On Social Marketing and Social Change

Walmart: Marketing Foods That Are Better For You

2012-02-08T06:05:19-05:00

Corporations can do responsible marketing to improve people's nutrition behaviors (or call it social marketing). Walmart announces a new point-of-choice food labeling program that will add 'Great for You' on many of its own products and at the fruit and vegetable counter; it will also be made available for free to other brands - though I would not expect a stampede to that offer. In the NYT article today, the usual suspects are herded to proclaim that "the label will only go on a fifth of their products" and "in the midst of all this clutter of competing [food labeling] systems, how helpful [will] its approach...be"? Eeyore has competition too, especailly when it comes to improving food choices.

When you look beyond the new label (and it is admittedly hard for people who only have information and communication hammers to solve problems), let's look at some other Walmart initiatives mentioned in this same article and use some marketing benchmarks:

Audience - Walmart focuses on the budget-conscious family, a very different group from what many health educators choose - the 'ready-to-change,' nutrition-aware, woman.

Product - Walmart has been working with suppliers of national brands and private label products to reduce sodium, added sugar and trans fats in 165 products it offers.

Place - It has built 23 stores to specifically serve food deserts where people lack access to full-service grocery stores.

Price - It has lower prices for fresh fruits and vegetables (Walmart claims last year its shoppers would have spent $1 billion more buying similar products at competing stores). It has also worked with suppliers to cut the costs of items like reduced-fat peanut butter and fat-free salad dressing.

Promotion - And yes, it does have a point-of-choice promotion effort along with all the other communication it does around healthier food.

What the self-styled critics of this Walmart initiative may be missing is the total picture. They will nitpick on the communication, the validity of the labeling criteria, whether it is "exploitative" to build Walmarts in neighborhoods with no access to grocery stores, why ALL products are not created equal (no fat, no salt, no sugars for example), and why prices are STILL as high as they are for fresh fruits and vegertables. They will miss how the social marketing approach can be employed to address a number of pieces of the nutrition and obesity puzzle rather than focusing on just (their preferred) one.

Read the article for yourself, but first ask yourself: "are eggs a healthy food?" Now you are primed.

Applying Service-Dominant Logic to Social Marketing Programs

2012-01-13T16:25:31-05:00

Many social marketing programs, and most public health ones, have shied away from working with their customers or members of their priority groups. Rather, we have stuck with the ‘marketing-to’ approach that Lusch (2007) describes as one of stimulating demand through use of the 4Ps in order to get customers to purchase goods, use services or adopt behaviors, and then be satisfied with their decision, in order to meet organizational (or social) objectives.

Service-Dominant marketing Logic (S-D Logic) marks a shift from this 'marketing-to' approach to a 'marketing-with' perspective (Lusch, 2007). This 'marketing-with' approach is an adaptive process through which organizations learn about their customers and markets, and collaborate with these customers and other stakeholders to create and sustain value for themselves and society. For organizations that engage in public health and social change activities, this 'marketing-with' framework is similar to other approaches that seek to engage people in the change process – not be an object of it (see the community-based prevention marketing approach as an example, Bryant et al, 2009).

Following-up on the last post, one implication of S-D Logic for social marketing is that our customers rarely obtain 'value-added' from the behaviors, products or services we offer. That is, the notion that we conduct research to unearth the ‘benefit’ that will compel people to exchange with us is misguided; we cannot presume to be the final arbiters of ‘value’ – the user must create or find that value as they engage with the behavior, product or service we are offering. Marketers who attempt to imbue their products or services with value, or benefits that consumers will find attractive, are reflecting ‘goods dominant’ logic. Rather, social marketing can be thought about as facilitating customer experiences or discoveries of value when using the product, trying the service or practicing the behavior. In short, value is uniquely experienced by each customer when they use our offering – not in how persuasively or creatively we ‘sell it’ to them. The S-D Logic perspective encourages marketers to suggest what the value might be - value propositions (“we think you may like this because it…satisfies a need you are experiencing now, solves a problem for you, facilitates your getting a job done, or helps you reach a goal”) - that customers must then validate through their experience of using the offering (product, service or behavior) in their lives. This perspective on how value is created by users means we must design interactions (or service touch points) to facilitate value-in-use and feedback. This feedback, or exchange, can suggest how we might refine, augment or change our initial offering.

To put this idea into action, let’s look at a tobacco cessation offering. In a classic social marketing approach, the first task would be to understand from the potential customers’ perspective, and there may be several segments of them with different perspectives, what benefits and barriers they perceive in quitting smoking. Along with other information we have about these customer segments, we design messages, products or a service to appeal to one or more of these benefits and/or reduce barriers; for example, older smokers sometimes resonate to “not smoking will allow me to live longer and watch my grandchildren grow up.” After testing these concepts and messages with members of the priority audience, we create materials and a program ‘look and feel’ to reflect this benefit positioning, launch it, monitor its uptake and completion rate and evaluate the results (for how long is a critical point here).

Using the S-D Logic framework for the same problem: first, we will think about the behavior differently – 'learning not to smoke’ versus quitting (a longer-term experience rather than a one-off quit episode). Then we would incorporate smokers into every facet of our discovery, design, creation and rollout of the program – not just invite them into focus groups and testing sessions. Finally, we would treat our value offering as a proposition and not be so sure we have actually ‘made value’ for a smoker who is trying to quit (see above for 4 possible approaches). This allows our offering to be subject to change and modification based on customer input and response (and not blame them for 'not getting it').

We would view the launch of our smoking cessation effort as the continuation of a conversation with them. Our role is to facilitate value creation as they quit smoking: they must integrate what we (and perhaps others) are giving to them as an active creator of value, not a passive recipient of benefits (Gronroos, 2011). We would also put into place feedback mechanisms about our value proposition (are we on the right track?). We could then learn from them what their experience is and whether they are obtaining the value we proposed and they expected (a very valuable exchange for us!). They may surprise us by noting that over time they are experiencing other benefits that are now more important to them. Or perhaps the initial value (benefit) was misjudged and together we need to come up with alternatives for creating more value from not smoking than continuing to smoke (rather than refer back to promoting 'pros' and reducing 'cons' to alter a decision-making process). What we are doing is co-creating value (or call it wrap-around or ubiquitous supports) with the smoker after they have made a decision to adopt a new behavior and/or use our cessation product or service. That's when the work starts and "experience-in-use" is not some theoretical expression, but the everyday reality of the smoker trying to quit.

The key shifts in thinking for social marketing that S-D Logic present to us are:

1. Exchanges are not the giving of something for the receipt of something else (value-in-exchange) as is understood in the Goods Dominant (G-D) logic model. Rather, we should view exchanges as mutual sharing of knowledge and resources among the social marketing agency, the priority group or customers and other actors or stakeholders (co-creation of value-in-use).

2. We need to focus on value-in-use to facilitate long-term adoption of healthier and sustainable behaviors. People we refer to as customers or clients are active agents in creating the value of our offerings and create value for us in return (if we are open to it). When we embrace this fact, we are then committed to developing the means and opportunities to co-create value with them throughout the process of a social marketing program (co-creation is more than being involved in program planning and materials development, it is getting something of value out of it).

3. Within the larger networks in which we operate, the S-D Logic also involves creating value propositions for stakeholders and partners. As with customers, the value for organizations to participate with us comes from their investment of information and resources to co-create value in the partnership (it is not something that is simply handed over, or exchanged, with them). What the value proposition does is set the expectations for what these values-in-use might be (Frow & Payne, 2011): value is not intrinsic to participating, it must be continually created and recreated through the interactions of the partners with each other.

References

Bryant, C.A., Brown, K.R., McDermott, R.J., Debate, R.D., Alfonso, M.L., Baldwin, J.A., Monaghan, P. & Phillips, L.M. (2009). Community-based prevention marketing: A new framework for health promotion interventions. In R. DiCiClemente, R.A. Crosby & M.C. Kegler (Eds.), Emerging theories in health promotion practice and research (2nd ed.). San Francisco: Jossey-Bass (pp. 331-356).

Frow, P. & Payne, A. (2011). A stakeholder perspective of the value proposition concept. European Journal of Marketing; 45: 223 -240.

Grönroos, C. (2011). Value co-creation in service logic: A critical analysis. Marketing Theory; 11: 279-301

Lusch, R.F. (2007). Marketing’s evolving identity: Defining our future. Journal of Public Policy & Marketing; 26: 261-268.

Note: A special thanks to Graham Hill [@GrahamHill] who provided several resources for me to consider and integrate into this discussion after the first post appeared.

Service-Dominant Logic and Social Marketing

2012-01-09T13:18:38-05:00

Is it time for more of us to loosen our grip on the 4Ps of the marketing mix as a necessary ingredient or benchmark for social marketing programs? In the broader marketing world, a growing dissatisfaction with the 4Ps framework has been driving a fundamental shift in the conceptualization of marketing since the 1980s (described as “merely a handy framework” of managerial decision-making variables; Day & Montgomery, 1999). Constantinides (2006) summarized over 40 papers that have been critical of, or presented alternatives, to the 4Ps marketing mix framework. The essence of their arguments comes down to three issues:

The internal orientation of the marketing mix in which the four elements are controlled by the producer of goods, services and behavioral offerings and has little involvement or interaction with customers. The 4Ps are decided upon by planners and managers - perhaps 'tested' with customer groups, and then 'targeted' at them.
The shift in marketing activities from one-off transactions or exchanges to dynamic and tailored interactions aimed at building relationships and retaining customers across many different marketing domains (e.g., retail marketing, business-to-business marketing, web-based or e-marketing). This shift requires marketers to understand customer constructions and evaluations of value, be more flexible in their approach, engage with customers over longer periods of time, and innovate and adapt to changing market conditions - especially those related to technology and communication.
The rise in services as primary drivers of economic activity that have their own unique character not addressed by the traditional 4Ps - for example, People or Participants, Physical Evidence (of their value), Processes (of service delivery), the intangible nature of their offering and demonstrated value to customers, as well as unique legal and professional restrictions on providers of many services (licensure of health providers, lawyers and general building contractors being just a few examples).

Most of these debates have been on theoretical grounds rather than based on empirical studies; it is also true that most marketers continue to practice as they were taught in college marketing classes (Constantinides, 2006). Yet, the growing consensus is that the 4P marketing mix idea of 40 years ago is no longer as relevant for current markets, customers or marketers. Some social marketers have examined these same concerns for our field and come to similar conclusions (Hastings, 2003; Lefebvre, 2007; Marques & Domegan, 2011; Peattie & Peattie, 2003).

A different worldview of marketing is emerging, one that seems well-suited to social marketing programs. In their seminal article, Vargo & Lusch (2004) state: “The purpose of marketing is to mutually serve.” The authors propose a Service-Dominant Logic to understand the purpose and nature of organizations, markets and society. In this post, and the following one, I extend the S-D Logic to social marketing (and thank Bob Lusch for his review and comments on an earlier draft).

Service dominant (or S-D) Logic reflects a change in perspective in marketing from one in which value is embedded into an organization’s offerings (such as value-added or functional utility) to an appreciation that value is co-created in collaboration with people formerly known as customers (Vargo & Lusch, 2004). The fundamental assertion of S-D Logic is that all exchanges are service-based. Because the classic analysis of exchanges has focused on the immediate exchange of money for products, the value the product provides to a person (the customer) after the transaction is completed is ignored. Since the early years of social marketing, many people have struggled with how to apply the logic of economic exchanges to social marketing ones - usually without much success. Vargo and Lusch reassure us that we have not been alone.

What S-D Logic shows us is that a tangible (product) or intangible offering (service, behavior) has value only when a customer ‘uses’ it. A person does not buy a hammer primarily for its features, for example, but the utility it provides in doing other things ('in use'). Similarly, people are not going to behave differently because of 'baked-in' or persuasive benefits such as longer, healthier or sexier lives. People will behave differently only if they find the new behavior (or discontinuing an old one) leads to self-defined value (benefits) when they engage in it (put it to use). Yet, how frequently, if ever, do we understand if our offerings actually result in value for people who use them (whether that value was what we proposed, or what the value is they 'created' or discovered when they used or practiced it themselves)?

The premises of S-D Logic (see below) guide us away from trying to create what we believe will be of value to people to a customer perspective that reminds us that it is how people utilize our offerings and experience rewards or value for adopting behaviors that should be our critical concern. People bring skills and competencies to encounters they have with us, and thus are always a co-creators of value, not passive recipients of what we judge they need or want. It moves us from being ‘customer-focused' not just in the beginning of a project when we conduct formative research, but throughout the process - especially when people discover or create the value of change for themselves. Process and outcome evaluations must become more sensitive to measuring value propositions and experiences-in-use if we are to understand how and why new behaviors are adopted, old ones discontinued and a better life is achieved by some, if not all.

S-D Logic is compatible with the notion that behavior change is a process and continually evolving; it is not one-off occasions that economic transactions trap us into thinking about. If we think about our offerings as transactions in which we ‘expose’ people to a messages to adopt certain behaviors or use a specific product or service, it shapes how we go about engaging with them (i.e., not for very long). The alternative proposed by S-D Logic is to think about exchanges of knowledge and skills, not one-way offerings; that the people we serve become producers of value for us as well as for themselves (co-value producers). The value of an S-D Logic perspective for social marketers includes asking what do we learn from our customers, are we open to changing ourselves and offerings as a result of their input and response, and have we created opportunities for them to participate in a reciprocal process?

The benefit of a social marketing offering is the value the customer experiences when they interact with it (whether it be using the product, trying the service or practicing the behavior). Value (or benefits) are uniquely experienced by each customer when they use our offering – not in how creatively we 'package' it or persuasively ‘sell it.’ Does your offering meet needs, solve an immediate problem or help one achieve their dreams?

The 10 Foundational Premises of Service Dominant Logic (from Vargo & Lusch, 2008).
1. Service is the fundamental basis of exchange
2. Indirect exchange masks the fundamental basis of exchange
3. Goods are a distribution mechanism for service provision
4. Knowledge and skills are the fundamental source of competitive advantage
5. All economies are service economies
6. The customer is always a co-creator of value
7. The enterprise cannot deliver value, but only offer value propositions
8. A service-centered view is inherently customer oriented and relational
9. All social and economic actors are resource integrators
10. Value is always uniquely and phenomenologically determined by the beneficiary (experienced in use)

References

Constantinides, E. (2006). The marketing mix revisited: Towards the 21st century marketing. Journal of Marketing Management; 22:407-438.

Day, G. & Montgomery, D. (1999). Charting new directions for marketing. Journal
of Marketing; 63 (Special Issue): 3‐13.

Hastings, G. (2003). Relational paradigms in social marketing. Journal of Macromarketing; 23(1): 6-15.

Lefebvre, .RC. (2007). The new technology: The consumer as participant rather than target audience. Social Marketing Quarterly; 13:31-42.

Marques, S. & Domegan, C. (2011). Relationship marketing and social marketing. In G. Hastings, K Angus & C. Bryant (Eds.), The SAGE Handbook of Social Marketing.London: SAGE Publications, pp. 44-60.

Peattie, S. & Peattie, K. (2003). Ready to fly solo? Reducing social marketing's dependence on commercial marketing theory. Marketing Theory; 3(3): 365-385.

Vargo, S.L. & Lusch, R.F. (2004). Evolving to a new dominant logic for marketing. Journal of Marketing; 68: 1-17.

Vargo, S.L. & Lusch, R.F. (2008). Service-Dominant Logic: Continuing the evolution. Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science; 36: 1-10.

Stump the Maven

2012-01-03T16:38:49-05:00

Last week I asked for nominations for the best papers in the field of social marketing. Prizes were offered for any nominations that were unfamiliar to me. I received quite a few suggestions and five people came through with "stumpers." The winners are:

Alan Andreasen, PhD
Professor of Marketing
McDonough School of Business
Georgetown University
Washington, DC

Steven Chapman, PhD
Senior Vice President & Chief Technical Officer
PSI
Washington, DC

Nurit Guttman, PhD
Chair, Department of Communication
Head, the Chaim Herzog Institute for Media, Politics & Society
Faculty of Social Sciences
Tel Aviv University
Israel

Aarti Sewak
Nausori, Fiji Islands

Professor Alan Tapp
Director, Bristol Social Marketing Centre
Bristol Business School
Bristol, UK

Thank you to them and all the others who nominated papers for the SAGE 4-Volume Set on Social Marketing. The prizes are in the mail to the winners.

I'll keep you updated on the progress of the social marketing series.

Top 10 Papers on Social Marketing for 2011

2011-12-29T17:57:51-05:00

It's that time of year for retrospectives on the state of whatever. Here we offer our top 10 papers on social marketing published in 2011. Each title has a link to the full article as an html and/or a choice of downloading a free pdf (toll gates are coming down slowly, but surely). They represent a diversity of theory, practice and research from around the globe, and several may get you rethinking your understanding of social marketing in 2012. That might be a good thing - ring in the new year with these!

EPODE approach for childhood obesity prevention: methods, progress and international development

A description of the world's largest childhood obesity prevention project operating in over 500 communities in six countries. Social marketing is a critical feature in the design and implementation of the project.

Got ACTs? Availability, price, market share and provider knowledge of anti-malarial medicines in public and private sector outlets in six malaria-endemic countries

Survey of the availability, market share and prices of ACT (the first-line malaria treatment) in six sub-Saharan African countries. This assessment provides information to inform and monitor programs that seek to influence supply and demand of ACT over the next several years.

Rebranding exercise: closing the gap between values and behavior

The specific socialization to exercise that individuals have had through the media, health care, and society has branded exercise as a vehicle that promotes "weight loss," "health benefits," and "disease prevention." This research suggests that it would be strategic to rebrand exercise as a primary method to enhance aspects of daily quality of life.

Socially-marketed rapid diagnostic tests and ACT in the private sector: ten years of experience in Cambodia

This paper describes and evaluates 10 years of a nationwide social marketing effort in Cambodia implementing subsidized ACT and rapid diagnostic tests (RDT) for malaria. The program includes behavior change communication and the training of private providers as well as the sale and distribution of Malarine, the recommended ACT, and Malacheck, the RDT.

Vigorous physical activity among tweens, VERB Summer Scorecard Program, Lexington, Kentucky, 2004-2007

Evaluation of a successful community-based social marketing effort to increase physical activity among tweens.

Why some do but most don't. Barriers and enablers to engaging low-income groups in physical activity programmes: a mixed methods study

A study to examine ways to increase participation in physical activity programs among economically disadvantaged groups. Although awareness of the benefits are high, the data suggest that there are some key issues relating to increasing recruitment and retention into physical activity sessions that have a greater impact on low-income groups than the general population.

Social marketing’s unique contribution to mental health stigma reduction and HIV testing: Two case studies

Two case studies—one on reducing stigma related to mental health and the other a large-scale campaign focused on increasing HIV testing among African American youth.

Condom social marketing in sub-Saharan Africa and the Total Market Approach

Condom social marketing interventions have advanced and achieved the goals of improving use and making condoms available in the private sector. It is time to manage interventions and influence markets to improve equity and sustainability.

Social marketing’s mythunderstandings

This paper looks at the mythunderstandings of social marketers themselves including definitional issues; the roles of education, law and advocacy in social marketing; and whether the sought behavior change must be voluntary.

An integrative model of social marketing

An integration of views about social marketing focuses on the core roles of audience benefits; analysis of behavioral determinants, context and consequences; the use of positioning, brand and personality in marketing strategy development; and use of the four elements of the marketing mix to tailor offerings, realign prices, increase access and opportunities, and communicate these in an evolving media environment.

International Social Marketing Association: 2011 Review

2011-12-27T16:49:00-05:00

Regular readers have shared the history of developing a global network of social marketers.

In 2011, the International Social Marketing Association (iSMA) has been developing the promise to be the catalyst for a global infrastructure to serve social marketing practice, education, research and management.

The hard work of developing the legal and operational framework for the iSMA has been done by a small group who have volunteered their time and expertise to serve as founding board members. These people represent various parts of the world and are committed to crafting an organization that is dedicated to full representation of social marketers around the world in the common pursuit of advancing marketing approaches to the solution of social problems.

Our active Board members include:

Tom Beall – USA
Susan Dann – Australia
Jeff French – England
Jay Kassirer - Canada
Nancy Lee – USA
Craig Lefebvre - USA
Christiane Lellig – Switzerland
Robert Marshall – USA
Win Morgan - USA
Gael O’Sullivan – USA
Barry Whittle – Guatemala

Our accomplishments to date include:

Established the iSMA as a nonprofit, tax-exempt corporation in Maryland, USA.
Created corporate identity for iSMA.
Developed a fully functioning iSMA website with specialized sub groups and monthly member updates.
Established Membership, Communication and Finance Committees.
Secured an investment by the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control to support their development of health communication and social marketing capacity for infectious disease control in the European Union.
Representation and presentations at the World Social Marketing Conference and the USF Social Marketing conference.
Liaison with the Australian Association of Social Marketing.
Established the European Social Marketing Network with its first meeting held in London on the 25th November.

There are many elements of the association development process that are nearing completion and the Board intends to present to the full membership for comment, action and votes over the next 6 months including:

Mission and Values Statements.
Strategic Direction and Priorities for the next 3 years.
A Board structure and process for nominations and election of officers.
Guidance for establishing regional, national and local iSMA affiliate groups and the harmonization of these relationships.

On behalf of all the Board members, we are thankful for the many social marketers who have contributed money to support the development of the association over the past several years - especially our Founders. We have deposited these funds in an iSMA account and put financial controls in place to monitor and approve use of these monies to support iSMA activities. We are also appreciative for those members who are donating their time to serve on our committees and otherwise making contributions to the development of the association and the strengthening of the global network of social marketing.

We also want to thank the over 700 members of the Social Marketers Global Network, a member service of the iSMA for news, networking and collaboration. We value your trust in us, and each other, to make the commitment to participate in this journey to expand the effectiveness and impact of social marketing approaches to solve social problems in all their forms around the world. We intend to transform this network into an active, interesting and rewarding professional experience to support your social marketing work and career development. To fully particpate in the activities of the iSMA in 2012, including voting privileges, you will need to be a member.

If you have not already joined iSMA please take the step of becoming part of the growing global network. If you are a member please encourage at least one other person from you own professional network to join.

Standard membership is $49.95 USD or EUR 38.2 per year.

Student membership is $29.95 USD or EUR 22.94/year

Inagural membership for citizens of developing countries is $7.95 USD or EUR 6.06/2 years.

More information about membership registration and to make donations to the iSMA.

We look forward to having your support and commitment to social marketing in 2012!

Nominate the Greatest Hits of Social Marketing

2011-12-26T14:57:31-05:00

What articles on social marketing would you recommend every faculty member, student or practitioner read? In the next 3 or 4 days please give the question some thought and email your ideas to me or (preferably) post them in the comment section of this post for everyone else to see.

It is not a rhetorical question… I am serving as the Editor of a major four (4) volume set on Social Marketing to be published by SAGE. The volumes will consist of previously published papers on all aspects of social marketing - from theoretical papers to research studies, in developed and developing country settings, and from environmental programs to public health, financial literacy and injury prevention. I am thinking about the project as curating the 'greatest hits' of social marketing - the most often cited, inspiring, trail-blazing and exemplars of practice and research. And I'd like your help to be sure I don't overlook important papers. Here is the recent SAGE 5-volume set on Health Communication as an example.

This is not a voting or popularity contest. The idea is to generate as many options as possible. Once I have put the complete list together (by the end of this week, December 30th), I will need to pare it down to a total of 1,600 pages by removing redundancies and articles that report on different aspects of the same project, assuring areas get attention (but not dominate), and illustrating the diversity of social marketing approaches and applications. In collaboration with SAGE editors, we will also have constraints as to what appears in the Volumes due to the fees some journals/publishers may charge for permissions to reprint (we have a limited amount of money allocated to paying these costs), inability to access high quality copies of original papers or artwork and who knows what other unforeseen circumstances that might pop-up. Here are some examples of articles I'm thinking about that go beyond the usual suspects:

Bloom, P.N. & Novelli, W.D. (1981). Problems and challenges in social marketing. Journal of Marketing; 45: 79-88.
Hastings, G. & Saren, M. (2003). The critical contribution of social marketing: Theory and application. Marketing Theory; 3: 305-322.
Dearing, J.W., Rogers, E.W., Meyer, G., Casey, M.K., Rao, N., Campo, S. & Henderson, G.M. (1996). Social marketing and diffusion-based strategies for communicating with unique populations: HIV prevention in San Francisco. Journal of Health Communication; 1: 343-363.
Lowry, R.J., Billett, A., Buchanan, C. & Whiston, S. (2009). Increasing breastfeeding and reducing smoking in pregnancy: a social marketing success improving life chances for children. Perspectives in Public Health; 129(6): 277-280.
Donovan, R.J., James, R., Jalleh, G. & Sidebottom, C. (2006). Implementing mental health promotion: The Act-Belong-Commit mentally healthy WA campaign in Western Australia. International Journal of Mental Health Promotion; 8(1): 33-42.
Bertrand, M., Mullainathan, S. & Shafir, E. (2006). Behavioral economics and marketing in aid of decision making among the poor. Journal of Public Policy and Marketing; 25:8-23.
Nathan, R., Masanja, H., Mshindra, H., Schellenberg, J.A., de Savigny, D., Lengeler, C., Tanner, M. & Victora, C.G. (2004). Mosquito nets and the poor: Can social marketing redress inequalities in access? Tropical Medicine & International Health; 9(10): 1121-1126.
Stephenson, R., Tsui, A.O., Sulzbach, S., Bardsley, P., Bekele, G., Giday, T., Ahmed, R., Gopalkrishnan, G. & Feyesitan, B. (2004). Reproductive health in today’s world: franchising reproductive health services. Health Services Research; 39: 2053-2080.
Peattie, K. & Peattie, S. (2009). Social marketing: A pathway to consumption reduction? Journal of Business Research; 62: 260-268.
Altman, J.A. & Petkus, E. (1994). Toward a stakeholder-based policy process: An application of the social marketing perspective to environmental policy development. Policy Sciences; 27:37-51.
Flocks, J., Clarke,L., Albrecht, S., Bryant, C., Monghan, P. & Blake, H. (2001). Implementing a community-based social marketing project to improve agricultural worker health. Environmental Health Perspectives; 109 (Supplement 3); 461-468.

So what are your social marketing favorites (no books; articles that appeared in peer-reviewed articles have precedent or a chapter with a good explanation of why you think it is important)? Think about it between now and Friday and send your suggestions in by December 30th, 6PM EDT (more than one submission per entry is OK). Please include the full citation (reference) as I have done them in the above list so I can easily locate them. And to make it interesting, for the first 5 people who submit an article that stumps me (a good suggestion that is not already on my list of 85 titles as of today), I'll send you a free copy of On Social Marketing and Social Change: Selected Readings. Any submission that results in that article appearing in the Volumes will also have your name listed as a contributor in the Acknowledgments section of the set.

I can't wait to see what you come up with!

Getting It Right (and Wrong) in Social Media: Current Business Practices

2011-12-20T13:50:04-05:00

How are your adventures in social media for behavioral and social change working for you?

Looking for some inspiration of what to do better or differently next year?

Cathy Hallingan writes in AdAgeDigital about Four Marketers Getting It Right (And Wrong) On Facebook. Her observations of commercial marketers complement what I was writing about in The 5 Fictions of Social Media in the health and health care sectors.

She notes that there may be as much as $3.8 billion spent in advertising on Facebook in 2011. But are these marketers creating any value or sustainable advantage for their businesses? Her answer for most of them is "categorically no." Here's why:

Most marketers approach Facebook purely as an advertising and engagement platform. The select few who are getting it right recognize and approach Facebook as a new business-building capability.

Most execute programs only on Facebook.com. The select few who are getting it right also use Facebook off Facebook.com; using the open graph to develop relevant, compelling, personalized experiences on one's branded web properties.

Most measure the media activity (reach and frequency, impressions, buzz, fan count) only. The select few who are getting it right also measure commerce activity (referral traffic from Facebook and the resulting conversion on one's site, customer acquisition).

She provides recent examples of the right and wrong approaches to using Facebook - Amazon, Step2, TripAdvisor and Louisville Slugger (pay particular attention to this one as it parallels much of what I see happening in public health applications).

Paraphrasing her guidance of how to judge the success of your Facebook (and other social media) efforts, we need to address the questions:

What relevant and compelling consumer problem does it address?

How do your social media activities advance the behavioral and social change objectives of your organization?

Her conclusion of what is working 'right' for successful companies is that they are exploring and exploiting the 'social' aspects of the social media experience, not using technology in the same old ways…something we talk about here regularly.

A Renewed Social Marketing Conference: Call for Abstracts

2011-12-16T10:51:08-05:00

We have been innovating in the approach and content of the annual social marketing conference held in Cleawater Beach, FL (aka Social Marketing in Public Health Conference, now in its 22nd year). The description and call for abstracts says it all...plan to be there.

The University of South Florida Social Marketing Conference (13-16 June 2012) enters its 22nd year with a renewed commitment to social marketing’s robust capacity to influence complex or “wicked” social problems. Social marketing has potential applications in a wide array of fields such as environmental studies, sustainability, transportation, financial literacy, education, not-for-profit management, labor relations, engineering, public health, and healthcare. All of these and others can benefit from social marketing’s consumer centered, strategic approach to influencing change. In recognition of social marketing’s expansive reach and increasing interest to persons in other disciplines, we are shifting the scope of the Social Marketing Conference beyond public health to welcome all professionals who work in or value the use of social marketing. [Ed Note: See The change we need: New ways of thinking about social issues.]

This year’s theme - “Getting Better at Doing Good” - reflects the global reality that government institutions, not-for-profit groups, non-governmental organizations (NGOs), universities and colleges and businesses are searching for better ways to improve people's health, the environment, infrastructures and social welfare. This international gathering will bring together social marketers and other social innovators in a forum where people can engage their collective wisdom and talents to discover new and creative ways social marketing can change the world for the better.

The four-day event consists of two major offerings: The Social Marketing Training Academy and The Social Marketing Conference. The Training Academy will continue its 20-year tradition of training professionals and students new to social marketing and others who want to enhance their understanding of the basic social marketing model.

The Social Marketing Conference will be enhanced to meet the needs of social marketers at all levels of experience. It will include conversational plenary sessions, interactive panels, and focused collaboratory sessions. We welcome social marketers, students and faculty, not-for-profit and government leaders, program planners and designers - all who share the commitment of getting better at doing good. The two-day conference will consist of opening plenary sessions with national leaders in education, design, organizational development and continuing professional development, and a closing plenary session with leaders in social marketing education. Each morning Opening Session speakers will introduce ideas from a variety of perspectives with time allocated in each one for participant questions and discussion. These will be followed by five (5) parallel sessions. On the first day four of these sessions will be seeded with panel presentations and conversations that focus on a variety of topics relevant to the practice, application and dissemination of social marketing. The fifth parallel session will be for presentations of exemplary work in social marketing research and practice. A poster walk and reception is scheduled to close the first day to present additional examples of social marketing practice and research and create more opportunities for conversations among participants.

Following the Opening sessions on Saturday participants may attend one of five collaboratories – facilitated discussions designed to dive more deeply into emerging issues and ways to apply innovative ideas for social marketing education, training and practice. Collaboratories will focus on the public sector, non-profit organizations, academic settings and education and training consultation. Additionally, six “incubators” (small conference rooms) will be available for groups that want to explore specific topics they determine will help them, and the field of social marketing, get better at doing good. Our Closing Session will discuss integrative innovations in social marketing.

Networking and Co-Creation are Key Goals: The conference is designed to offer numerous informal opportunities for networking with some of the world’s best social marketers and leaders from other social change disciplines. In addition to networking breaks, concurrent sessions are structured to give participants an opportunity to interact with presenters and other participants to explore and integrate new ideas into their own projects and organizations.

Call for Abstracts

Electronic Abstract Submission Deadline: March 31, 2012

The conference planning committee invites abstract submissions to be considered for oral and poster presentation.

Abstracts should demonstrate the application of social marketing strategies to behavior change, service marketing or improvement of social change practice. They may describe social marketing programs, innovative research methods or theoretical advances. Conference reviewers favor abstracts that clearly illustrate key elements of the social marketing approach (e.g., how formative research is used to make marketing decisions; description of audience segmentation methods and results, evaluations of comprehensive marketing programs).

Of particular interest are applications of social marketing strategies to pressing social issues, promoting social marketing within an organization, demonstrating the sustainability and/or self-sufficiency of social marketing programs or using innovative methods to understand consumer needs and wants. Other suggested topics include, but are not limited to: the use of social marketing to ameliorate health problems and social issues concerning special populations; evaluation of social marketing programs and strategies; social marketing approaches to defining social problems; examining solutions to health problems; changing health practices in school and community settings; and training and education in social marketing.

Oral presentations will be limited to 15 minutes and should address one of the five topic areas featured in this year’s conference:

A: Education and Certification in Academic Settings (e.g., new approaches for incorporating social marketing into academic curricula and post-graduate training; development of competencies for graduate education and certification; exploration of training differences and similarities for social marketers working in environmental protection, global health, public health, and other disciplines; new strategies for incorporating lessons learned from social enterprise, social design, social media, and Service-Dominant logic into graduate education).

B. Social Marketing in the Public Sector (e.g., recommendations for incorporating marketing’s mindset into public sector organizations; strategies for training public sector employees to use social marketing more effectively; techniques for designing social marketing programs on a tight budget and short timeline; and using the Service-Dominant logic to market program services.)

C: Social Marketing in NGOs (e.g., strategies for incorporating marketing’s consumer orientation into service delivery and program design; lessons learned from social entrepreneurial programs; techniques for using social marketing techniques when funds and time are limited; and using the Service-Dominant logic to market program services).

D: Social Marketing Training and Consultation (e.g., state-of the art techniques for training and consulting with public sector and non-profit organizations; lessons learned from social enterprise; application of social design approaches into program development; emerging issues and methods in use of social media and mobile technologies).

E: Program Applications (e.g., new techniques for incorporating social design and mobile technologies into program development and implementation; application of social design approaches into program development; emerging issues and methods in use of social media and mobile technologies).

Submission Details:

Send abstracts to Bobbi Rose at brose@health.usf.edu.
The abstract should have the title, author, and author’s organization on the first page.
The email needs to state the name, email and phone number of the contact person, and state preference of ‘oral’ or ‘poster.’ The preferences are given consideration, but they do not determine the final status.
Electronic submission is March 31, 2012.
Late arriving abstracts are welcome, but they are only considered for poster presentation. Submitters will know outcomes in late April.
The preference for formatting is in WORD, Arial font.

Support Opportunities

We are actively seeking sponsorship partners for The 22nd Annual Social Marketing Conference. Organizations or individuals can support specific events or become event co-sponsors in a variety of ways:

Provide financial support one or more people from your organization to attend the conference on June 15-16, 2012 at Clearwater Beach, FL.
Underwrite/subsidize participant costs at $600/per person (estimated cost for 3 nights and meals). (These costs are separate from registration fees.)
Sponsor a special section/supplemental issue of a professional journal in which to publish the proceedings (this would include cost for editing and manuscript preparation and publication costs that are to be determined in consultation with the sponsor and targeted publication outlet).
Sponsor webcasting of Opening and Closing plenary sessions and panels, video capture of conference proceedings, transcription of plenary sessions, other conference documentation activities, and meeting facilitation (the scope of these activities to be determined with the sponsor and the conference planning committee).
Provide financial support for the conference. This support would offset costs associated refreshment breaks, lunches, signage, promotional costs, and the reception. Sponsorship levels include:

        Diamond - $25,000
        Platinum - $15,000
        Gold -$10,000
        Silver - $5,000
        Bronze - $2,500
        Copper - $1,000

For more information regarding opportunities for giving, contact Bobbi Rose at brose@health.usf.edu     (813) 974-6158

Getting Back to Blogging

2011-12-06T16:09:46-05:00

My apologies to regular readers of this blog. This past year was a busy one for writing. However, most of those words were directed towards chapters, journal articles and books. I promise to get more consistently back to blogging over the next few months. For those of you who would like to catch up with what I have been doing, please keep reading.

One project that ran through the first several months of the year involved selecting, editing and publishing a book of selected readings from this blog: On Social Marketing and Social Change (details here). It is now available as a softcover book and an e-book and is intended to provide an introduction to social marketing as well as be a supplemental text for courses in social marketing and social entrepreneurship. It also makes a great holiday gift for that hard-to-shop-for social marketer in your life.

Almost immediately after putting that to rest, I began working on an advanced social marketing textbook with Jossey-Bass. The first complete draft is finished and was submitted for outside review. Right now I'm waiting for the comments and will then dive back into it early next year. I hope this book fills the void that exists in having more advanced theory, research and practice in social marketing available for academics and students in schools of business, environmental studies and public health (to name a few).

And now a third book is in the process of development with SAGE Publications. More about that later this week.

I was also fortunate to be asked to contribute two chapters to the just released The Sage Handbook of Social Marketing. One chapter develops social perspectives on social marketing (a topic that has also been featured on the blog) and the other is co-authored with Phil Kotler on the roles of behavioral economics, demarketing and design thinking in social marketing.

And for switch hitting, I co-authored a chapter on health communication and health information technologies and their implications for Healthy People 2020 objectives in The Routledge Handbook of Health Communication.

For a shorter (and less expensive) read, there is my article on an integrative model of social marketing that appeared in the inaugural issue of the Journal of Social Marketing this year. You can still get a free download of the pdf here.

So I am back with lots of ideas to share with you and discuss here and in other venues (I do stay active on twitter @chiefmaven). Stay tuned in for more information about how you can contribute to my next book project. Pass it on...

Can Social Marketing Revitalize Communities?

2011-08-23T21:26:52-04:00

The White House Neighborhood Revitalization Initiative Report (pdf; July 2011) summarizes the knowledge and experience base for building neighborhoods of opportunity. These neighborhoods are described as ones in which improved educational and developmental, commercial, recreational, physical and social assets are sustained by local leadership and lead to improved well-being and community quality-of-life. The idea of using social marketing to change neighborhoods and communities may seem absurd to people who believe that social marketing is ONLY about behavior change (or worse yet, using social media). Yet, the five strategies outlined in this report reflect many of the core ideas in our discipline. See if you can recognize them from the descriptions in the report.

1. Resident engagement and community leadership. “It is critical for leaders to understand residents’ views of the neighborhood, particularly the neighborhood’s needs and assets, and how residents want their neighborhood to change. Revitalization efforts involving, and in some cases led by, community members create a sense of ownership of the challenges, and help ensure the path forward is relevant, accountable, and sustainable.” (p. 5)

2. Developing strategic and accountable partnerships. “To create deep and lasting change in the community, high-quality interventions must be linked to address interrelated problems. This requires the development of strategic partnerships to achieve identified goals, as well as share accountability for the intended outcomes. Some key elements for effective partnerships are clearly defined roles and agreement upon a common vision, theory of the change, and theory of action.” (p.6)

3. Maintaining a results focus supported by data. “Data should not only measure population-level outcomes, but should also drive the development of the other elements identified in this report - engaging neighborhood residents, establishing strategic and accountable partnerships, securing and sustaining diversified partnerships, and investing in capacity building… data is a critical tool for building cross-agency accountability systems and tracking progress against desired results.” (p. 7)

4. Investing in and building organizational capacity. “Building and managing data systems, recruiting and retaining staff, and developing resources are examples of organizational capacity that take money, time, and energy. Developing these capabilities should be a key strategy of organizations pursuing comprehensive neighborhood revitalization, rather than afterthought.” (p. 8)

5. Alignment of resources to a unified and targeted impact strategy. “Communities with comprehensive revitalization efforts strategically align their resources in targeted geographic areas to move the needle to reduce poverty and neighborhood distress… targeting limited resources rather than spreading them thinly across an entire city offers greater returns, especially in high-poverty neighborhoods.” (p.8-9).

Two of the core social marketing elements are easily identified:

"Programs should be audience-centric; that is, based on understanding the people to be served by the program, having insights into how they perceive the problem and possible solutions in the context of their everyday lives, and engaging them to be co-creators and eventual owners of relevant solutions.

Audience engagement, from who is sitting at the policy table to who is sitting across from a teacher, is both a core value and outcome for success. It becomes part of a common framework for understanding and implementing programs with population-wide benefits."

[from The change we need: New ways of thinking about social issues]

You may also recognize the call for integrated collaborations across multiple sectors of the community. Yet, the challenge is to identify a common way to frame the problem, the hopes of the community and a strategy to achieve them (the theories of change and of action). As I pointed out in ”The change we need,” a social marketing approach would lead to strategies that include:

"… a set of integrated activities that analyze, design for, implement and evaluate programs that specifically address (1) products, services and behaviors that will improve individual and social well-being; (2) realign incentives and costs to facilitate behaviors for the individual and social good; (3) create opportunities and improve access to beneficial products, services and places that encourage and support behavior change; and (4) employ state-of-the-science communication strategies and tools to promote and support positive change at all levels of society - individuals, families and other social networks, organizations and communities."

Of the five strategies in the report, the issue of capacity building is one many social marketers totally overlook in their programs. Indeed, as I noted in my talk Designing for Change in Public Health Programs at the National Conference on Health Communication, Marketing & Media, the entire arena of services marketing is, with few exceptions, completely ignored in social marketing despite the fact that most sustainable activities require changes in how services are designed and provided. More of us need to be using marketing to improve services in our communities, not just designing messages and products, to initiate and sustain positive individual, community and social change.

If you want to use social marketing to expand your scope of impact from individual behaviors to community or social indicators, this report may help you rethink your models of change and practice. Yes, there are many gaps in their analysis and many steps between recommendations and implementations. But those are precisely the areas in which social marketers have so much to offer.

Make Every Day a Mandela Day

2011-07-18T03:46:06-04:00

We have been in South Africa for the better part of the last two weeks and are fortunate to be here on Nelson Mandela Day. It marks a fitting end to the trip with the reminder to take action to help change the world for the better and build a global movement for good. Ultimately it seeks to empower communities everywhere. “Take Action; Inspire Change; Make Every Day a Mandela Day.”

Nelson Mandela Day is our time to recognize his legacy of service to humanity in the fields of conflict resolution, race relations, the promotion and protection of human rights, reconciliation, gender equality, the rights of children and other vulnerable groups, and the upliftment of poor and underdeveloped communities. It acknowledges his contribution to the struggle for democracy internationally and the promotion of a culture of peace throughout the world. Take 67 minutes today to touch and improve the life of someone else; here are 67 ideas.

Integrating Cell Phones Into Public Health Practice

2011-06-29T15:00:59-04:00

More health professionals are exploring the use of mobile technologies, especially mobile phones, in their research and programs. However, many of them never get pass the 'gee whiz, new technology' phase and consider how to use mobile for innovative and scalable behavior change.

A couple of years ago I was invited to write an article on mobile technologies and public health from a marketer's perspective. Today, I received a note that it is the most downloaded article of all articles published in the journal in 2009 and 2010.

"On behalf of SAGE, I would like to congratulate you on this achievement and your contribution to the continued high quality and impact of this journal. To enable you to share this achievement with your friends and colleagues we have made your article free to access via the following URL in perpetuity so that they can read your article too."

Here's a closing excerpt from the article. You can now read it in its entirety whenever and where ever you like (I wonder how long 'perpetuity' is on the internet).

They are more than a communication device—they can become marketing tools that address all elements of the marketing mix when strategically considered in the context of how people use them. Cell phones are an always-on, two-way communication channel, a signal or cue for action, a resource of instant access to health information, a tool for social support and the development of social capital, a production tool, a way to engage audiences, and a data collection and feedback device…

As public health professionals, we need to adapt and change not only the technologies we use in our programs but our framework for looking at the world and thinking about what we do. In designing interventions that will effectively lead to behavior change, we have to ask ourselves as social marketers and public health professionals (a) do we harness the technology to educate people about issues and problems that are relevant and meaningful to them (not us), (b) is what we do engaging them in positive and meaningful ways with the technologies that they use, (c) is there an entertainment value to our offerings, (d) do people believe and feel empowered as a result of their experiences with our programs (products and services), and (e) do we take advantage of every opportunity to let our customers and clients become our evangelists and leverage these new social and mobile media? If we fail to do all five, we are failing them and ourselves.

Thank you to all the people who have already discovered and downloaded it. Now it's your turn. And, of course, feel free to pass it along.

Lefebvre, R.C. (2009). Integrating cell phones and mobile technologies into public health practice: A social marketing perspective. Health Promotion Practice; 2009:490-494.

The Anesthetics of Management

2011-06-22T18:21:40-04:00

No doubt you are using social marketing and other approaches to social change because doing good is like breathing air for you: it is all part of your evil plan to make a living doing what you love and doing your best to make a dent in the universe. Many public, private and nonprofit organizations are in the exciting business of organizing and managing people like you to stimulate and facilitate social change. Yet, when I spend a few hours with some of these managers and staff, there is an anesthetic quality to their approach: a loss of all sensations and passions that originally drove them to this type of work.

Much of this loss of sensation seems to be the result of decisions that block out creativity, curiosity and courage among the workforce. Creativity that sparks new approaches to understanding or solving wicked problems (even when the current ones are "OK"). Curiosity to discover what the frontiers could be for personal and organizational growth and impact. Courage to stretch beyond the accepted and known (and not fear negative repercussions from colleagues and supervisors).

You or your organization may have anesthetic management syndrome if you find yourselves asking variants of these questions.

1. How can we remain invisible?
2. Can we just stick to doing one thing well?
3. How can we be all things for all people?
4. How do we keep our distinct professional identities?
5. How do we build and maintain silos of excellence?
6. What is our next project?
7. How do we benefit from doing things more slowly?
8. How can we become even more cautious and deliberate?
9. How can we more efficiently get from Point A to Point B?
10. How can we continue to treat each new challenge as a unique one?
11. How do we stop feeling time pressure?
12. Why don't we just do what we know how to do best?
13. Can we stay focused on the small stuff?
14. How do we keep personalities and passions out of our decision-making processes?
15. Can we develop a simple approach/solution that applies to most (all) of our work?

To become more creative, curious and courageous first means reclaiming your point-of-view about why you do what you do. Then change your professional networks, the people you mix with outside work, the books and other media you consume and the conferences you attend to ones that feed what you want to be - not what you have become.

Publicness: Get Use to It

2011-06-21T12:00:07-04:00

"This erosion of anonymity is a product of pervasive social media services, cheap cellphone cameras, free photo and video Web hosts, and perhaps most important of all, a change in people’s views about what ought to be public and what ought to be private."

from Upending anonymity, these days the web unmasks everyone. Brian Stelter in The New York Times.

Whether you are interested in using social media for behavior change, health care or just to have fun, being on public display is part of the gig. You can be surprised by it...or plan for it.

Image from activehealth.

Social Innoculation, Social Marketing and Childhood Immunizations

2011-06-13T11:01:05-04:00

The majority of parents have concerns and misconceptions about immunizations, yet they still have their children immunized. When their concerns are specifically about autism and the number of vaccines an infant receives, parents are much less likely to have their child receive all of the recommended vaccines.

These results from a national household survey conducted for the CDC are the first time that American parents’ level of confidence in vaccines and the recommended schedule of immunizations for children have been assessed. While vaccination levels of children 19-35 months are above national goals of 90%, it is not parent beliefs or confidence that may be the primary determinants of having their child immunized – only 23% of them reported ‘no concerns’ with vaccines.

The survey also documented that the important sources of information about immunizations for parents were health care professionals (85% named them), family members (46%), the internet (24%) and friends (22%). Unfortunately, the survey did not ask respondents to distinguish between static information websites and interactive ones such as social network sites (a note to survey designers: you must at least make the distinction between these two types even if you don’t ask for their specific names or sponsors). Otherwise, we could say with almost complete confidence that parents' d ecisions about having a child fully immunized are solely based on social interactions. And that conclusion has significant implications for the theories and models we employ to develop interventions to maintain or boost levels of childhood immunizations (or introduce new childhood vaccines) – they become more social and less purely psychological or individually-focused.

This social idea is vitally important as concerns parents have about immunizations likely propel some of their interactions with others (who they seek out and listen to) and their information–seeking behaviors (which is a social phenomenon too). What are the specific concerns they have?

The pain the child experiences when receiving so many shots during a doctor’s visit (36%)
Their child is getting too many vaccines in one visit (36%)
Their child is getting too many vaccines in the first two years of live (34%)
Vaccines may cause fevers. (32%)
Vaccines may cause learning disabilities, such as autism (30%)
The ingredients in vaccines are unsafe (25%)
Vaccines are not tested enough for safety (17%)
Vaccines may cause chronic disease (16%)
Vaccines are given to prevent diseases children are not likely to get (11%)
There are not enough of some vaccines for my child to get them on time (9%)
Vaccines are to prevent diseases that are not serious (8%)

The investigators then looked at what concerns characterized the small number of parents who said their children would receive some but not all vaccines. From the list above, only concerns about too many vaccines in the first two years of life and that vaccines may cause learning disabilities (autism) were significantly more frequent than expected by chance, while the belief that vaccines were for diseases that were not serious was significantly less frequent than one would expect in this group.

Unfortunately, the survey included too few parents who stated they were not having their child immunized at all to be able to conduct any meaningful analysis that might have shed some light on what pattern of concerns they may have.

The authors conclude by noting that parents having concerns about immunizations for their children should not be seen as a negative event. In fact, the majority of parents do follow recommendations anyway. This study does document that concerns about childhood immunizations are pervasive among parents – 77% report having at least one. The data also gives US planners (we would not generalize this to other countries) a quantitative handle on which concerns out of all the ones that have come out of qualitative research may be the most important ones to focus on from a population perspective (that is, are most prevalent). In-person or digitally mediated clinical encounters will be needed to solicit specific concerns and directly address them for individual parents. The authors of this study specifically address the dynamics of the health care practice visit and recommend more time and effort be given to improve parent satisfaction with office visits, fully explore and discuss parents immunization concerns (which they note is not necessarily constrained by time but by provider communication skills), and improving provider knowledge and confidence to discuss the childhood immunization schedule with parents.

These results also lead me to suspect:

If we don’t acknowledge that concerns about vaccines are pervasive among parents, we lose credibility when acting ‘as if’ only people who don’t get their children immunized have worries. By acknowledging the pervasiveness of their concerns, and that parents find answers to their questions and carry on (‘norming’ or making this behavioral scenario the usual case, not the deviant one), we might also inoculate more parents against the persuasive effects of anti-vaccine proponents who might seem more empathic to these concerns than the public health and health care communities.

There are many more components of a social marketing effort to maintain and improve immunizations that I have written about in relation to the H1N1 pandemic preparation activities of a few years ago. Communication is one part of the effort, but price, distribution, the role of groups who are critical to success (health care providers to name just one), and designing better products (immunization delivery methods for example) and services (the parents’ and children's experience during the visit) are factors that must be attended to as well.

Source:

Kennedy, A., LaVail, K., Nowak, G., Basket, M. & Landry, S. (2011). Confidence about vaccines in the United States: Understanding parents’ perceptions. Health Affairs;30:1151-1159.

Getting to Know Social Marketing, Public Health and the Environment

2011-05-20T13:43:29-04:00

The University of South Florida’s College of Public Health’s annual social marketing conference continues its tradition of developing the skills people need to apply principles of social marketing to public health, environmental sustainability and other social issues.   “USF’s conference has done more to advance social marketing than any other single effort I know,” said Philip Kotler, PhD, distinguished professor of international marketing at the Kellogg Graduate School of Management at Northwestern University, who coined the term “social marketing” in 1971. The inclusion of social marketing objectives in Healthy People 2010 and in the national health strategies of Australia and England signals the need for more professionals who know how to use social marketing in public health programs.

To better meet that demand, the Social Marketing in Public Health Conference has expanded its roster of leaders in the field and added sessions on social marketing and the environment. The conference, set in beautiful Clearwater Beach, Florida, offers participants an opportunity to explore the innovations and discoveries that will shape our work in the coming decades.

Plenary sessions and in-depth breakout sessions will include:

Fostering sustainable behavior: An introduction to community‐based social marketing
Applications of social marketing to ecosystem recovery and sustainable seafood
How social marketing is working for positive change around the world
Effectiveness of health communication campaigns that include mass media and health‐related product distribution
The use of social media during a social crisis
Social marketing approaches to preconception health
The power of branding in changing energy consumption behaviors
Using online platforms for qualitative and quantitative market research

There will also be ½ day workshops on (1) fostering sustainable behaviors, (2) taking the 4Ps to the UN and beyond, (3) healthcare providers and behavior change and (4) identifying and integrating customer insights into program planning.

A 2-day Training Academy offered immediately before the conference (June 15-16) is designed to immerse participants in the concepts and skills needed to apply social marketing to public health issues.

The Social Marketing in Public Health conference offers a casual and intimate setting where people can come together to learn from and share with each other and some of the leading experts in the field. Known for its passionate, interactive training and innovative education, the conference has become a valued resource for public health and social change professionals.

The 21st Annual Social Marketing in Public Health Conference will be held at the Sheraton Sand Key Resort, Clearwater Beach, FL 17-18 June 2011.

For more information on the conference and Training Academy, including online registration:
(click on ‘Course Calendar’ and then choose ‘June 2011’ from the drop-down menu)

See you there - and yes, I will bring some copies of the book if you like.

Co-creating the Social Marketing Discipline and Brand

2011-05-10T11:44:33-04:00

[Note: For the closing plenary session at the World Nonprofit and Social Marketing Conference a few weeks ago, I was asked to speak about the future of social marketing. The video of my presentation is now available; I thought that putting my comments in text would be helpful for many who don't have the access to watch 20 minutes of video. And it makes a nice touchpoint for people who want to pass the ideas along and discuss them some more. This is not a transcript, but is based on the notes I had for my slide presentation. You might want to download the slides before viewing the video as the camera does not pan to the screens. I entitled this post 'Co-creating the social marketing discipline and brand' to recognize (1) all social marketing stakeholders have a part to play in the evolution of social marketing, (2) the theory and empirical basis for our work - the discipline - needs to be updated, and (3) the practice of social marketing - our brand - should both drive and reflect the new ideas and transdisciplinary nature of our work (aka it's time to jump out of the silos). I look forward to many more conversations on the future of social marketing.]

In thinking about the future, I can't help but look back at what the field has become since I first wrote about it in 1988 (Social Marketing and Public Health Intervention, pdf). I see very little change in most of our core ideas such as audience segmentation, formative research, the marketing mix and a people-centered approach. Yes, there has been more discussion around ideas of competition, critical marketing, ethics and social media, but as I said in a blog post nearly 4 years ago, the field has essentially become an echo chamber. And while the world is changing all around us, especially the world of marketing, most of the thought, research and practice of social marketing is not. As I stated in the social marketing manifesto 'we have lost the soul of social marketing' - and to free that soul is going to take us all thinking a little harder about what we are doing here.

The Akan people of Ghana use the Adinkra symbol - one version of it shown here is of a bird with its head turned around taking an egg off its back. Sankofa represents the idea of taking from the past what is good and bringing it into the present in order to make positive progress through the benevolent use of knowledge. So what I am suggesting is not that what we know about social marketing, or how we practice it, is necessarily all wrong. Rather, we should take those pieces that have proven themselves useful in both research and practice and add to them what we know from related fields in order to make positive progress in how we use marketing for social change.

As I look forward with social marketing, I bring a set of experiences over the past few years that color my view. Among these influences are the fields of transformative consumer research, design thinking and service design, the service-dominant logic approach in the academic marketing literature, my work with the use of social technologies to influence behavior and social change, and a shift to a perspective that is more rooted in social networks and social determinants of behavior and cultural change.

In my journey, several definitions of social marketing have caught my attention that represent different point of views and emphasize other elements of social marketing. Here are three examples I particularly like:

Harnessing the power of markets and marketing to improve well-being and save lives.
Ensure fair allocation and access to the means of maximizing well-being.
Develop and enhance marketing systems that support consumer well-being.

What is intriguing to me is that none of these definitions mention individuals, behaviors, exchanges, marketing mixes or even social good. What they all share is a focus on markets and marketing systems. And I think that is a clue to our future progress: our definition of, and approach to, social marketing needs to expand. In that last sentence is a clue to our future. It is the answer to the question: what space do we operate in? Some commentators want to say social marketing operates in the marketing space… or public health… health communciation... or the environment… transportation… financial or math & science education. Others that it’s the behavior change space. Some want to say it’s the social change space. To a greater or lesser extent, I think each of these positions demonstrates a form of marketing myopia.

What I propose is a new conceptualization of social marketing that continues our commitment to making positive social progress, carries forward useful heuristics of what works, and adds to it changes in our understanding of what we do.

I suggest that social marketing is a planned approach to social innovation. That is, social marketing is the application of marketing principles to shape markets that are more effective, efficient, sustainable and just in advancing people's well-being and social welfare.

As the idea of markets may be new to social marketers who don't come from marketing backgrounds, let's dive into that idea a bit more. A traditional view of a market is any arrangement in which some people offer goods or services and others buy it (either for money, barter or some other method of exchange). For example, there is a market for shoes and clothes. There are markets for food, construction supplies, housing permits, legal services, and information. I suggest there are markets for behaviors and ideas. However, the notion of markets as places in which exchanges of products and services take place is shifting as marketing scholars suggest giving up the sacred cow of exchange theory as a seller-buyer model and the sacred script of the 4P's for a model more rooted in a customer, rather than producer, perspective - a service-dominant (S-D) logic. This S-D perspective views skills and knowledge (behaviors and ideas), rather than products, as the fundamental unit of exchange. The focus of social marketing becomes one of facilitating and supporting a process of co-creation of value in which people are seen as coproducers or collaborators rather than targets we attempt to exchange with. This viewpoint involves a much more participatory and dynamic learning process for both people we serve and social marketers. Indeed, I suggest that to judge successful social marketing programs, we must assess how we - the implementers, sponsors and partners of social marketing programs - change, not just the people we call audiences.

A marketing system supports the ability of markets to function and for participants to co-create value for each other. Markets need a range of other players to support the principal actors who are involved in an exchange or co-creation process. These supporting players include the private, nonprofit and government sectors of society as well as the formal membership organizations and informal networks that bind them together. In a marketing system, ALL players CHOOSE to participate - or not. Suggesting that a problem, or a solution, is the responsibility of one sector or another is to ignore the dynamic interrelationships that exist in the system. To develop intrasectoral and cross-sectoral partnerships, therefore, is an inherent part of shaping and adapting marketing systems to new ways of relating to each other as well as supporting and facilitating exchanges of skills and knowledge. Understanding the context of our work as occurring within a larger marketing system leads us to take a Total Market Approach as we identify the possible ways to solve the puzzles of public health, the environment and other social issues. And to those who argue, as some have done at this conference, that we should not engage with private companies and thus ignore a large portion of the marketing system, let me suggest that one cannot change the world without changing business. Social marketers need to open up their apertures beyond a focus on individuals to all of the actors in the marketing systems that determine who has access to what resources - at what costs and when.

How do we move out of the social marketing box we have placed ourselves in for so long? I suggest it is by first moving towards creating more permeable walls with many other disciplines that share our motives, values, interests and approach. An openness to new ideas will also occur as we embrace the transdisciplinary nature of marketing and the wicked problems we often tackle. And it also means thinking about what we do in new ways. Here I take a first look at what this looks and sounds like.

This 3-dimensional cube is meant to convey some structure to what we do and also acknowledge its complexity - yes, what we do is complicated, But most of us choose to engage with social marketing programs because of the challenges they pose to us - not because they're easy, fun and popular.

On the deep axis lies the Scope of what we do. We need to surrender the idea that we are in the individual behavior change business. Rather, we need to refocus on marketing programs as an exchange, and at the heart of that exchange is value co-creation. If we are not learning something from the people we serve and gaining value from working with them, then we are not doing social marketing; we should not be delighted by aiming persuasive messages at audiences or manipulating environments to guide people towards doing certain behaviors and not doing others (whether it be a nudge, a physical change in the environment or a policy). Co-creation also recognizes that our focus shouldn't just be about people we might call customers or participants, but also stakeholders and partners (people critical to success) with whom we must also actively engage with in developing customized, competitively compelling value propositions for people we formerly called the audience.

The other levels of the Scope dimension reflect three more levels of the social marketing approach: creating conversations, working in the context of communities and at its broadest level, focusing on changing the marketplace. As Doc Searls said over 10 years ago in The Cluetrain Manifesto, markets are conversations - that's what should make social media interesting to social marketers. Social media are not simply new communication tools; it is a fundamental shift in the dynamics of conversations enabled by new technologies. How can we use conversations to influence communities and marketplaces? With social media, not only is it happening everyday in the commercial marketing world, but the events of the past few weeks in North Africa and the Middle East demonstrate it is shifting political marketplaces of ideas and behaviors as well.

Markets are also relationships, and the suggestion that we need to embrace relationship marketing more strongly in our efforts is certainly one I agree with. If we are creating exchanges with people and co-creating value for each other, we are setting the foundation for relationships. Indeed, one can argue that the two mutually support one another. If we continue to aim programs at targets, we may be missing our greatest opportunities and are neglecting the fundamental premise of a marketing approach.

Relationships form networks and networks form communities. And I focus on communities because we need to realize that mass communication programs will never be social marketing programs, and that most top-down programs will never be focused on exchanges. Communities provide the context to bring social marketing to scale utilizing co-creation, conversations, networks and by changing local market conditions.

Markets - whether they be local, regional, national or global - are the great frontier for social marketers, though we will certainly not be the first to tackle them. Social activists, social entrepreneurs and corporations are deeply involved in changing markets whether it be through social action, regulation, or leveraging or realigning market forces of supply and demand to name just a few strategies. To foster sustainable changes that support people's health and social well-being we must acknowledge and engage with the marketplaces of ideas and practices that are part of our social world no matter where we live. I am fond of this comment (by Doc Searls again) about a friend's response to The Cluetrain Manifesto: 'you guys defected from marketing and sided with markets against marketing.' What he meant was that it no longer about the 'power' of marketing strategies and tactics, but the power of the marketplace - consumers and communities who now dominate and dictate to brands. Markets are not creations of economists and Wall Street; they consist of human beings - not demographic sectors – and certainly not businesses. To say social marketers are customer-centered should translate into actions that seek to alter the conditions of the markets in which they live, work and play rather than trying to adjust people to their current living conditions. Social marketers need to work from the premise that we are in an intention economy now and approach markets with tools that mobilize citizen participation and demand that lead to engagement with and improvement of the mechanisms of supply - whether those tools are incentives, more efficient and just distributions systems or social and mobile technologies.

Along the horizontal axis are four key features of how social marketing programs might be Designed. The first feature is Honoring People - not just focused or centered on them. Honor means more; it demands from us to have empathy and insight into people's view of the puzzles we choose to solve together and how their possible solutions provide value and relevance to their needs, problems and dreams. Honor is a more complex issue than just 'respect.' Consumer researchers have written about the tensions that underlie whether 'at-risk consumers' should be conceptualized as having a vulnerability versus a strength, if we should encourage radical versus marginal change in our social marketing programs, whether targeting or non-targeting should be advocated, the relative costs and benefits of knowledge versus naiveté about risks, and the relative value of inclusion versus exclusion of such people. Each of these tensions goes to how we are Honoring people - it is by no means an easy set of issues to balance, and different groups and people and circumstances may lead to divergent answers and opinions. My point is that we need to be asking ourselves these types of questions, and not just become like a surgeon who walks into an operating room and starts a procedure without even knowing the patient's name. Then we can decide whether we are creating products, designing services, learning new behaviors or adopting new ideas. Those decisions should be the outcome of our conversations with people, not the excuse to start them in the first place.

Radiating Value builds on the notion of exchange as co-creating value. It is not about creating value 'for them,' but creating value for us as WE define and experience it. And WE is an inclusive term that can include many actors in the marketing system as well as stakeholders, partners and communities. Value needs to be defined and measured from multiple points of view, not just from a paternalistic one. Radiate gets to this inclusive dynamic more forcefully and visually then words like "create" or "build" value do.

The third element of the Design dimension is Engaging Service which I am anchoring in the ideas of service design and also S-D logic where all exchanges are services – active participation in relational exchanges that are useful, usable and desirable from the user's POV and effective, efficient and distinctive from the supplier’s POV. Drills are not important because they are tools, but because they make the holes in the walls for us to hang things (in a value proposition, not a tool but a service to help me make holes). In social marketing, providing people with information, products or tangible services is not the point; the question is how this information, these products and services can be used by individuals to add value to their own lives - whether it be meeting basic living needs, solving or preventing problems or moving them closer to their dreams for themselves, their families and other important social objects.

Enhancing Experiences is the promotional mix re-imagined as contributing to a sense of overall well-being. It is the antithesis of talking or telling stories to people. The experience becomes people engaged and connected with us, each other, organizations, communities and their lives in ways that are meaningful to them and allow for the learning and acquisition of behaviors that improve health, living conditions, the environment and society-at-large. The depth and richness of this Experience emerges as much from the marketplace and the physical environment people find themselves in as it does in the communication or promotion tools we use to engage with them on their terms.

The third dimension of the cube, the vertical axis, displays four Value Spaces that I also think are integral to social marketing programs. They are:

Dignity – Phil Harvey, the founder of Population Services International and a believer in the "social marketing is the subsidized sales and distribution of commodities to prevent diseases" model, based this 'sales' premise on his reaction to giving away for free needed supplies to thankful poor people: “I would never be comfortable providing help to people in ways that suggested they should express gratitude… I found such relationships demeaning, and yes, immoral.” We need at all times to respect people's dignity and the choices they make; otherwise we fail to both Honor them and have relationships with them for value creation.

Hope is believing in future possibilities. Our commitment should be to bring these possibilities into view in a compelling, accessible and relevant way. One of the guiding principles of design thinking that we need to imbue our social marketing with is the notion that Design ‘is making hope visible.’ The idea of abductive thinking, visualizing the future before creating an intervention, is remarkably absent in many of our projects (and not just social marketing ones, but throughout public health and environmental change). Yes, people may be able to offer ideas about the future in terms of numerical objectives or a 'a healthy world for all,' but to explicitly map it out and to share that with our co-creators as it would affect their daily lives I am finding to be perhaps the most important ingredient to motivate and engage all types of people in social change.

Love – Donald Calne has said that the essential difference between emotion and reason is that emotion leads to action while reason leads to conclusions. Love is among the most powerful and positive of emotions (and though I didn't note it at the time, the fact that the conference started off with a talk about the Role of Fear in Social Marketing programs makes this juxtaposition more poignant). This most powerful of emotional connections needs to be tapped by us to create 'lovemarks’ (as Kevin Roberts, CEO of Saatchi & Saatchi calls them) - the next evolution in brands, whether they be for products, services or behaviors. How do we understand and then engage people in change out of love, not fear, and certainly not out of a rational weighing of pros and cons? I believe we start by devoting ourselves to creating deeper relationships with the people we serve and understanding what they love in their lives. Maybe then we could move towards designing healthier and more socially beneficial behaviors that are sustainable over the long term.

Trust – Trust is a larger idea than just a variable of interpersonal relationships or a characteristic of 'sources of messages.' It also extends to organizations and companies that support and sponsor social marketing activities. Richard Edelman talks about a 'trust triangle' that is based on the expectation for companies to act collaboratively to benefit society and not just shareholders. He says companies (and I would add NGOs and government agencies) must be transparent about their operations and profit engines and engage with people. We live in a world where trust is no longer a commodity that is acquired, but rather a value that we receive from the people we serve and our stakeholders. Without trust, social marketing risks slipping into coercion, propaganda and irrelevancy. Trust also underlies important concepts including social capital formation as well as the development of effective partnerships.

PATTERNS of Change --- In the middle of the cube are those wavy lines that represent the outcomes of social marketing programs. Their configuration is meant to suggest the patterns of change we should expect from and measure in social marketing programs. We should not limit ourselves to single indicators such as changes in rates of behavior, or to other individual level indicators such as changes in awareness, knowledge, physiological measures or morbidity and mortality. Rather, the patterns of change we should assess include changes in social determinants, social networks and relationships, community indicators, and policies; changes in organizational relationships and the physical environment; and changes among groups of people we serve including their overall sense of well-being, social capital, collective efficacy and equity (are we reducing disparities in health and access to health products and services). Our assessment of social marketing programs also has to measure how 'we' change as a consequence as well - whether it be in our understanding of people we serve, the relationships we have with them and the larger community, our relationships with partners and stakeholders, and our procedures and policies. The idea of 'patterns' is to shift us from thinking linearly about finding the 'solution' to a 'problem,' and to think more about how our offerings move us closer to solving the complex puzzles we are challenged by in our work.

The 3-D cube is a starting position in how to begin to operationalize our aspirations for social marketing. This presentation is a rough draft to which I hope many of you will think about, engage with, try out and talk about with your colleagues. It is my attempt to start turning 10 What-Ifs of Social Marketing into action: What if....

We are co-creators of value
Create places where people can play
Design research to fit the puzzle and people
Seek empathy and insight into people's motivation and values
First assume that something might be wrong in people’s environment (or the marketplace)
Focus on creating exchanges with people and stakeholders
Measure how, when and how often we touched people in a variety of ways (both intended and unintended)
Serve people
Offer people new ways to solve problems, meet their needs and reach for their dreams
Make sustainability as important as evaluation

and finally, through applying marketing to social issues, my hope is we can...

More Reading and References

Brown, T. & Wyatt, J. Design thinking for social innovation. Stanford Social Innovation Review, 2009.

Edelman Trust Barometer 2011.

Levine, R., Locke, C., Searls, D., Weinberger, D. & Jake, M. The Cluetrain Manifesto: 10th Anniversary Edition.

Lovemarks

Peattie, S. & Peattie, K.J. Ready to fly solo? Reducing social marketing’s dependence on commercial marketing theory. Marketing Theory, 2003; 3: 365-385.

Pechmann, C., Moore, E.S., Andreasen, A.R., Connell, P.M., Freeman, D., Gardner, M.P., Heisley, D., Lefebvre, R.C., Pirouz, D.M. & Soster, R.L. Navigating the central tensions in research on at-risk consumers: Challenges and opportunities. Journal of Public Policy & Marketing, 2011.

Phills, Jr, J.A., Deiglmeier, K. & Miller, D.T. Rediscovering social innovation. Stanford Social Innovation Review, 2008.

Service design

Service dominant logic - selected publications.

Why social marketing? [Interview with Richard Pollard on the Total Market Approach]

What Really Works in Mobile Health? A Summary of the 2011 Conference

2011-05-07T15:01:30-04:00

The 2011 version of Mobile Health was designed around 'What Really Works?' Our intention in using this question as the conference theme was to shift the conversation from 'look at we did, or can do!' to one more focused on evidence about practical, proven solutions. Despite the best efforts of our content team, of which I was a member, to solicit the evidence, the answer seems to be: we have some clues, but research beyond pilots and feasibility tests is sorely needed.

Few of the presentations were data-driven, many were anecdotal, and perhaps more maddening were the number of academicians there who said to me "Oh, I have some data under review at a journal right now - but can't talk about it before it is published." As was noted by more than one presenter, that's likely 6-7 years between submitting a research idea, having it funded, conducting the study and analyzing the results, and then having it appear in a peer-reviewed publication. That process might work for people who measure their careers in decades, but in the quickly changing world of mobile health technologies, that's at least a generation or two. Whether those results will have any ecological validity by the time they appear in print is debatable, and I believe not very likely. It does raise the issue (again) of how do we increase the speed of diffusion of data while not undermining the peer-review process? Another question for another time. And for the research wonks, we learned about a Workshop on mHealth Evidence that will be convened by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, McKesson Foundation, National Science Foundation and the National Institutes of Health later this Summer at which alternative designs to randomized controlled trials (RCTs) will be a particular focus. Check the site for more information about it and a call for papers.

The conference attracted over 420 participants, the largest registration yet, which led to a larger venue and more complicated logistics that BJ Fogg and his crew handled tremendously well. We had 60 speakers packed into 12 hours of presentations over 2 days. A most important feature, however, is the amount of programmed break time for networking; not the typical 15-20 minute segments twice a day plus lunch, but a full 6 hours worth. Any seasoned conference attendee will tell you, this is where the full value of a conference lies.

Susannah Fox kicked things off with a quote from Mark Zuckerberg: most of the mHealth space is uncharted territory. And she noted that the data from the Pew Internet and American Life Project serves as a GPS for the explorers of this space. Among the new findings to be released shortly from the Project is that 1 in 4 adults say they are using mobile apps. For the diffusion crowd, and the naysayers, that is bumping right up to the tipping point of 20-25% the research finds is the take-off zone for innovations.

She also reported that analysis of their data finds two main drivers of online health conversations: The Mobile Difference (people who use mobile phones are more active in these conversations) and The Diagnosis Difference (people who have chronic diseases are more active as well).

In my lead-off to the first session of what works, I used the time to briefly talk about 'theoretically' what we know works in mobile. The answer is 'contiguity.' Beginning with Aristotle, and tracing through learning theorists including Pavlov, Guthrie and Skinner, the idea that things that are in close relationship or proximity to each other are most likely to be associated with each other and affect learning is a foundational premise for mobile health. We talk about ubiquity and the 24/7 nature of mobile devices, but the secret sauce is when it provides a platform for introducing contiguity in new ways, whether it be by:

spanning geographic boundaries,
bending time by making events more contemporaneous or asynchronous as needed,
bringing new perspectives to situations as we are seeing with augmented reality applications or introducing highly localized ones,
satisfying immediate needs for information (as Bill Gates has said: Search is a verb),
allowing people to seek ways of motivating themselves through digital record-keeping and other applications of self-change principles as well as increasing access to social support networks,
developing co-presence among people whether it is through mobile social networks, digital coaches or connecting in real time with other agents, and
increasing access to information not just through apps, but through better design of information that can be easily accessed and understood through the mobile web.

We had two reviews of the state of the science for mobile health and both concluded that the evidence was limited. Rob Furberg made the observation from his review that the US lags behind several other regions of the world in the number of randomized studies that have been done on mobile health (kudos to Australia/New Zealand, the UK and the EU - and there are many descriptive studies available from developing world countries). Charlene Quinn added more emphasis to this lack of US research in her study of Federally funded research in mobile health over the past 6 years. She found only 29 mHealth studies in the databases of the Federal agencies she surveyed, the majority of which were funded through Small Business Innovation Grants from the National Institutes of Health rather than investigator-initiated ones.

There were a number of excellent presentations; among the highlights for me were:

The audience research and segmentation studies of texters being done by Public Health - Seattle and King County as part of their text messaging project.

The challenge for mobile health identified by BJ Fogg and his family on the lack of mHealth apps that can be used by family units to encourage and support healthy behaviors among themselves.

Jody Ranck's observation that "public health just focuses on epidemiology and not the future" as well as his introduction of the new HUB site for health technologies, including mHealth, by the mHealth Alliance and HMN.

Michael Cross from Kaiser Permanente talking about 'innovation hunters' in the K-P system nationwide and his observation that of all the mHealth meetings he attends each year, this one is by far the best (a sentiment I share).

Eric Leven from Rip Road and who was part of the group that developed the text voting system for American Idol. He reminded us that the program was a major experiment in changing consumer behaviors. He related that there were 50,000 votes cast on the first show and they thought they had hit a home run. Now there are at least 31 million and the last show of the 7th season had 97.5 million votes cast (not the same as the number of voters since one can vote multiple times). Eric also identified that mobile needs to be a business channel as well as a consumer one and to use for feedback from users to improve offerings and performance.

You can find more about the people, content and some of the great applications that were introduced at the links below. In the meanwhile, though dates have not yet been set, it's not too early to make your plans to be in Palo Alto next June. I have.

Links to the conference program and the presentations.

[Update 9 May 11]

Links to other conference coverage:

Kevin Clauson - Mobile Health 2011: A Look Back at What Really Worked
Katie Malbon - Lessons, home runs and more from Mobile Health 2011 (Stanford)
Thulcandrian - Thoughts from Mobile Health 2011

Recommendations for mHealth Stakeholders

2011-05-03T15:14:34-04:00

A new report contains a set of recommendations for mHealth policy-makers (including governments, health NGOs and regulators); telecommunications operators; systems integrators, manufacturers and technology providers; and healthcare providers and insurers to enable innovation in mobile health that can transform healthcare in both the developing and the developed world. The University of Cambridge and China Mobile teamed up to conduct a study describing and forecasting a vision of mHealth they state "can contribute to bringing healthcare to unserved or underserved populations; increasing the effectiveness, and reducing the costs, of healthcare delivery; improving the effectiveness of public health programmes and research; preventing illness (for example through behaviour change); managing and treating chronic diseases; and keeping people out of hospital" as well as serving as a platform for global sustainable development.

The recommendations in Mobile Communications for Medical Care are:

Policy-makers should ensure that policies and priorities for healthcare are complemented by financial incentives that reward those who deliver outcomes, particularly in disease prevention.

Policy-makers, healthcare agencies and professional healthcare bodies should provide guidance for assessing the healthcare and public financial benefits from emerging applications in a manner that can be understood by application providers, and create an expectation that such assessment should be an integral part of provision.

Public health authorities and agencies should engage in assessing the benefits and costs of acquiring information – whether as “by-products” or directly – from mobile applications, either to replace existing data gathering or to gain new knowledge. This requires clarity of ownership of, and access to, personal information.

Regulatory regimes and the medical establishment’s guidance-setting need to strike an appropriate balance between the risks and benefits of specific mHealth applications, distinguishing between those apps for which a light touch or a market-based approach is appropriate (i.e. those that pose no risk to health and may be effective, and which typically have little or no interaction with the established health delivery system) and those which have the potential to bypass or substitute other healthcare systems (i.e. those that might pose a risk to health unless properly regulated, or which might need to be robustly evaluated if health system money is to be put into them).

Telecoms regulators should review any constraints that existing regulations may place on the deployment of mHealth applications. In particular they should consider allowing mobile operators to operate as micropayment banks, i.e. directly handling small financial transactions.

Operators should have clear strategies – which might be different in different markets – for how much of the value chain (basic services, generic platforms, application provision) they wish to operate, balancing investment, financial return, reputational risk and the presence/absence of other players operating parts of the value chain.

Mobile operators should promote their networks as platforms for innovation and small-scale application deployments, and should invest in the provision of generic service platforms for this purpose. They should facilitate the use of the platform for domain specific innovation (here healthcare, though the recommendation is more generally applicable) by third parties, recognising that, even if they choose to operate some applications directly, some applications will be too small (or present excessive risk) for the operator to provide.

Medical device manufacturers should exploit the power of the mobile handset as a computing and communications platform, even when the computation required to deliver a particular application cannot reside completely on the handset. The swiftest take-up will be of applications that rely only on voice, SMS and WAP.

There is an opportunity for technology providers to provide the tools for creating or running managed services related to mHealth, which will in turn enable operators to provide generic service platforms. Technology providers need to decide whether their strategy is (a) to build and sell or (b) to build, sell and operate, perhaps in direct competition with operators.

Healthcare providers should examine mHealth applications as a means of managing exposure to costs – e.g. through the use of in-home monitoring to avoid hospital or residential stays. This might allow reduced charges or premiums, or increased profits.

Healthcare providers should consider how they might use data generated by mHealth applications to monitor and optimise the healthcare delivery chain itself, e.g. by improving the management and efficiency of expensive assets, or by better understanding the patterns of use.

To download and read the full report... that contains several useful models for thinking about the mobile health space and its applications to diverse health issues. A very insightful and timely piece!

via FierceMobileHealthcare.