November 16, 2011
The Impassioned Few
In the wake of last week’s news regarding the Penn State sexual abuse scandal, the media turned its attention to Joe Paterno’s career. It seemed that every news channel, website, station or publication was debating whether or not JoePa should resign or be fired; then they focused their coverage on the Penn State protesters’ reaction to his ultimate termination. Meanwhile, a group of Penn State Alums who were enraged by the coverage of the incident decided to reframe the issue and remind people that there are victims in this story. Four former students— Jerry & Jaime Needel, Bob Troia and Larena Lettow—teamed up with the Rape, Abuse and Incest National Network (RAINN) to support the victims and survivors of sexual abuse.
Since the Penn State news story broke (one week ago), these former students jumped on the issue, created a website, began spreading the word through their social media networks and have recently begun receiving some traditional media coverage.
As described on their website—proudtobeapennstater.com— are:
In one week they have raised over $390,000 — more than half-way to their goal to raise $500,000.
Congratulations to these Penn State Alums for putting the focus back on the victims. You have inspired us individuals in the social marketing world; reminding us that it only takes an impassioned few to do a lot for an issue or cause.
Filed under: fundraising
Tags: fundraising, Penn State, Proud to be a Penn Stater, RAINN, Social Media
September 23, 2011
Same Message, Different Ways of Spreading it
I don’t know about you, but I have an online presence everywhere – Google+, Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Youtube, Pandora, Blogs, Spotify, a Myspace I can’t delete, and more. Corporations and non-profits like the Ad Council aren’t so different. With all these different ways to use the Internet and, more importantly, represent yourself, it’s becoming harder to maintain a consistent brand image. But with this increased difficulty in keeping a brand’s message consistent across multiple, varied platforms comes the potential to exploit the opportunity for a much stronger brand.
Some brands think that they should use every social platform the same way. If a Facebook post says, “Product X launches today!” so will their tweet and Google+ post (once G+ allows brands that is). This isn’t the kind of brand consistency I’m talking about. That’s just lazy. Do you want to have a lazy brand? Didn’t think so. Rather, brands need to have innovative ways exploit the very best of each platform. If they all did the same thing there wouldn’t be a need to have more than one. Despite their similarities, social platforms have definitive strengths and weaknesses.
Facebook, for instance, is amazing with contests thanks to their support of widgets. Twitter, on the other hand, may be a much better place for engaging people or addressing concerns. When Google+ allows corporate pages, Hangouts (video conferences between up to 10 people) will challenges brands to engage their customers face-to-face – a first for social media. Capitalizing on these innate advantages will only help to round out a brand, not fragment it. For instance, a consumer who doesn’t like the way Facebook works isn’t going to follow that brand on twitter if they treat it like Facebook. But they will follow it if it uses Twitter “the right way.”
Filed under: Social Media
Tags: Social Media
August 22, 2011
Marketing Good Health
The CDC hosted its annual Conference on Health Communications, Marketing, and Media in Atlanta last week, and I had the opportunity to spend three days listening to talks by public health experts and social marketers and chatting up folks from around the country who are passionate about using mass communications to help solve public health objectives.
This year’s summit focused on “Listening for Change,” the idea that the most effective campaigns and interventions are those that acknowledge that marketing is increasingly about dialogue rather than one-way broadcast. Unsurprisingly, much of the discussion focused on the role of social media in social marketing and why these platforms represent a fundamental shift in the media landscape.
I was heartened to see that the public health community is embracing social media platforms as part of their interventions, but all the same, I found the level of discussion to be slightly disappointing. Absent from the conversation was discussion about HOW to use social media in the context of health and health-related behavior change. Furthermore very few presenters spent much time discussing the impact of their efforts. While calculating ROI in social media is admittedly tricky, it seemed odd that in this gathering of mostly government public health officials, little attention was paid to results. This seemed to be a theme even in non-social media presentations – many presentations were light on impact evaluation and calculating the ROI of interventions.
Filed under: Communications
Tags: CDC conference, health marketing, ROI, Social Media
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