Feb 22nd, 2010 by Fard Johnmar
Are you excited about First Lady Michelle Obama’s new anti-childhood obesity initiative, Let’s Move? You should be. But, before you get too enthusiastic, consider recent history.
Early in the last decade a new public health initiative was launched to great fanfare and public acclaim. The cause: reducing childhood obesity. Funding was appropriated, policymakers were corralled and the initiative began.
Over the years, the initiative was led by a single public health agency, which relied on its standard roster of talented agencies, evaluation companies, researchers and others to launch, improve and monitor the strength of the project. The news was good and got better. Children were moving again and behaviors were changing.
Then disaster struck. One day, the news broke that the project had been de-funded. Much gnashing of teeth and pulling of hair ensued. A single funding vine was cut and years of work went out the window.
VERB was the name of that doomed initiative. It is widely considered to be one of the best examples of the power of sustained public health communications and social marketing to change behavior. To learn more about VERB, see this case study.
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Posted in Collaboration, Health Communications, Marketing Strategy, Public Health | 7 Comments »
Feb 16th, 2010 by Sarah Ragsdale
I recently read the NPR article ‘Selfish’ Giving: Does It Count If You Get In Return? The article criticizes the practice of cause marketing – which is defined as the integration of social and environmental issues in a corporation’s brand. Cause marketing fuses our business needs with our societal needs.
By combining our desire to give and our desire to have products, cause marketing makes perfect sense (and dollars). I love water bottles. I love pink. I don’t need another water bottle. But if I buy this pink one, I can help find a cure for breast cancer. Breast cancer is bad. Guilt of a frivolous purchase mitigated.
Let’s take a look at the evolution of cause marketing with the help of Cone Communications, a marketing firm in Boston. Cone created the Past. Present. Future. report commemorating the 25th Anniversary of Cause Marketing.
According to Cone, cause marketing began with the American Express Statute of Liberty Restoration Project in 1983. Cause marketing can be seen today with campaigns such as Product(red) and Dove’s Campaign for Real Beauty.
Cone found that 85% of Americans have a positive image of companies that support causes. So is cause marketing really this awful and selfish thing as the NPR article suggests? Does the motive behind the donation really matter as long as someone benefits by my purchase? What do you think?
To learn more about the history and evolution of cause marketing, please see this article published on Living the Path, our knowledge community.
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.
Posted in Case Studies, Marketing Strategy | 3 Comments »
Feb 12th, 2010 by Fard Johnmar
Earlier today, John Cass and Toby Bloomberg led a fantastic conversation focusing on social media transparency for our Casual Conversation Webinar series (click here for my original post on the session).
During the Webinar we discussed a range of issues, including:
- Should there be gray areas when it comes to transparency in health social media?
- Can transparency (or the lack of it) impact health behaviors and outcomes (heart attack, stroke, STD status, etc.)
- Do people care if an agency is tweeting, blogging or social networking on a health organization’s behalf as long as the messages are accurate?
Please see below for the slides and audio from this Webinar. In addition, we encourage you to continue the conversation re: transparency and social media at Living the Path, our knowledge community, here.
Click the “play” icon below to listen to the audio recording of this Webinar.
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.
Posted in Casual Conversation Webinars, Collaboration, Social Media | 4 Comments »
