Do you remember the first Big Brother? The Millennium Dome exhibition? George W Bush being elected president?
Well, it’s almost a decade ago, just as long ago as I started analysing appeals used in television adverts from culturally close countries. The ads were selected from the main television stations in the UK, Netherlands and Germany. They were then coded for the appeals they contained - and I then compared the coded appeals to the cultural values, as measured by Schwatz and Hofstede, for these countries.
At the time, this was the first study to look at what happens to appeals in advertising in countries that are fairly close, which made an important contribution when most studies looked at “very different” countries, often comparing US adverts with Far Eastern ads. The result (in short) was, that the appeals broadly reflected cultural values (though somewhat distorted, as Pollay rightly claimed!) - and that for appeals linked to cultural dimensions which were fairly different, the appeals usage was also different. Whereas there was no difference for appeals linked to “culturally close” dimensions.
The other advantage of the study was that I now have a set of adverts and appeals - used a decade ago. This means I can now revisit the data set, and see how it compares to today’s adverts. Again, this addresses a major gap in our knowledge of advertising appeals, i.e. how they change over time. There are a few studies who have looked at advertising content (especially using images used, ethnicity of actors and perceived clothing sizes) - but no one so far has addressed how appeals change (or not - as the case may be!). I’m currently collecting all the adverts (which means recording a LOT of prime time television, and deleting all the “real” programms !) and trying to sweet talk the coders from a decade ago to offer their help again, in order to replicate the study and see just what has happened to the appeals.
Posted in Advertising, Cross-Cultural/Intercultural.
Tagged with Advertising, Cross-Cultural, Research.
Here are details of the three upcoming Social Marketing workshops later in 2010 hosted by Middlesex University, London at the Hendon campus. The workshops can be taken individually - or can be counted towards a degree such as the Middlesex Postgraduate Certificate (PGCert) in Health & Social Marketing or Master (MA) in Health & Social Marketing.
Part 1 (9 October 2010):
Social Marketing & Health Behaviour
Topics covered:
Scope and function of Social Marketing
Health Behaviour Models:
Marketing Models applied to complex Health Behaviour Models
Part 2 (11 December 2010):
Planning for Social Marketing
Topics covered:
Situational & Environmental Analysis in Social Marketing
Scoping & Community Engagement
Segmentation & Targeting
Total Process Planning Model
Alternative Planning Models
Exchange & Competition
Message Design & Framing
Social Marketing Tool Selection
Part 3 (29 January 2011):
Implementation, Evaluation, Barriers & Limitations of Social Marketing
Topics covered:
Implementing Social Marketing Campaigns
Evaluation of Social Marketing Campaigns
Barriers to persuasion & Potential Solutions
Limitations of Social Marketing
Ethical Issues of Social Marketing
Each workshop will last one (Satur-)day, and each module can be booked separately or you can book all three workshops together.
Please note that after completing all three workshops, there is an optional assessment for the award of 30 credit points, which count as part of Middlesex University’s Postgraduate Certificate in Social Marketing, or our MA in Health & Social Marketing, the first in the UK.
For more information, please contact me - or call the administrator Lucio Versaggi on +44 20 8411 4747. The price for the three day CPD is likely to be around £400 per day if you choose not to take part in the assessment (i.e. you would get a certificate of attendance). If you want to take part in the assessment for the workshop, gain ECTS points, have additional tutorial support and library access etc then the cost for all three workshops is £1800. You can also take the Postgraduate Certificate in Social Marketing (PGCert) by completing an additional module for a total cost of £1860 (i.e. £60 more than one module). (Fees are 2009/10 fees, which may increase slightly in 2010)
Posted in Social Marketing, Teaching, University.
Tagged with CPD, Social Marketing, Teaching.
The Royal Cayman Islands Police Service has become the latest police force to recommend the use of Social Marketing to reduce crime rates in the beautiful British overseas territory located in the western Caribbean Sea. As the police force argue, Social Marketing has been very successful in the reduction of crime rates, using the example of reduction of petty crime in New York around 20 years ago, yet it is still not as often applied as it should be. As regular readers of this blog know, Australia recently also recommended a more systematic application of using Social Marketing to reduce crime there.
Social Marketing has been used very successfully to reduce petty in the past, i.e. in reducing small “crimes” that often have a profound negative effect on the perceived quality of life,ranging from graffiti and littering to misdemeanours, such as drugs taking, vandalism and simple assault. An other area where Social Marketing has a proven track record is financial crime, which may be an other important area of concern in a major international financial centre such as the Cayman islands. In previous applications, Social Marketing has been applied to tax evasion, fraud in the insurance industry and in the reduction of investment fraud.
Posted in Social Marketing.
Tagged with Crime, policy, Social Marketing.
From Kinky Fantastic
In 2006/7, around 8000 teenagers were admitted to hospitals in the UK because of alcohol abuse, according to figures from the Liberal Democrats. Yet, while there are increasing restrictions on the sale of alcohol, and plans to ban “All-You-Can-Drink” as well as the CAP Code on Non-Broadcast Promotions and the BCAP Code on Broadcast Advertising, the trend in teenage/underage drinking remains upward. A variety of studies have shown that there is a direct effect between exposure to alcohol advertising and alcohol consumption (Anderson, de Bruijn, Angus, et al, 2009).
Yet, the evidence seems to be that young people see more not less alcohol related advertising. In Australia, there was a virtually identical exposure of underage (under 18) teenagers to television alcohol advertising in Melbourne as those old enough to drink, with lesser but still significant exposure in other cities (Fielder, Donovan & Ouschan, 2009) and in one US survey, underage adolescents (under the age of 21) saw almost 10% more alcohol advertising than those old enough to drink (Center on Alcohol Marketing and Youth, 2007). However, few studies have so far addressed the situation in the UK, nor have any studies addressed how teenagers get exposed to alcohol related messages through other media forms, especially online and mobile social networking platforms.
A short survey of social networking website (Dahl, 2010, under review) shows that however there is a significant presence of alcohol related promotional messages and fan groups on social networking websites. And, what is probably equally worrying, is that while some of these groups are not visible to underage adolescents - the vast majority of them is not. Given the unique context of social networking, the power of vWOM - and the lack of a regulatory framework (and even possibility for regulation), this topic may well become a major concern for public policy and health prevention policy in the near future.
Posted in Advertising, Health Promotion, Research, Social Media, Web 2.0.
Tagged with alcohol, Health Promotion, Social Media, teenagers.
In times of funding cuts across the board, accessing a little extra help may be a particularly good idea for organisations especially in the public, non-profit and health sector. Even more so, if the extra help comes with additional help, research skills and consultancy expertise.
In the UK, organisations can easily access additional funding for projects by using what is known as a Konwledge Transfer Partnership (KTP) - a part government-funded programme to encourage collaboration between businesses (including charities and public sector organisations) and universities. To look at a Social Marketing example, Breast Cancer Care and Kings College formed a KTP in order to look at the barriers preventing women from BME and socially deprived backgrounds accessing breast cancer care. This KTP helped to identify the barriers and help more women access the services provided by Breast Cancer Care.
At Middlesex University, we are currently working at setting up a KTP with a local health care provider to look at the barriers of ethnic minority groups accessing certain services - combining our expertise in Social Marketing and Cross-Cultural Psychology, and enabling the service provider to better reach its patients.
With KTPs lasting anywhere from 10 weeks to 3 years, and the government contributing up to two thirds of the cost, KTPs are an attractive, but often not fully exploited, option to add a little extra help and make limited funding go a lot further. The key to KTPs are “KTP Associates”, who are graduates employed by a university and based at a company, charity, other organisation, for example an NHS Trust, where they are carrying out their project work. In return, the organisation and university work together on the project, providing joint supervision and expertise. For example, for a project costing £60,000, the government provides funding up to £40,000 .
For more information, have a look at the KTP website ( http://www.ktponline.org.uk/ ) or just email me for more information.
Posted in Research, Social Marketing, University.
Tagged with Cross-Cultural, Funding, Knowledge Transfer Partnership, KTP, Research, Social Marketing.
A reader of this blog sent me a link to a rather interesting news item from California over the weekend (Thanks!). According to the US magazine The Advocate, the AIDS Healthcare Foundation in California is planning on petitioning for a law to require condoms being used in adult movies (the article can be found here). The arguments that the AHF uses are that workers in the adult industry should be protected, which is of course a very valid point. Another point though is absent from the statement, and that is the question whether or not what is happening in adult movies may influence perceptions of “normality”, and “what is expected”, which is part of an ongoing research project we are working on (see the post about the project here) . Our research is grounded in the Theory of Reasoned Action/Theory of Planned Behaviour (see image below).
In other words, what we are interested in is, if people do form their views of what is expected and “normal” from media consumption, even if this is not (usually) a major plot line (as using a condom or not using a condom would be) - and how that then in turn does (or does not) influence their intentions and potentially behaviours, especially behaviours that are often very private and for which there are only limited other experiences apart from media and own experiences. This is, of course, ultimately leading us to ask if and how this can be used for social marketing purposes. In other words, while the original AHF petition maybe mostly about workers in the adult industry, it may be, that if such a ban comes into force, and if the TRA/TPB model guides us in the right way, such a ban on condomless sex on screen may have also a prevention effect in the much wider public that consumes adult movies (for an interesting discussion on how many this may be, see this Time article).
Posted in Health Promotion, Research, Social Marketing.
Tagged with Bareback Porn, Health Promotion, HIV, Research, Theory.
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.
By 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
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?
Posted in Internet Marketing, Social Marketing, Social Media, Web 2.0.
Tagged with Facebook, HIV, Internet, Social Marketing Intervention, Social Media, Stigma.
I often get asked what is the main difference between Social Marketing and Commercial marketing - or indeed if there is any difference. Of course, this is understandable, not least because after all we are using fairly similar tools (and theories in some cases). However, I’d argue that the main difference is probably in the starting point. Consider the basic definition of Marketing as a “social and managerial process by which individuals and groups obtain what they need and want through creating and exchanging products and values with others.” (Kotler et al, Principles of Marketing). One of the main points for commercial marketing is the creation and exchange of products that people want and need, for social marketing while that may be true in the long run, it may not be so in the short term. Take the example of healthy food choices: While it may be true for some people that they do prefer a piece of fruit, many more people are likely to prefer unhealthy food choices (chocolate anyone?). For commercial marketers, the main objective is to find out which people want the healthy food and supply them with apples, bananas and grapes - while also supplying and exchanging unhealthy food with the people who want it. In that sense, commercial marketing is pretty value free - it delivers what people want, when they want it (and without starting a discussion about the ethics of such an approach), does not really make a judgement if that is good or bad.
Social marketing is pretty different: In social marketing we would be actively trying to convince those people that want unhealthy food to switch to healthy food (and we would probably not be too concerned about those that already eat healthily). Thus, our target is very, very different (and yes, we are making a judgment call, i.e. that there is such a thing as desired behaviour as well as undesirable behaviour). This also explains why in many ways it is a lot easier to be a commercial marketeer: after all commercial marketing is a little like running in open doors (or delivering what someone wants when they want it in the way they want it) - while social marketing really is about convincing someone that a particular behaviour is bad/unhealthy/undesirable and to do something that he/she may not originally want to do.
Posted in Social Marketing.
Tagged with Commercial Marketing, Difference Commercial and Social Marketing, Theory.
Social Media re a great way to spread the word about local sport and physical activity programmes, and can be used as a tool to further participation in sports.
These are the slides from an upcoming workshop at Middlesex University’s Trent Park campus on how to use social networks such as facebook, twitter, blogs etc effectively to communicate with potential and existing clients/customers - and how to generate a real strategy for creating content and maintaining a social media presence.
For more information about the workshop, please have a look at the Pro-Active North London website here.
Posted in Internet Marketing, Social Media.
Tagged with Charity, Internet, Marketing, Non-Profit Marketing, Social Media, Sports.
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