A new marketing strategy for the Open Society Institute
The Open Society Institute has initiated a new campaign to prevent the spread of HIV. Here's the website, and here's what they have to say:
In many developed countries like the United States, medication assisted treatment is a standard option for people who are dependent on heroin and other opiates. However, in most developing and transitional countries where injection drug use drives the HIV epidemic, these medicines are largely inaccessible—or even banned outright. The Open Society Institute’s International Harm Reduction Development Program has developed a campaign, Where's the Methadone?, to raise awareness about the glaring lack of access to these lifesaving drugs.
The text seems fine to me as far as it goes. I'm just curious about the two 'superheroes' that OSI has decided to use as part of its marketing strategy. This seems like a bit of a departure from their past work. OK, communications and social marketing experts out there - opinions?
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The two "action figures" seem to be targeted at the hispanic population, which makes me wonder if the organisation has chosen its target to be only these specific regions of the world. It would seem that in order to make the people accept and for the brand to be recognized there is a need for a standardized logo with the "action figures" being localized for each community individually.
Posted by: LukeS | Aug 8, 2008 9:51:57 AM
Ryan - Thanks for bringing forth these rather curious superheroes; they were designed to get your attention, and it worked! Social marketing campaigns often use cartoons and cartoon characters to tell a story, serve as the symbol for the cause, as a way to improve the 'stickiness' of the message, part of the intended result being a high correlation between awareness/recall of the campaign ('sure i remember the Meth Man superhero')and action on the intended behavior ('and yes I signed the petition'). The choice of animated superheroes seems to me to indicate that their target audience for this particular campaign may be networks of younger activists who can help generate tangible support for the issue, which would then be used to influence the actual decisionmakers...
Posted by: Colleen Gorove | Aug 8, 2008 11:25:16 AM
I agree with both Colleen and LukeS- it depends on their target audience. The characters make two complicated drug names more memorable, and even people in their 30s respond positively to cartoons. At the same time, they look like Mexican wrestlers to me, which is an odd association, and I bet they could have come up with cool cartoon visuals that had a look which connected more obviously to HIV and medication-assisted treatment. So, good but not perfect.
I'm very impressed, though, that OSI did not fall into the trap of choosing visuals that were boring and public health-ish.
Posted by: Alanna | Aug 11, 2008 5:21:06 PM