In Social Marketing, Stakeholders become Product Developers

New Routes to Community Health features eight hybrid media and outreach initiatives, each using different media and outreach tactics to positively impact immigrant health. With immigrants, media makers and community organizations all pulling together at the community level, everyone in the New Routes equation is in the communications business. Everyone is also in the outreach and change-making business. The question is: how can best practices in media-making and in community outreach come together to achieve the greatest social impact?

I have found that adapting social marketing techniques to outreach and media collaborations is one way to create that alchemy between words and actions that results in community change. Social marketing is, in fact, much closer to best practice in outreach, than it is to what most of us think of as media campaigns.

http://www.roadcrewonline.org details a social marketing effort developed as a Wisconsin highway safety initiative, and a link to a short video about the project.

I was one of the Road Crew program designers who asked what it would take for 21-34 year old single guys to NOT drive after drinking. We developed the program by asking all stakeholders that question, including the 21-34 year old target, bar owners, law enforcement, local businesses and government.

The resulting initiative is NOT structured as an ad campaign- although it’s got a great logo and slogan. It does NOT try to talk people out of drinking and driving. Rather, it provides an alternative to driving after drinking that the target likes and uses.

Topics: Building Community, Civic Life, Leadership, Outreach, Social marketing