Today is World AIDS Day.  In recognition of this event, we ask you to take time to think about and support people living with HIV/AIDS in your community and around the world.  One way you can help is by participating in the AIDS.gov powered public health initiative featured in this post, Facing AIDS 2009.  Learn more about this initiative here.  If you are on Twitter, you can also support World AIDS Day by adding a red ribbon to your Twitter avatar.  Learn how here.  In addition, to find an HIV test site in the U.S., text your ZIP to “KNOWIT” (566948), or visit www.HIVtest.org.

Finally, we’d like to thank AIDS.gov for its early and enthusiastic support of the Path of the Blue Eye Project.  Those participating in the beta of our online community, Living the Path, can learn more about the work AIDS.gov does to educate the public on HIV/AIDS by visiting the AIDS.gov KnowledgeSite.  Please note that the AIDS.gov KnowledgeSite was developed free of charge.

When was the last time we really thought about the theories behind the marketing and communications initiatives we see every day? I ask this because I am a currently a graduate student at the Boston University School of Public Health and our curriculum is rather theory-heavy.

As students, we memorize everything we can about the theories we are assigned to study. Who created it? When was it published? What field did it evolve from? But it is a less frequent occurrence to see successful public health applications of theories of mass communications. AIDS.gov’s Facing AIDS campaign is a timely example of a successful mass communication theory in action.

One theory of mass communication is McGuire’s Communication Persuasion Matrix. McGuire outlines the five aspects of the successful communication campaigns in his Handbook of Social Psychology.

1. Source – Choosing an appropriate source to deliver the message. The source should be a person or group that has a “persuasive appeal” such as a role model, celebrity or someone the audience identifies with. The source should be credible, trustworthy, authentic, powerful, likable and attractive according to McGuire.
2. Message – Carefully framing health messages. I discussed framing messages in a previous post.
3. Channel – Selecting the communication channel such as television, print media and social media. I wonder what McGuire would say about the array of media channels we are fortunate to work with today?
4. Receiver – Identifying the specific audiences intended to receive the messages.
5. Destination – Having a clear goal for the receiver to accomplish after they have heard the message.

Let’s start at square one – how do you identify an appropriate source? First, let’s look at a bad example. The Above the Influence campaign targets youth with anti-drug messages. In one of their videos, they selected a dog to deliver the anti-drug message. Although clever and cute, it is clear that a talking dog is not an authentic source to motivate complex behavior change.

More subtle examples of choosing an inappropriate source include some government-sponsored campaigns such as the 5-A-Day campaign.  People don’t like to be told what to do — especially if the person doing the telling is a government official. I would be curious to see the success of the campaign if the source was a celebrity – similar to the Got Milk? Campaign – as opposed to a government official?

Now, let’s look at one outstanding example of selecting an appropriate source. As part of the AIDS.gov’s World AIDS Day campaign, AIDS.gov began the Facing AIDS Flickr group. Facing AIDS encourages people in the community to put a face to the AIDS epidemic by downloading a sign and taking a photo with their message. You cannot find a more authentic source than real people within the populations AIDS.gov serves.

Marketing communications professionals can contribute so much to the field of public health by sharing knowledge of mass communications with public health organizations. What theories do you use regularly to guide your work?

Keep up with the Path of the Blue Eye project by subscribing to our RSS feed and/or downloading our nifty widget. Also, get more insight and information at our knowledge community, Living the Path, by clicking here.

Read More from Walking the Path:

1. Exploring Theory: Smaller (Online) Worlds Provide Greater Opportunities for Knowledge Sharing
2. KnowledgeDrive Progress Report: January 29, 2009
3. Top 10 Living the Path Resources: 2009 – 2010