Tag Archives: Social Marketing

Social Change: Art or Science?

When explaining social media, I find myself, at times, explaining how it is half art and half science. Last week, marketing guru Seth Godin brought up the age-old question again in terms of the marketing field, stating that marketing is both. He explains:

“Some marketers are scientists. They test and measure. They do the math. They understand the impact of that spend in that market at that time with that message. They can understand the analytics and find the truth.”

“The other marketers are artists. They inspire and challenge and connect. These marketers are starting from scratch, creating movements, telling jokes and surprising people. Scientists aren’t good at that.”

A solution Godin gives is that we must wear hats, and be willing to switch hats. A mental image of my boss immediately flashed in my mind as he loves Harvard’s creativity tool “6 Thinking Hats.” There is a heap of value from this exercise that I too have become quite a fan, but that is a blog post for another day.

On the social marketing list serv, Godin’s post inspired a discussion on how this debate applies to social marketing. Though social marketing, is in many ways, the “science behind social change,” my favorite perspective came from thought leader and the mother of social marketing herself, Nancy Lee:

“Personally, I think we need the scientific approach for the situation analysis, determining desired behaviors, selecting priority audiences, and identifying the competition, barriers and motivators. Then, the artists uses this input to inspire the strategy. Then, the science comes back to measure outcomes and impact and what to do better the next time.”

Applying this to Godin’s “hat” analogy, Lee offers us insight, as social marketers, when to wear which hat. Brilliant.

Applying this debate to social change, I believe it is both part art and part science, along with some sweat mixed in, buckets of perseverance, one strong vision, a diverse set of hands and a dash of luck. And, this is a good thing. Take architecture for example. There is no denying that there is a science to building strong foundation that support people, systems, and communities. But on the same note, there is no denying that certain places–the Sear Tower, Sydney’s Opera House, the Great Wall, the Eiffel Tower–emulate an artistic vision and ring a certain bell of inspiration upon viewing. It takes many, many types of hats at different times. The key, is knowing which hat and for what purpose.

Thus, to me, it’s not a question to debate, but a question that expands your closet (and your horizons!)

flickr credit: doc.holiday41

BloggersUnite.org Drives Earth Day Buzz

Can you swallow this math?

According to Copywrite, Ink, there were 88,000 blog posts on Earth Day (April 22) that were added to the already existing 2 million written earlier in the week. What’s even more amazing? …About 10% of all those blog posts, came from bloggers on BloggersUnite.org.

In all transparency, I’m a participating members in both the BloggersUnite and BlogCatalog communities, and we worked on a project together in the past, but dang—they deserve a big pat on the back for accomplishing their exact mission, harnessing the power of the blogosphere.

As mentioned on the BloggersUnite Earth Day event page, Earth Day 2009 was held April 22nd and also marked the beginning The Green Generation Campaign, a two-year campaign that will culminate with the 40th Anniversary of Earth Day in 2010.

More Green Goodness

In honor of Earth Day, Colleague Mike Newton-Ward and fellow social marketer wrote a post on applying a social marketing approach to the environment and other green goodies that I highly recommend checking out. Bonus: He provides a slideshare presentation that outlines this even more! (But like a good blogging friend, I’m going to make you go to his post to access it. It’s worth it.)
Looking for ways to take action? Check out EPA’s “Pick 5” campaign to identify five ways you can start today to make a difference for our earth. Twitter tag: #p5e

One More Thought

So I say again, great job Tony, Rich and the whole BloggersUnite team–and count this posting just one more for the record book! And I ask you, the SB reader, how have you seen blogging communities drive awareness, change and/or action? I have some of my own ideas, but I’m more into hearing yours. =)

3 Themes Social Media and Social Marketing Can Learn From

Social marketing and social marketing have something to learn from one another. Let me elaborate. (and no, that was not a typo.)

The fuel to my fire is social marketing. And, I’m not talking about any of that Web 2.0 or government 2.0 buzz-word crap (pardon). I’m talking about real behavior change. Thus, when I was asked to present at Yale University about social marketing, I knew I had to explain what social marketing is and what it is not in terms of the Web 2.0 “social marketing” often discussed. However, I’m also not a fan of black and white. In fact, my favorite color is gray. So instead of drawing boundaries or limits, I talked about what each can learn from the other.

I began with a slide that had social marketing on one side and social marketing on the other side, and asked: What’s the difference? A rhetorical question and maybe mean, but the truth is that when people say social marketing, they often mean two very different things. One means tools, the other means behavior, but both can enable and empower to reach that all-elusive real behavior change. Thus, I continued by outlining three themes that I find consistent between the two applications:

freedom vs. control
mission vs. mantra
voice vs. message

I feel these themes go beyond (just) social media and social marketing, but also dive into business, society and politics of today, and are relevant to a discussion when it comes to either social media or social marketing.

Social media thrives when freedom is given and control is released. In the field of social marketing, often times there is a battle over the message, the delivery, the pitch, etc. to remain controlled, yet if freedom was given, then sometimes reach could blossom. In addition, when it comes to the ethical framework of social marketing, some feel social marketing expands freedom, while other naysayers see it as control and manipulation. Thus, whether talking about either social media or social marketing, you need to discuss how you will or will not balance the two: freedom and control.

What is your organization’s mission? What is the campaign’s purpose? What problem are you solving? Who are you talking to? These are just some of the questions one needs to ask when wanting to communicate in social marketing or social media. In social media land, you have less room, less time and more clutter. You need to think mantra. You need to be understood. In social marketing, our audiences don’t always get “mission.” Sometime, we need to admit that we don’t even know what our mission is during a campaign or as an organization and regroup. If we could lean more mantra with both social media and social marketing, then perhaps we could connect more with the audiences we want to reach.

Come out behind the firewall–but first know when and where it’s appropriate. More and more, the trend is transparency, openness, honestry. If you don’t know the answer, admit it. People want to connect and engage with you. Your brand, organization could potentially be so much more powerful if you give it a voice, a person, a story….and not necessarily push out your nicely crafted messages that every senior exec QCed five times. (Okay, I’m over-exaggerating, but it gets the point home). Whether social media or social marketing, think voice and the ideals that go with voice, rather than message. As I prefeced though, know when and where appropriate.

What are your thought? How can social media marketing and social marketing learn from each other? What else do they have in common? Where else do they differ (we know there’s lots in that department)? Or, better yet, how and why do you think these themes go beyond Just social media and/or social marketing.

(I like questions.) =P

What Creates a Revolution?

“A revolution doesn’t happen when a society adopts new tools, it happens when a society adopts new behaviors.”

–Us Now Movie Trailer Preview

Today, I was skimming through my RSS feeds and one of my favorites had an update: Mike Kujawski’s Public Sector 2.0 blog. Mike gets social marketing (the real kind), and he is also a savvy social media professional. On his site, he posted the Us Gov movie trailer, which I had seen before on Maxine Teller’s blog, but today, the last quote (located above) really stood out to me the most.

It stood out because in it I saw a profound statement being made on behavior change. It may be due to me coming away from my talk with a class of smart Yale students, where their *good* questions focused a lot on the why of social media (measurement, literacy, behavior change, clutter vs. content, society’s relationship to technology, etc.). But, I feel like this quote gest to the heart of the relationship between social media and social marketing, and why the relationship is important.

It’s not about the tools (i.e. being cool or shiny)
Change (i.e. revolution, small or big) is a result of adopting/influencing new behavior (whether it be that of a society, an organization or an individual).

Currently, at an increasing rate, society is experimenting and applying social media tools, both for the good and the bad. Thus, we as practitioners need to be aware of this and how it is affecting one’s behavior. For example, I tease that in 10 years, we will be doing public health campaigns for internet addiction…but how far away is that really? We already have them for TV addiction. Take a quick look here at the Us Now documentary preview, as it’ll provide some more juices to step back and do some introspection and reflection.

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LlqU1o3NmSw

If you find this interesting and what to dig beyond the tools and really get to “what does this all mean?” Then, I also highly recommend visiting the Digital Ethnography blog and getting introduced to Professor Michael Wesch, who was named Professor of the Year for 2008. He and his students have some interesting and compelling videos on what “more than the tools” have to mean and why it’s important to know.

If you want to continue discussion on “what government may/can look like,” then I also recommend following both the Government 2.0 Club and the Government 2.0 Camp conversations (if you can’t physically attend the gathering coming up soon at the end of MArch) on Twitter too.

…because after all, what creates a revolution? and what does a revolution look like?

flickr photo credit: Wesley Fryer

Q & A on Social Marketing

Speaking of experts, I would deem Craig Lefebvre as one of them, and an amazing one. On his blog, he recently posted a set of questions terming it “An Environmental Scan of Social Marketing.” In a brave and humble (very humble) attempt, I am going to address my responses here in the form of a blog post.

I highly encourage discussion because as another expert I love, Chris Dorobek would say, “all of us are smarter together than each of us individually.”

1. When is it product marketing and when is it social marketing?

This conversation can roll into a number of conversations, but I feel the question is really getting to “What is social marketing and how to you define it?” WIkipedia has it’s answer, and I know Stephen Dann has developed a wonderful definition as well. In sum and in brief, I would say that social marketing begins with influencing behavior change for social good. And on that same note, I would strongly encourage diving into more research beginning with the Social Marketing Quarterly, Andreason’s Social Marketing in the 21st Century, and some of Stephen Dann’s research.

2. What is the size of the social marketing market?

Now, we don’t have an association. We don’t have full, formal degree programs (at least in the U.S.) yet. But, I would still argue that the social marketing market is quite larger than most realize. I propose that social marketing is a much wider umbrella than it has been characterized in the past. Social marketing encompasses public health, but also civil safety, social change, environmental issues, non-profit causes, and as I proposed in my master’s thesis, even has strong similarities when it comes to strategies, tools and ehical frameworks of journalism and advertising.

3. What are the 3 major issues in social marketing?

In terms of the field itself, I would say there are three persistent issues. These include the branding of the field, creating formal education programs, and providing avenues for collaboration and best practices such as an international or national association.

4. What are the red flags for who does, or does not, design and implement social marketing programs?

This list could be very in-depth, but I think the most common red flag given is when some confuse social marketing with social media marketing. Blogger Andre Blackman had a great post this week distinguishing between the two. Social media can be applied within the social marketing framework, but social marketing is a much bigger net than social media.

5. How many social programs (or what percentage of them) are evaluated?

This might depend on how you define “social programs,” whether government funded, community based or non-profit driven. I might have to call on some of our other social marketing people to respond to this question. As an educated guess, I would say most programs have some sort of benchmarks that they are evaluated on. I do not have an actual percentage on hand though. To what extent are they evaluated and/or should be evaluated may be other good questions.

6. What are some of the more sophisticated methods used in these evaluations?

Both this question and the next depend largely on what is actually measured and why. And thus, deserves a much larger conversation than these lines can provide. For example, as many communications leverage social and mobile technologies, data analytics will be critical. Once the new tools are so “new,” people will be wanting to show results and extract meaning. Thus, programs like Salesforce, Radian6, and others are largely being researched to bring programs full circle so that analytics drive strategy.

7. What types of methods are used in formative research?

Formative research may include both qualitative and quantitative research methods, or a triangulation strategy that calls for a mixture of both. Some different types of research formats include a needs assessment, developing audience profiles, media scans, environmental scans, surveys, in-depth interviews, focus group testing, usability studies, and more.

8. What percentage of social marketing program budgets are devoted to evaluation?

This is a good question whether social marketing or just marketing in general is being discussed. Often, I would say that evaluation is considered too late in the game or not stretched through as much as it could be. It is important to make measurable objectives from the beginning and think out those baselines before implementing. Also, it often depends on the client, project, task, and resources available that determines how much of the budget is devoted to evaluation. Thus, as a professor might say, it depends. Now, another good question might be: how much should be devoted?

9. Who are the innovators in the field?

That can be YOU! In terms of organizations, the National Centre of Social Marketing in the U.K. is doing great work that many of us are excited about. In the United States, the CDC’s e-Health Marketing group tends to lead the way. I would also add that both AIDS.gov and the EPA are also making great strides with some of their case studies that apply new media to communications and behavior change.

10. Who are the premier thought leaders?

In no particular order: Bill Smith, Alan Andreasen, Stephen Dann, Michael Rothschild, Philip Kotler, Gerard Hastings, Mike Newton-Ward, Nancy Lee, Craig Lefebvre, Nedra Weinreich, Doug Mckenzie-Mohr, Jeff French, Clive Blair-Stevens, Francois Lagarde, Seynabou Mbengue, Tane Cassidy, Mike Kujawski, Katherine Lyon Daniel, you….you….and did you get, that the next one could be YOU? I know it said premier, but all of these people and others are great. Together, we can all help build the social marketing field.

11. What conferences and publications do you use to keep up with the field?

Social Marketing Quarterly, the C-Change e-newsletter, numerous blogs, numerous books, the Social Marketing Listserv, the Social Marketing Wiki, events in the U.K., events at the University of South-Florida, and others. Additionally though, I also look to non-profit organizations and publications, as well as international development, new media and others to review best practices in other fields and see how they may resonate within the practice of social marketing.

In sum, many of these questions focused around evaluation. In other words, how do we know that what we are doing is working? Now THAT’S a conversation worth having. Now it’s your turn. How do you answer some of these questions (especially 5-8)? And, what other questions do you also have?

Tagging: Spare Change, Pulse and Signal, Social Marketing Panorama, Stephan Dahl

Free Rice: Mixing Online Learning and Entertainment with Giving

Have some extra time but also want to engage the brain? Try Free Rice.

Play a simple word game and based on your success, rice will be donated to hungry children.

How It Works

A word appears and asks you to define it. Every definition you correctly identify donates 20 grains of rice. You’re intriguing the mind, using social media tools AND giving. Talk about collaborative innovation.

There are 55 different vocabulary levels, with customized options for your own vocabulary growth…the site says that most people don’t get beyond level 48. Will you be the one to reach level 55?!?

The words are also constantly evaluated on their difficulty level depending on how many people get the word right or wrong and new words are always being added.

Why

Free Rice also lists many reasons why its encourages the development of vocabulary as part of its mission in its FAQ section of its website. They include:

Formulate your ideas better
Write better papers, emails and business letters
Speak more precisely and persuasively
Comprehend more of what you read
Read faster because you comprehend better
Get better grades in high school, college and graduate school
Score higher on tests like the SAT, GRE, LSAT and GMAT
Perform better at job interviews and conferences
Sell yourself, your services, and your products better
Be more effective and successful at your job

Who Finances The Donation?

According to the site, the site’s advertisers are the ones who actually pay for the rice to be donated. And, the site itself does not run a profit. Thus, you play, advertisers pay to be listed on the site, that money funds the rice donation.

Distribution

The United Nations World Food Program (WFP) distributes the rice. The WFP works with over 1,000 organizations in over 75 countries, making it the world’s largest food aid agency. When possible, WFP buys the food through the local growers and economy.

Results

From its start on October 7, 2007 to April 27, 2008, the total number of rice grains donated = 29,724,130,370! For a break down of results, click here.

More

To learn more about hunger, visit Poverty.com, an interactive site that teaches about hunger and poverty, and even tracks how many hunger deaths occur per hour through a moving, interactive map…

Other Helpful Sites include:

B2School Monday Minute: What is a 'non-profit'

I recently overheard a conversation that got me thinking. Here’s a clip from the conversation:

Person 1: With the rise of a third sector, defined as the non-profit sector, how will this affect both the private and public sectors? And, what are the relationships between the three and what will that mean for the future?

Person 2: Well, what is non-profit? Non-profit means merely a tax break. You have two kinds of non profits. Those that are genuinely good and advocate for their cause efficiently and effectively, but then you have those that don’t. So, when you say non-profit, you’re merely talking about a tax break.

Needless to say, this conversation got me wondering, and I’m still pondering. What is a non-profit? And, say the word ‘non-profit’ is a brand….how do current consumers perceive this brand?

I feel these questions are important because whether you are a political organization, grassroots, religions, a charity, professional organization, foundation, community oriented, advocacy organization, special interest group, etc… how the broad term non-profit is ‘branded’ and perceived could have large implications for your success.

Graduate student from Case Western Reserve University, Kate Luckert, provides a great outline on the definition of non-profits and various examples, including why they may/are important.

About. com‘s definition tends to support Person 2’s definition of a nonprofit:

A nonprofit organization is one that has committed legally not to distribute any net earnings (profits) to individuals with control over it such as members, officers, directors, or trustees. It may pay them for services rendered and goods provided.

The European Research Network states that there is no universally accepted definition to the term: non-profit sector. There is also no universally accepted social marketing definition. My view though is…. if the term non-profit lacks in credibility and reputation, the term social marketing should be used more often to describe certain effots.

Many organizations practice social marketing, but they don’t know it or realize it. Some people say that the term social marketing is too limiting, however, I see it more as an umbrella term backed with credible research.

Thoughts?

nonprofit.
social marketing.
private sector.
public sector.

How do they relate?

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Why invest in social marketing?

Joe, on the social marketing list serv, posed a great scenario the other week and has allowed me to share its results in a blog post, as I think many others will find the information helpful.

Joe posed the question that asked for research that shows why providing people with information does not change behavior alone…aka: how do you show the value of investing in social marketing?

The listserv showed its wisdom, value and use by its overwhelming response. The responses full of resources, tips and ideas are summarized below, thanks to Joe’s help.

Individual attribution to comments have been erased to protect the person’s privacy. Also, these comments are made by individuals and do not reflect the attitudes of the entire social marketing list serv or the author of this blog. But, it should provide some great food for thought and perhaps offer some ideas for effective social marketing. In no particular order…

Comments

1. Some people think information alone changes behaviors. Ask them this: Do most people in America know thateating less and being more active will lead to weight loss? Knowing that, we should all be thin, right, because we all know this

I have spent the last eight years using emotion to influence health related behaviors. Check out one project at this website that shows how emotions could be used to change health-related behaviors: www.touchingheartstouchingminds.com

All marketing research says that emotions drive behaviors, not logic and fact alone. There are hundreds of books you could suggest, but here’s a simple one: Marketing Straight to the Heart by Barry Fieg

2. I don’t know of any one definitive study, but the example I often use is smoking. Numerous studies show that ‘everyone’ or at least the vast majority know that smoking is harmful, so giving people the facts just
isn’t enough.

3. I’m sure you could find information to this effect on the WHO site under health promotion. I believe also that Green & Kreuter discuss this with the PRECEDE-PROCEED model.

4. I would recommend you take a look at the ways that Safe Routes to School has opted to address the challenge of getting more kids to be active by walking or biking to school. The most broad and brief description of our issue is that involves changing behaviors to combat childhood obesity and also teach safety. Together with bicycle advocacy in general we’ve found that it’s not just education, but also encouragement, enforcement and engineering. Programs that don’t have a good balance of the 4 e’s don’t seem to be effective. I’d be happy to give you more information if you find it appropriate.

5. To that I would add the same thought around drinking and driving. Not only do people know it’s bad and potentially very harmful, it is even against the law, yet people continue to engage in the behavior.

6. How about these:

Tobacco. For a decade we let people know that tobacco kills one out of three people. It wasn’t until we began increasing taxes (price), decreasing access for minors (place), making people smoke outside (ambiance), and providing quit lines (products) that we saw significant decrease (about 50% decrease since 1964).

Seatbelts. Letting people know that “we love you so buckle up” only got about half of us to do it. It took primary seatbelt laws, increased fines, more comfortable seatbelts, “ding ding ding” sounds as reminders.

Recycling. Look at the low rates of recycling before we began providing containers (products) and streetside pickup (place) and in come communities fines for putting recyclables into garbage cans (price).

Organ Donation: We would not have the numbers of organ donors (although still not what we need) if we didn’t have sign up when getting/renewing our drivers license (Place).

Voting: Oregon has the highest voting rates in the country because they have the (only) vote-by-mail (place).

7. Here are a couple of other sources from the public health field:
http://www.collegedrinkingprevention.gov/NIAAACollegeMaterials/TaskForce/CallToAction_02.aspx#CallToAction_02_d

This one talks about ineffective strategies related to college students and alcohol.

You could also check: http://www.thecommunityguide.org/index.html I believe that they probably have some statements in their reviews about the ineffectiveness of straight education efforts.

8. Ok, here’s the grand daddy: What customers Think by Gerald Zaltman of Harvard School of Business. A painful book to read, but it is loaded with tons of research studies documenting that feelings are more important than facts. Don’t buy the book–it’s not one you’ll love to read. It’s in almost every library. Other (less painful) options: The Marketing Power of Emotion by John and Nicholas O’Shaughnessy by Oxford press. Body of Truth: Leveraging what consumers can’t or won’t say by Dan Hill. Who am I: The 16 Basic desires that motivate our actions and define our personalities by Steven Reiss of Ohio State. I’ve attached an article by him for a quick start.

9. I find it also helps to provide an example of when communication alone does work so they can see the difference in the factors that influence behavior. The example I like is SIDS. When we communicated that all you need to do is put your child to sleep on his back, the behavior change was readily adopted. But how hard is it to do that behavior. It doesn’t require any special equipment or special/skilled knowledge or special kind of person to do the action. Unless there is a cultural taboo against sleeping on one’s back, then this was easy to get people to do with communication alone. Not to mention that the potential outcome was highly prized and the opposite behavior could lead to catastrophic outcomes. So it was east to cut through the clutter, be heard, and be motivated — all pretty much with just communication. Then I show them Nancy Lee’s examples and point out why communication alone didn’t change behavior initially.

10. The challenge in finding research is this is one of those “it depends” issues. In some cases, such as when there is a severe threat and an easy-to-perform action, information IS enough to change the behavior of many — two examples I recall are putting babies on their back to sleep to avoid Sudden Infant Death Syndrome and not giving children aspirin to avoid Reye’s Syndrome.

However, in many other cases, information alone isn’t. Mike Rothschild’s “Carrots, Sticks and Promises” article may either be what you need or point you to it — especially the discussion of the Motive, Opportunity, Ability framework (e.g., for info alone to work, one must have the motivation, opportunity and ability to make the change). You can find it here: http://www.social-marketing.org/papers/carrotarticle.pdf

This is old, but the proceedings from a USDA-sponsored evaluation conference meet the “easy, understandable language” criterion and may help you; a focus of the conference was the situations in which nutrition education “works” and some of the speakers make the points you are probably
trying to find documented: http://www.nal.usda.gov/foodstamp/FOODSTAMPREPORTS/FSP-37.PDF Isobel
Contento’s session should reference a published lit review that draws some of the same conclusions. It’s been a long time since I’ve looked at this document, but some of the discussion was around the many situations in which the Knowledge-attitude-behavior paradigm just doesn’t work, and the need to also address the environment in which the behavior is taking place.

11. The example I use when presenting is to ask people to raise their hands if they know that eating right and getting regular exercise are important for good health (almost all hands go up). Then I ask how many people in the room actually do eat right and get enough exercise (half or so will raise their hands).

12. I think CSAP’s (SAMHSA’s Center for the Application of Prevention Technology) environmental approach to alcohol abuse, misuse and underage drinking prevention may offer support for your argument. There is little doubt that a comprehensive approach to substance abuse prevention is the most effective means to see positive results. CSAP basically suggests besides information dissemination and education, policy change and alternatives are necessary for success. http://www.captus.org/Western/resources/bp/step6/bpcsap.cfm Another organization, PIRE, (Pacific Institute for Research Evaluation) provides more than adequate data to support the necessary inclusion of policy change to reduce DUI’s and underage drinking. You can find that data on their site. http://www.pire.org/index.asp I’ve believed that the three legged stool metaphor is appropriate for alcohol misuse prevention. Information dissemination, alternatives and policy change are the legs that support behavioral change. Many would argue that addressing individual factors included in the universal, school, family and peer environments also need to be addressed and I would have a difficult time arguing with that. The bottom line is comprehensive approaches are best. I hope this helps.

13. You might want to look at the accessible work of Larry Green, who developed the PRECEDE-PROCEED models for (health) behavior change. His web site http://www.lgreen.net/precede.htm notes that there some 960 published studies that apply this model and he includes a link to a bibliography. There is also the body of work by Martin Fishbein at UPenn. His two key contributions to behavior change research: the Theory of Reasoned Action and Expectancy-Value Theory might bolster your (correct) assertion that it takes more than information to change behavior. You need to understand the larger context of how people perceive and value the information, and how attitude plays a major role. Wikipedia has accessible explanations of this scientifically rigorous work. Hope this helps. Web sites of other government agencies, such as the National Cancer Institute, may help. They have huge programs studying how to optimize communication (they don’t refer to it as social marketing, but that’s what it is) in order to produce behavior change. NCI’s Pink Book (aka Making Health Communication Programs Work) is a concrete example of what another gov’t agency is doing in this arena.

14. While in my graduate program in public health we learned that effective programs must include components of Knowledge Attitude and behavior change. Please check out the following resource on tools for Behavior Change Communication: http://www.infoforhealth.org/inforeports/BCCtools/2.shtml Under the section labeled “Understand Audience and other Potential Participants..” Collect in depth information about the audience: What are their knowledge attitudes and beliefs about health? To further support your argument you can also refer to the basic rules of evaluation… Establishing program objectives and deciding the particular evidence (such as the specific knowledge, attitudes, or behavior) that will demonstrate that the objectives have been met. A key to successful evaluation is a set of clear, measurable, and realistic program objectives. If objectives are unrealistically optimistic or are not measurable, the program may not be able to demonstrate that it has been successful even if it has done a good job. http://www.evaluationwiki.org/index.php/Evaluation_Definition I hope this is of help to you.

Still with us?? =)

15. Check out the US Forest Service’s research station. An excellent contact there is Pat Winter, PhD, a USFS employee who conducts research that may relate to your mission as well. At least, you can show that federal agencies understand the value of social marketing and are active in defining how it can be used to meet their goals.

16. I hope this helps. This article tells of a specific program that helps in drinking and driving in a Texas City. I have not analyzed the methods, but sounds very interesting. Also the Dept of Texas funds a drinking and driving program for young adults. The program is run by an Sherry Matthews Advocacy Agency in Austin, if you need more info let me know. The website is: http://whosdrivingtonight.com/

17. You can try searching this reference-see below for a brief summary (Redman, Spencer and Sanson-Fisher, 1990) though it’s a bit outdated, it might give you a bit of a start. This was taken from page 10 of The Health Communication Unit’s resource booklet on communication campaigns.
http://www.thcu.ca/infoandresources/publications/OHCMasterWorkbookv3.2.mar26.07.pd

When applied on their own-without complementary strategies such as community mobilization-the ability of some health communication campaigns to effect change is limited. In particular, a large body of evidence suggests that health communication campaigns relying exclusively on media appeals are not a sufficient means of changing attitudes and behaviour. In some contrast to the meta analysis found on this page, recent review of 24 published evaluations of health promotion programs revealed that media alone interventions had little impact on behaviour (Redman, Spencer and Sanson-Fisher, 1990).

18. Of course, the answer is (as it always seems to be when you look closely), “it depends.” On the behavior in question, that is. A very good scientific discussion of the if/thens is provided in Leslie Snyder’s meta-analysis. The reference is: Snyder LB. J Nutr Educ Behav. Health communication campaigns and their impact on behavior. 2007 Mar-Apr;39(2 Suppl):S32-40.

19. I think this might help you out a bit…(abstract) This paper proposes that stigma in relation to people with mental illness can be understood as a combination of problems of knowledge (ignorance), attitudes (prejudice) and behaviour (discrimination). From a literature review, a series of candidate interventions are identified which may be effective in reducing stigmatisiation and discrimination at the following levels: individuals with mental illness and their family members; the workplace; and local, national and international. The strongest evidence for effective interventions at present is for (i) direct social contact with people with mental illness at the individual level, and (ii) social marketing at the population level. http://www.ijmhs.com/content/2/1/3

20. This is an issue I deal with all the time and there’s tons of research to the contrary. Most behaviour change theories use some variant of the motivation, opportunity, ability model where knowledge is just one aspect of ability. If there’s no opportunity to behave or motivation to behave knowledge alone won’t work. Here’s one reference: Keller, Kevin Lane. “Memory Retrieval Factors and Advertising Effectiveness.” In Advertising Exposure, Memory and Choice, edited by Andrew A. Mitchell. New Jersey; Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc., 1993. If you’d like more please let me know. In an ideal world I’d suggest doing a KAPB survey and asking the same questions of those who already do what you want and those who don’t.
Ask a bunch of knowledge questions as well as other motivation, opportunity and ability questions. If the knowledge levels of those who behave and those who don’t behave are the same it’s clearly not the key thing driving behaviour and sadly this data is often necessary to finally convince people not to focus on knowledge.

21. Perhaps the point is not so much providing evidence to this person(there is lots of that), but acknowledging that they do have a point and then showing them evidence that while info alone can bring about change, enhancing the info/facilitating/etc etc can bring about greater change & faster. The fact is that many people do change their behavior on the basis of information alone. The Sloan-Kettering report on cancer & tobacco tar in 1953 and the 1964 Surgeon-General’s report on smoking were both followed by declines in smoking rates without any campaigns or other measures. However smoking rates began (and continued) to decline significantly when advertising campaigns dramatized & personalized the information. (Of course not all behaviours are the same — nor are all people – and that is another point).

Hope this helps! =)