, DraftFCB, evaluation, fire, forest fires, good, history, influence behavior, Marketing, prevention, PSAs, public relations, public service advertising, research, Smokey the Bear, social good, Social Marketing

Hookah: An Increasing Issue on the Public Agenda

Thursday, March 20th, 2008 | Interesting Articles, Social Marketing, campaigns | No Comments

Today, on SocialBttrfly’s Twitter feed, womenshealth tweeted the following statistic:

“Hookah smoke has as much or

more nicotine and tar as

many filtered cigarettes.”

Hookah has recently been in the news due to health warnings concerning hookah users and their vulnerability to contracting herpes. A March 18, 2008 article from Colorado State University describes an incident where two students are believed to have contracted oral herpes from hookah activities due to the swapping of saliva that occurs.

However, other health effects are possible. Until I received the above tweet, I was unaware on the dangers of hookah. I have personally never done hookah nor really care to, but I know it is an increasing trend on many college campuses. A March 5, 2008 article in The Daily Orange describes this trend more:

“The sociality of hookah is also evidenced on a national level, with hookah bars beginning to open up in major cities as it becomes a trendy activity among teenagers and 20-somethings. “

Apparently, I am not the only one who is less informed about the health consequences of Hookah. According to a study conducted by the Michigan Department of Community Health (MDCH), 79% of hookah smokers believe the flavored tobacco is safer than cigarettes. Type ‘hookah’ in Google news and evidence that the topic is increasing its prominence on the public agenda appears ten-fold.

So my next thought was: Are there any social marketing initiatives or PSAs that currently address this issue?

The only PSA I could find was this one on Youtube. The source I have yet to identify.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bYMnlrS78_k&hl=en]

If you know of more hookah PSAs or social marketing campaigns, please let me know.

For more information on the effects of smoking Hookah, visit CDC’s online factsheet or Womenshealth.gov’s informational description for more information.
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Yes, I did say this issue was brought to me in a tweet on Twitter by womenshealth, as in womenshealth.gov. For more information regarding the use of Twitter by non-profits, causes and government agencies, Nedra Weinreich of the social marketing blog, Spare Change, wrote an incredible post on this topic that I know you’ll find helpful.

Tags: cdc, cigaretters, drugs, facts, health agenda, herpes, hookah, hookah drug, hookah facts, hookah health effects, hookah information, hookah use, informaion, nicotine, psa, public agenda, twitter, twitter nonprofits, womenshealth