Sing along with the condom ringtone!
08:10, 3 December 2009
.. Posted in Development, Relief and Advocacy Efforts.. Link
Social marketing is the application of marketing to achieve specific behavioral goals for a social good. You've experienced social marketing on a very basic level when you have seen a TV ad encouraging you not to drink and drive, or seen a billboard that reminds you to wear your seat belt. But just one single message probably didn't change your behavior; it was a combination of messages you heard during a radio news story, read in various places, heard from friends, and so forth, that got the message through to you.
I'm fascinated by social marketing. And I'm passionate about promoting condom use anywhere. Recently, I found a long summary about year-long multimedia behaviour change communication campaign launched in December 2007 to promote condom use among young men in India. It's a great example of how social media can work successfully. Here is the long summary of the campaign.
Here's a shorter summary: the objective of the campaign was on getting men talking about condoms with their peers. "The secondary objective was to address barriers to condom normalisation including negative judgment and increased association with disease. The stage of condom normalisation at issue here is freedom from judgment among community, with the objective of associating condoms with smart and responsible behaviour. In the end, the key message to emerge: a condom is just another (personal) product."
Television was the lead medium selected. In addition to using local satellite and terrestrial channels, combined radio, print, and outdoor media was used, as well as cell phone technology, such as the infamous condom cell phone ring tone. It is AWESOME!
