The second National Conference on Health Communication, Media and Marketing sponsored by the Center for Disease Control and Prevention's National Center for Health Marketing and the Office of Enterprise Communications will be held in Atlanta, Georgia, on August 12 - 14, 2008, at the Omni Hotel in downtown Atlanta. The National Cancer Institute and the National Public Health Information Coalition are co-sponsors for this event.

Three half-day pre-conference workshops are offered, for an additional registration fee. I will be presenting a workshop on Social Media for Social Marketers. If you've missed my Next Generation Social Marketing Seminar, it will be similar in scope and a bargain to boot. Other workshops include Crisis and Emergency Risk Communications, and Designing Health Literate Marketing Products and Services.

If your company or organization is interested in exhibiting at or sponsoring the conference, it's a great way to reach hundreds of health communicators and social marketers.

• How much effect would you think a checkbox would have on someone's decision whether or not to become a potential organ donor? When the checkbox on the form at the DMV is "opt-out" versus "opt-in" to the organ donation program, consent rates are much higher. In both cases, people generally adopt the default option, but with opposite results, even among people with similar characteristics. This is an example from Dan Ariely's blog, linked to his new book Predictably Irrational, of how people are influenced by environmental and emotional factors that unknowingly affect our choices and behaviors even when we think we are making rational decisions. I think the field of behavioral economics holds a lot of lessons for social marketers.

• Don't miss the special free supplement in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine with a treasure trove of articles about the (now defunct) VERB Campaign. This great example of using branding to persuade preteens to get physically active had full-scale evaluation data showing how effective it was, and the articles in this supplement help round out the case study.

• Another classic social marketing brand, the Truth Campaign, seems to have gotten off-track with its latest TV ad. Called out by AdRants for being anachronistic, I have to agree that basing the commercial on a tobacco company executive's statement in 1971 -- 37 years ago -- is irrelevant to today's kids. A 14 year old today was born in 1994 (yikes!); 1971 might as well be 1871 to them. Hope the campaign will lose its obsession with old tobacco industry documents and get back in touch with what connects with youth now. They used to be great at it.

• I found it interesting that the Democratic National Committee is requiring the caterers for its convention in Denver this summer to use healthy, environmentally friendly ingredients. The food must be local, organic or both, and must include at least three out of the following five colors: red, green, yellow, blue/purple and white. Fried foods are out. Individual bottled drinks are a no-no, as are styrofoam plates. This will be a challenge for the caterers, as one said, "We all want to source locally, but we're in Colorado. The growing season is short. It's dry here. And I question the feasibility of that." The costs for the committee's 22 or so events may be at least doubled by these new requirements (not a happy prospect given their money woes, I'm sure). If they succeed, though, I'm sure this will be a model for other future events.

• It's worth checking out the podcasts of the panels from the Making Your Media Matter conference, presented by the Center for Social Media. They include topics like games for social change, telling difficult stories, hip-hop as a medium, crossing cultural boundaries, and emerging formats and distribution strategies.

• Global warming gadfly Bjorn Lomborg wrote a thought-provoking piece in the Wall Street Journal on how to think about the world's problems. Can we set our priorities based on straight cost/benefit analysis of what will be most efficient in saving lives? Maybe we could, or maybe the vested interests would get in the way. On Friday, a panel of the world's top economists will release a prioritized list showing the best and worst investments we could make in 50 solutions to the biggest problems. That should be interesting to see, and even more interesting will be the reaction to it.

• Are you a sworn officer of the grammar police like I am? Misplaced apostrophes drive me bonkers. Misspellings make me want to stab people with a red sharpie. PSFK points us to a Chicago Times article about two guys who decided to get militant and do something about it. They traveled across the US as the Typo Eradication Advancement League, stopping wherever they saw typos or grammar mistakes on signs and either asking the owner to make the correction or fixing it themselves. My heroes!
  

• SocialButterfly has compiled a comprehensive list of the latest social marketing-related events coming up on the calendar this year all over the world. There's something for everyone there.

• Speaking of social marketing events (ahem), next week is Social Marketing University in Washington, DC. Even if you're not coming to SMU (though there still are a few seats left if you register immediately), if you are in the DC area please join Andre Blackman (of the Pulse & Signal blog), me and many others at the first Social Marketing Blogger/Reader Dinner and Meetup. It will be on this Tuesday, June 3rd, 6:30 - 9:00 pm, at the Capitol City Brewery (1100 New York Ave, NW). Come by for all or part of it, and eat, drink or just schmooze. If you are on Facebook, you can let us know you're coming on the event page, or send me an email at weinreich at social-marketing.com. Hope to see you there!
  

What are the differences between an individual's personality and that of an organization?

This is a really good question and one that I spend a part of Chapter 1 focusing on. The main reason is that we all have a shared idea of what individual personality means. It usually relates to a four letter rating from a test like Meyers-Briggs, and conjures up images of multiple choices test online. The personality of an organization is something that I try to define as much deeper. It is the unique, authentic and talkable soul of a company.

How does an organization go about creating a personality for itself?

You're really asking the right questions here! This, to a degree is what the whole book is about. A quick snapshot of steps basically comes from my overall outline of the book:

Step 1 - Understand why organizations lose their personality
Step 2 - Look at your accidental spokespeople to see who speaks for your brand
Step 3 - Define your personality using a formula from the book
Step 4 - Create and tell your backstory
Step 5 - Overcome the barriers or roadblocks
Step 6 - Find and use your personality moments

There are other lessons in there, but that's the snapshot view.

Are there special considerations that nonprofits and government agencies need to think about when cultivating their personalities?

Of course, I think that regulations may make it seem more difficult to do things when it comes to being a government entity - but ultimately the barriers to personality come down to the same thing ... fear. It is the topic that I cover in Chapter 5 - how to overcome the different types of fear and have a personality. The one thing I might add to my list that I share in the book that is common in government is the idea of ego. This not a negative term, as many might suppose, but rather the idea that there are a lot of dedicated government workers that are trying to make a name for themselves because they may have political or career aspirations. It is a key factor that many government agencies may need to take into account when finding a way to cultivate their personalities.

What are some good examples of nonprofits or government agencies that have developed a personality for themselves?

There are a few great examples in the book, but one that I am a big personal fan of is Kiva.org. They have been one of the pioneering groups in microfinance and have also built a large following of dedicated givers because of the way that they manage to portray their brand and let their team members share their passion with the world.

What are some examples of negative nonprofit or government agency personalities, and how might they turn that around for themselves?

Good question - I think the government agencies with the lowest public perception are the ones that you might expect - eg, the IRS. How could the IRS use personality? How about taking an approach similar to what Intuit did with their popular TurboTax solution by letting people answer each other's questions in a real time collaborative online help system? Personality is all about having a human voice and trying to avoid becoming a bureaucracy. Perhaps the better questions is which government agencies couldn't use personality? They all could.

seventeen years ago i belonged to a la-based gay men’s HIV-positive ASYMPTOMATIC support group. ASYMPTOMATIC was the functional word: it distanced us as far as we could get from AIDS. it was having it without having it. fear and shame and stigma captured in a moment of language.

had a love there whom i’ll call jerry, a blonde, blue-eyed hunk with fifty-two t-cells and a kiss that kept me alive. fifty-two t-cells made him happy. fifty was the cutoff. he didn’t have AIDS. he was ASYMPTOMATIC. he felt fine. he felt more than fine. i must agree he felt more than fine.

then came the day.

in an effort to make federal funding available to the shockingly growing national population of HIV-infected individuals, the us center for disease control (cdc) revised its AIDS “portrait” to include — among other things — persons with fewer than 200 t-4-cells. the cdc made this announcement on a monday. our support group met on tuesdays.

jerry came to the meeting in tears.

last week, he’d been free as a bee can fly, an HIV-positive ASYMPTOMATIC person. this week, he had AIDS. nothing else had changed. and everything.

that was the day jerry began to die. i will simplify the rest of his story and tell you he lasted about another year.

Later, Richard talks about the concept and history of Daylight Saving Time:

the us law by which we turn our clock forward in the spring and back in the fall is known as the uniform time act of 1966. the law does not require that anyone observe daylight saving time; all the law says is that if we are going to observe dst, it must be done uniformly.

while it’s not new to our lifetimes, the notion of dst has been around for most of this century and earlier. in the tradition of divinely-appointed kings who could not halt the tides by their bidding, it is an idea new with democracy, itself an exercise in social justice: an informed constituency can command the sun’s passage...

a democracy can command the time, it can alter the fall of daylight.

The implicit point that Richard makes with this juxtaposition of concepts is that definitions are powerful. The words we use to describe something can mean the difference between health and disease, between light and darkness. Jerry's health status was exactly the same before and after the CDC's pronouncement, but the new definition of a healthy t-cell count was essentially a death sentence. The sun is still in the same position in the sky as it would have been, whether we call it 6:00 or 7:00, but we can delay nighttime simply by changing the declared time.

• DARE to Keep Kids Off Drugs
• There's No Excuse for Domestic Violence
• Don't Drink and Drive (or something to that effect)

• Keep Your Eyes on the Road.

• Make your words count. Like a billboard, you only have a small number of words to get your point across. Unlike a billboard, you don't have space for graphics and need to rely on the words to convey the idea without visuals. Make sure your message is clear and succinct, and make it memorable. The best bumper stickers make you laugh and then think.


• Make it visible. The worst bumper stickers make you squint and mutter, "What does that say?" as you drive by. Use high-contrast dark lettering on light colors or light lettering on a dark background. Don't try to fit so many words on the sticker that you have to use a small font.


• Make it ubiquitous. Figure out ways to encourage your supporters to put the bumper stickers on their cars. Give them away, provide incentives, pay college students to stick them around, use window clings if a sticker is too permanent for them... The more people see your bumper sticker, the more it will provide confirmation that support for your cause is socially acceptable and desirable.


• Make it a social object. Bumper stickers can be conversation starters or a way for people to identify common interests. In junior high, a KLOS bumper sticker on our Pee-Chee folders was a coveted status symbol designating that we were cool enough to listen to that radio station.


• Make it build curiosity. Drive around the US enough, and you will eventually see a car sporting a bumper sticker that says, "Where the heck is Wall Drug?" If you don't know the answer, the more you see cars with that sticker, the more it will continue to irritate those three neurons in the back of your brain devoted to the idea of Wall Drug. If you ever have the opportunity to find out the answer, you will do so just to satisfy that nagging curiosity. (Here in California, I often see bumper stickers that say, "I saw the Mystery Spot." Similar idea.) Ask a question. Make people wonder about the answer.


• Make it special. If your bumper sticker is one of 20 (or even four) covering the back of someone's car, the message will be diluted (see the photo above). For more impact, your bumper sticker should be the only one on the car. Encourage your supporters to get rid of extraneous stickers so that yours will stand out.

• Make it memorable. A message that's genuinely funny, for instance will stick to more than just bumpers; it will be something people remember, even repeat to their friends. And that can magnify its impact tremendously.

• Think about the stickee. When someone slaps a sticker on their bumper, it isn't just to say something about their cause; they're taking on a little piece of your identity as their own. What does sporting this bumper sticker say about your supporter? How can you make that statement as appealing as possible?