Course Project—Plan to Address Health Issue

Social Marketing Campaigns

Joseph Toole

Health Promotion and Disease Prevention

24 January 2017

Social Marketing Campaign in Public Health

Social marketing is the use of proven concepts and methods derived from the commercial sector to promote changes in different social significant behaviors. It involves the use of health communication strategies like promotion, community outreach and also mass media (Andreasen, 1995). We will discuss two social marketing campaigns, the ‘smoke-free Alexandria’ and ‘PackHead’ done by the World Lung Foundation.

‘smoke-free Alexandria’ is a campaign that has two phases starting with smoke-free legislation enforcement. It sought to get public support for the law. The campaign used creative measures which attracted other media services. They used a small budget, and the campaign was successful as it was the first campaign on Egypt’s Facebook. By the end of it, the advertisement gained many impressions within ten days at a cheaper cost. The campaign is resource intensive as it requires a lot of human resource and ongoing communication among the users. Also, message generation should be continuous for it to be effective.

The ‘Packhead’ campaign involved an application that was used by Facebook users to attach photos on the effects of tobacco and made them as profile pictures. The pictures were put on a generic pack of cigarettes and later shared. Therefore, the primary objective raise awareness, give warning on tobacco smoking and passage a message on effects of tobacco. The smoke-free Alexandria campaign used products like ashtrays shaped like lungs as a marketing strategy. The tobacco users were prepared psychologically as awareness on legislation was first done to the people, and they gave support to it, and this helped in emotional cost. The lungs like ashtrays got put in public places where the tobacco smokers were usually available, and this made the area accessible. Social networking adverts were used in which it was very effective as many people became supporters (Egypyt|Vital strategies, 2010).

The packhead campaign used a graphic pack warning as a product in which the participants could easily access. The participants could easily access it online, therefore, making it cheap for them since they were not incurring costs. A YouTube video was used to show some the effects of using tobacco which was very effective as it went viral. It was done purely online in which there was no real venue. The campaign intended to make changes to tobacco control policies. Though the video went viral, this was not the intended or objective of the campaign (Becky Freeman, 2015).

For the smoke-free Alexandria campaign, there was a growing community on Facebook. And for it to be continuous it needed constant communication. The members had to encourage the followers to build the society. This campaign gained favor in Egypt as it was the first public health campaign in social media as compared to the pack head marketing year.

For both campaigns, there are chances for wastage of resources because in social media there will be untargeted audiences which will be of no value and may bring about wrong impressions on the success of the campaign. It is, therefore, good for both campaigns to know their audience. In regards to appeal to the audience, there should be added advantages like some gifts for someone who promotes the campaign more than others in the social media. It will encourage more people to participate. The content for the campaign should be straight to the point and engage for example the one for packhead in which people were changing profile pictures with a certain message. The message was unique and at the same time engaging peoples’ mind.

Both campaigns also have weaknesses in which the messages or the content was general. As for the message, it should have been divided into different age groups to make sure everyone was a target in a special way. Secondly, another weakness for the campaigns is that it encouraged more use of tobacco and thus got enhanced by the social media. It is through the encouragement of tobacco consumption due to resources found on social media. Finally, it was observed to have spent more time on it instead of regulating on its practicality period for the campaign so that it does not last for so long and instead of bearing results it destroys more.

Recommendation for both campaigns can be given that they involve even mass media to make it effective though cost intensive. Social media is small scale and cheap which is a good thing. In order to make it more effective, there should be effective planning and development of evaluation strategies for the campaign. The integration of other techniques can be highly effective as shown by the smoke-free Alexandria campaign in Egypt. Mass media on its own or social media cannot reach everyone, but the use of others like mediated techniques like healthcare providers can bring about the achievement of set objectives. The goals of the campaign should be behavioral a change rather than awareness, embrace what your audience likes most and focus more on evidence (Fenton, 2013).

When recruiting participants for the campaign, social media is very effective. It, however, leaves you wondering the effective way of measuring the success of the campaign. Between the two campaigns, the smoke-free Alexandria campaign is the best. It is because the results were very impressive. The use of both social media and mass media seem to have worked very well for this campaign also being the first of the kind in the country could have favored it.

References

Egypyt|Vital strategies. (2010, June). Retrieved from Building Health Systems Globally: https://www.vitalstrategies.org/resource-center/media-campaigns/country/egypt

Andreasen, A. (1995). Marketing Social Change: Changing behavior to promote health, social development, and the environment. San Francisco: CA: Jossey-Bass.

Becky Freeman, S. P. (2015, March 30). Public Health Research and Practice. Retrieved from Social media campaigns that make a difference: what can public health learn from the corporate sector and other social change marketers?

http://www.phrp.com.au/issues/march-2015-volume-25-issue-2/social-media-campaigns-make-difference-can-public-health-learn-corporate-sector-social-change-marketers/

Fenton, K. (2013, September 18). Public health matters. Retrieved from Public health issues: https://publichealthmatters.blog.gov.uk/2013/09/18/social-marketing-2-0/