The PSI BCC Blog

Why aren't we doing this?

Guerrilla marketing has been defined as "an unconventional system of promotions that relies on time, energy and imagination rather than a big marketing budget...[It] involves unusual approaches such as intercept encounters in public places, street giveaways, and PR stunts - any unconventional marketing intended to get maximum results from minimal resources."

To which I say: we'd like maximum results, and all too often we have minimal resources. So why do we keep sticking doggedly to the traditional marketing paradigm? It would be nice to see more social marketing programs experimenting with newer, more viral approaches.

For some food for thought, see:

• This write-up  on a New York City Tylenol PM campaign using wall projection appeared in last week's New York Times. Be sure to check out the comments below the post for some even more inventive guerilla marketing campaigns.
• Six Great Guerilla Marketing Campaigns
• Web Urbanist Guerilla Marketing Examples

Cell-Life: Using mobile technology to prevent and treat HIV/AIDS in South Africa

Cell-Life, a South African company launched by professors at the University of Cape Town and Cape Peninsula University of Technology, has developed software that enables medical professionals and caregivers to monitor patients receiving treatment for HIV/AIDS by transmitting vital information via mobile phone. Capitalizing on widespread mobile network coverage and use in South Africa, Cell-Life’s intervention allows patients to send information (symptoms, medications, dosage, dietary concerns, and other health data) using a cell phone equipped with a special menu that allows it to capture specific data. The information is transferred via SMS to an information database, which doctors and/or nurses can access over a secure connection (http://www.shareideas.org/index.php/CellLife). Patients also receive a text message each month that asks them to answer several questions about their health, which they communicate via phone or text to a central hotline. If a patient’s response merits an in-person visit, the health care worker contacts them. Text messages are a form of triage, allowing already overburdened health care workers to expend their efforts with increased efficiency. Cell-Life also uses technology to support ART adherence among patients, sending out daily text messages to remind ARTpatients about taking their medicines (Of note: PSI’s affiliate in Zambia, the Society for Family Health, is currently using a similar approach to remind men of safe healing approaches and sexual risk reduction following circumcision).

This innovative use of technology appears to have great potential for addressing some of the communication challenges faced by HIV service providers and their patients. Key questions remain, however: Can text messages really improve  ARTadherence? To what extent can texting effectively replace face-to-face communication between a patient and a health service provider? How big a barrier will cost be for less-resourced patients? 

 

Also of interest to the many PSI country platforms implementing peer education and IPC activities: Cell-Life has worked with AED/South Africa to develop a system in which school representatives text information about peer education sessions into a central database, allowing for easy monitoring of large, geographically disparate interventions.

 

For more information, see:     www.cell-life.org

 

Guest blogger bio: Hailing originally from Zimbabwe, Boniface Hlabano is a Hubert H. Humphrey Fellow at Emory University's Rollins School of Public Health, where he has  been studying HIV prevention and health program management. Boniface is spending a month at PSI/Washington to hone his skills in BCC and quality assurance for counseling and testing. Back in Zimbabwe, he is the Executive Director of Matabeleland AIDS Council, a local HIV/AIDS NGO that is part of the New Start network.

Ain't that the truth®.

If you have ever watched TV in the US - or walked down the street in an American city - chances are you're familiar with the truth® campaign, the American Legacy Foundation's massive youth anti-smoking effort. Launched in 2000, the campaign is funded through settlement monies provided by big tobacco companies as part of the Master Settlement Agreement (MSA), which they signed with the states in 1998. The campaign includes TV spots, print media, and a large, multifaceted website with online games, polls, quizzes, and downloads, as well as a blog "written" by the animated characters featured in the campaign's current phase. Truth® has also recently begun promoting re-broadcasts of episodes of MTV's long-running reality show The Real World that include these animated characters (fairies, unicorns, leprechauns, and a typewriter!) poking fun at the show's actors through speech-bubble commentary - with, of course, the occasional anti-smoking jab. The campaign is "designed to engage teens by exposing Big Tobacco's marketing and manufacturing practices, as well as highlighting the toll of tobacco in relevant and innovative ways" (www.thetruth.com). The campaign focuses heavily on changing social norms around smoking - taking the idea of smoking as youthful rebellion and turning it on its head by exposing the marketing approaches used by tobacco companies to target young people. Truth® doesn't include any calls to action - a nod to the idea that young people "can put it together" and may be less inclined to change their behavior if they're told to do so - and is known for framing its messages in a tongue-in-cheek, humorous way. The current phase of the campaign, "The Sunny Side of Truth" plays on traditional fear-based messages - which are generally not terribly effective with young people - reframing them in "sunnier" terms.

But does it work, or is it just a flash in the behavioral pan? According to www.protectthetruth.org:

• 75% of all 12 to 17 year-olds in the nation - 21 million - can accurately describe one or more of the truth® ads.
• Nearly 90% of youth aged 12 to 17 - 25 million said the ad they saw was convincing.
• 85% percent - 24 million - said the ad gave them good reasons not to smoke.

"Monitoring the Future, one of the nation's most comprehensive substance abuse surveys, reported dramatic declines in smoking rates among 8th, 10th, and 12th graders, citing truth® as a factor in this public health success story" (www.protectthetruth.org).

To learn more about the campaign and check out sample spots, check out the truth® campaign website at: http://www.thetruth.com/.

Pos or not?

Today's New York Times highlighted www.posornot.com, a new web-based game sponsored by MTV's college network (MTVu) and the Kaiser Family Foundation that seeks to promote counseling and testing, increase accurate risk perception, and reduce stigma around HIV.

The game presents a series of brief profiles of men and women between the ages of 21 and 45 (with photos), and asks players to guess whether they are HIV positive or negative.

Pos or Not, which was launched in late April, has been played 5.1 million times by 500,000 people in its first three weeks, according to MTV.

One of the things you'll notice if you access the game is that, while HIV positives are quoted talking about how they became infected or how they learned their status, many of the HIV negatives are cited offering impersonal platitudes about the importance of testing or addressing the global HIV epidemic. The contrast between the two groups is marked, and begs the question: is this simply reflective of the way that people tend to respond to negative and positive test results, or a missed opportunity on the part of MTVu to highlight more personal, resonant  aspects of HIV negative participants' commentaries? Given the difficulty in changing behavior among HIV negatives through counseling and testing, Pos or Not could have better highlighted the positive deviants - those who tested negative and were inspired to change their behavior.

For the full article, see: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/19/business/media/19mtv.html

Six degrees of chlamydia

To promote STI awareness month, the American Social Health Association (ASHA) teamed up with the creative team at Duval Guillaume to develop an application on Facebook (a social networking website) to highlight the risk of chlamydia transmission among young people.  The application, known as Morph Monkey, allows users to merge two photos to see what their potential child might look like.  The user is then notified that while making this "love child" they became infected with chlamydia, some facts on STI transmission are shared, and the user is referred to the ASHA website.  Users are also asked to "help spread this virtual disease to help destroy the real one" by continuing to make love children with other users to whom similar chlamydia prevention information is shared.

It's a clever way to reach youth All Facebook users can take part in the campaign by downloading the Morph Monkey application and clicking on the "make a love child" button. 

To watch a video highlighting the application: http://vimeo.com/959090

Have you been carded?

Internet Sexuality Information Services (ISIS), a non-profit dedicated to preventing disease transmission and enhancing sexual well-being through technology, maintains inSpot, an anonymous, online STI notification service and testing resource. Users can choose between a variety of e-cards, which inform their sexual partners that they should get tested for STIs. The site also includes a more limited selection of cards for HIV partner disclosure and related testing resources. Cards are targeted primarily to men who have sex with men, but some are appropriate for women as well. 

The site includes local testing resources for a number of cities and states in the US, as well as Canada and Romania.

Check out inSpot at: http://www.inspot.org/gateway.aspx. To see e-cards, click on any one of the cities, states, or countries listed, then click "Tell Them." Other organizations using e-cards to promote healthy behaviors include the CDC (multiple health areas): http://www2a.cdc.gov/ecards/; and Try to Stop (smoking cessation):  http://www.trytostop.org/ecards/ecards.asp.

Cell Phones: Innovative Media Channel

Cell phones are increasingly being used as media channels to convey health-related information. Cell phones are being integrated into interventions as a communication tool to foster treatment adherence, to offer social support for smoking cessation, and to share facts and information.   A recent article highlights a creative use for cell phones for HIV prevention.

XA campaign in the Republic of Georgia sponsored by UNICEF is using cell phones to transmit a 20-minute film about HIV prevention to youth around the country. The film will be split into 5 segments and the pieces will be sent individually to youth who have contact with peer educators through UNICEF-funded activities. The hope is that these videos will become “viral” as youth forward them on to their friends, who forward them on to their friends, and so forth. Program managers hope the movie segments raise awareness about HIV and spark a discourse about HIV prevention among young people. While most Georgian youth younger than age 25 have cell phones and blue tooth capability, this intervention has the potential to have vast reach.