Can you shame people out of using the ER as a walk-in clinic?

In a public healthcare system, one of the biggest drains on resources is the people who come to Emergency for problems that should be addressed by family doctors, clinics, or even telephone health advisors.

More urgently, the long wait-times that result can actually prevent the people who desperately need treatment from getting it in time. At least, that's what this PSA from the UK National Health Service in Suffolk wants you to know:



It's not exactly a subtle message. And if you read this blog (or my posts on Osocio) regularly, you know I'm not a fan of guilt and shame as social motivators.

I don't like the ad. But in this particular case, I think it could actually work. The difference is that the "ask" of this PSA is actually pretty simple: to call the NHS telephone health line first.

Who wouldn't prefer to avoid a trip to the ER waiting room, where non-emergency cases get triaged into several-hours-long waits among the sick and injured? I just wish that the message had been that, instead of using a dead child as worst case scenario.

Thanks to Bury Free Press (from my ancestral homeland, BTW) for the tip.

Candie's Foundation gets spanked by activist moms #NoTeenShame

The Candie's Foundation recently launched an anti-teen-pregnancy campaign in which a who's sho of Millennial celebrities  — Hayden Panettiere, Carly Rae Jepson, Hillary Duff, Lea Michelle, Fergie, Vanessa Minillo, Ciara, Teddy Geiger and the band Fall Out Boy — tell teens how much parenthood sucks.

According to Feministing, the campaign has really offended the Strong Families Movement for its shaming approach towards teen pregnancy. Allied blogger Natasha Vianna puts it plainly:

At the age of 17, I gave birth to a little girl. When the Candie's Foundation launched a teen pregnancy prevention campaign with the tagline "You're supposed to be changing the world... not diapers," I was outraged by their attempts to shame young parents. Although I was changing diapers at age 17, I am changing the world – and so are Lisette, Consuela, Jasmin, Gloria, Marylouise, Christina, and so many other young parents like us across the country. Our activism has been shaped by our experiences as young moms; we are working to change the world because we are young parents.

The organization has launched a petition to Candie's and encourages the use of a hashtag, #NoTeenShame, to draw eyes to the cause.

This controversy is similar to what happened when NYC's Human Resources Administration put up ads  in which young children shamed their teen parents about getting pregnant.

The problem lies in the strategy of shame. This is an organization that previously used wealthy teen mom (and born-again abstinence advocate) Bristol Palin as a spokesperson for what a burden young parenthood is. They describe themselves as " a non-profit organization that works to shape the way youth in America think about teen pregnancy and parenthood." 

And sex:

Research has shown that teen girls who have been exposed to the foundation and its messages are more likely to view teen pregnancy and parenthood as stressful and negative, and they are more likely to be skeptical of the media's portrayal of teen pregnancy and parenting. They also think teens should wait longer to have sex than girls who are not aware of the foundation and its messages.

But where does that leave the teens (especially girls) who have become pregnant? Ashamed, if the campaign has its way with them. But even if their own feelings of self-worth are not important to you, do you actually think that teens are unaware of the fact that unplanned pregnancy is a big deal? 

It would be really refreshing to see someone pony up for a pleasure-positive, choice-positive teen sexuality campaign that helped young people get and use contraception without vilifying those who do not, and who decide to have a baby. The Candie's Foundation's pro-abstinence stance reflects a conservative culture of sexual shaming, in which people who consensually give in to their natural curiosities and pleasures are seen as morally weak. (And the shaming can affect victims of rape as well.)

As much as I don't want to be a grandparent too soon, neither would I want to raise my young son to believe that teen parents are lesser people than him. Not only for their sake, but possibly for his own. 

Advertising rape culture in anti-rape campaigns

Victim-blaming. It's ugly, it's hurtful, and it's doing nothing to stop people from raping other people.

In the aftermath of the Steubenville rape trial, in which two teenage men were convicted of raping and humiliating an unconscious teenage woman, it's time we had another look at what these supposedly-helpful ads are saying. 

Using some of the post-verdict, victim-blaming Tweets compiled on Sociological Images, I've twinned the infamous ads with their real-life counterpart messages.

The ad above is from the Pennsylvania Liquor Control Board. I wrote about it on Osocio, and it was all over the mainstream media. The ad was pulled from the campaign.

This one is from West Mercia police. When called on it by British feminists, they refused to apologize.

This one isn't even about drinking. It's a "safe taxi" campaign by Transport for London, and note that it has the Mayor and the police endorsing it.

To quote You Are Doing it Wrong: 

Christ. Did anyone pause for even a milli-second, and think, ‘Gee, maybe it’s NOT such a good idea to equate not booking a taxi with certain rape?’. Or did the advertising agency just convince Cabwise that it would provoke attention, and controversy?

Which brings us to my longtime prohibition-era nemesis, MADD:

MADD - Unbuttoned from Esparza Advertising on Vimeo.

Interestingly, when the message is being preached to men, the danger isn't being raped but rather having unwanted sex with somebody unattractive:

It's really bad, folks. People actually think that the only thing standing between a woman and her rape is how she controls herself. She must at all times be sober, fully covered, aloof and safely cloistered away from "bad people". Failure to observe any of these rules makes her responsible for anything violent that happens to her, because men — especially drunk men — have no control and will automatically seek to sexually violate her.

There is hope, however:

Sexual Assault Voices Edmonton, via Osocio.

Association of Chief Police Officers in Scotland, via Osocio

Via Men Can Stop Rape

Teach your children well. 

NYC shames teen parents to battle unplanned pregnancy

It seems that scaring and shaming people just won't go out of style in social marketing, no matter how much research proves it's ineffective.

These ads are from NYC's Human Resources Administration, and they feature "with hard-hitting facts about the money and time costs of parenting, and the negative consequences of having a child before you are ready".

Think Progress points out that New York's mandatory comprehensive sex ed curriculum, as well as better teen access to contraception, have seen the teen pregnancy rate drop by 27 percent over the past decade. But they compare this campaign to abstinence-only education, "a misguided approach to sexual education that teaches adolescents to be ashamed of their bodies, rather than equipping young people with the tools they need to safeguard their health" and expect that the campaign by itself will be no more effective.

But worse, the negativity heaped on kids born to teen moms is unconscionable. Just because the statistics are there, doesn't mean you have to be so insensitive to real children and their parents.

This one, however, has the right positive message (in the headline, at least):

Why couldn't the whole campaign have taken this route?

Censor your shame with the pixellated bath towel

Funny. Plus, it gets us into all kinds of interesting discussions about why we censor women's chests and not men's, or why we even consider nudity to be unseeable.

Via Brands of The World

F'd Ad Fridays: The grossest film poster you'll come across today

According to the Anomalous Material blog (via Buzzfeed) this is a "banned" poster created for the Hungarian release of the well-received dirty Steve McQueen movie, Shame.

Eww.

Rethinking shame

I just caught up with an article from last week's Advertising Age that is kind of a big deal for social marketers.

It previews a study by Northwestern University's Kellogg School of Management on the use of shaming in anti-binge-drinking ads — with specific reference to a prom night campaign initiated by the LCBO:



Copy: “Your prom should be memorable – for all the right reasons. You know you don’t need to drink to have fun. Plan ahead and make smart choices. Don’t let drinking flush your prom night down the drain.”

The study interviewed 1,200 undergraduate students at Northwestern, and concluded that the attempt to shame students straight had ironic psychological consequences:

"Viewers already feeling some level of guilt or shame instinctively resist messages that rely on those emotions, and in some cases are more likely to participate in the behavior they're being warned about."

Seems counterintruitive, doesn't it? But it seems this study dredged up a phenomenon psychologists were already well aware of, something called "defensive processing".

I'm only an armchair shrink, but I get this. It has to do with self-esteem. We don't really want to feel badly about ourselves, so when our self-esteem is under attack by a message meant to induce shame, we get defensive. We block it out, we make fun of it, or we even defy it by engaging in even more of the behaviour.

Medical News Today puts it this way:

"Findings show such messages are too difficult to process among viewers already experiencing these emotions -- for example, those who already have alcohol-related transgressions.

To cope, they adopt a defensive mindset that allows them to underestimate their susceptibility to the consequences highlighted in the ads; that is, that the consequences happen only to 'other people.' The result is they engage in greater amounts of irresponsible drinking, according to respondents."

This is a great reminder to social marketers about the holier-than-thou approach we are often tempted to take — particularly when we and our client are "true believers" on a social issue. I've always said that the problem with being an activist is that you naturally want to preach to the choir. And this is not what social marketing should aim to do.

If you want to change attitudes, you have to get inside the heads of the people you want to change. Sure, you can identify their behaviour as negative, but you have to give them an out, and you have to show the positive outcome.

As one of the study's authors concludes, there are two things we need to keep in mind:

"The first involves media: Ads placed in more-positive surroundings -- such as in a sitcom or a positive magazine article -- have a better chance at resonating than those placed in tense or negative contexts.

Second... anti-alcohol groups would be better served focusing their messages around how to avoid situations that lead to binge drinking than on the consequences of the behavior, because attempting to shame people out of binge drinking doesn't work."

If you want to read more on this issue, there's another academic article about it here. It's long, but both it and the Kellog study should make good professional development reading for anyone in the biz.

Ten concepts that will be redefined in the Twenteens

Whether or not it is mathematically accurate, most of us consider 2010 to be the beginning of a new decade. And with such a break, naturally, come speculations as to what the next ten years are going to be all about.

I'm no futurist, but as a writer I'm interested in how words change their meanings over time. And more importantly, how the big ideas behind them catch up with social evolution.

Here are 10 terms that I think will mean something very different during this decade:


Shame

Even people of my generation are amazed at younger people's lack of what we would call "shame". Just yesterday, I was reading about how a brother, whose sister narced him out for keeping beer in his room, got his revenge by posting her "hookup list" on Facebook and tagging all the guys' names.

Sibling rivalry may be as old as the hills, but when you see this list and the reactions to it, you can see that we're dealing with a generation that doesn't blush. They get mad, sure. They get embarrassed. But I don't get the impression that this girl really felt shame at having written this list in the first place.

Is that wrong? Not necessarily. In fact, when these kids are running the world, I can't imagine what kind of sex scandal could unseat a political leader, since everyone will have done everything imaginable and shared it by then.


Old

Speaking of which, I'm getting old. Or at least, I should be. But one great thing about trailing the Baby Boomers is that they keep raising the bar. First 30 was the new 20. Then 40 was the new 30. 50 the new 40. 60 the new 50. Etc.

It's gotten to the point where I'm not really that concerned about turning 40 this year. As older friends and relatives have shown me, I never really need to grow old.

Here

I'd like to thank you, my dedicated reader, for being here. But where is "here"? I'm writing this in my office, and you could literally be anywhere in the world. This is nothing new, since telecommunication has always made some of this possible, but the ease and richness of it make us so much more present in each other's lives than ever before.

Online meetings, online games, online parties... people are getting together in places that don't actually exist. So at what point will we need a new word for "here" that means "no, like actually in the flesh (and actually paying attention rather than Blackberrying)".


Now

I think the concept of "Now" has also changed, and will continue to do so, in certain contexts. When I write an e-mail to an friend, and I ask "what are you doing now?" I might mean this year, or even since 1989. But when I see them on Facebook or Twitter, I see that they're trying to clean cat barf out of their carpet.

The immediacy in personal communication is risible, but in business it's downright infuriating. But I've already covered that one in another post.


Brand

Originally, a brand was an attempt to give human attributes to a company or product. Now it's gone full circle, and corporate branding techniques are being applied to people.

Way back in 2007, Fast Company said "Regardless of age, regardless of position, regardless of the business we happen to be in, all of us need to understand the importance of branding. We are CEOs of our own companies: Me Inc. To be in business today, our most important job is to be head marketer for the brand called You."

So if a brand is a person, and a person is a brand, then... ?

Oh, forget it. My head hurts.


Conversation

Are we having a conversation right now? Not really. As far as I know I'm just talking at you (or nobody, for that matter). But we may get into one in the comments thread below.

What's interesting about online ideas exchange isn't just that we can have a little Twitter flamewar in almost real time — it's also that a conversation can play out over hours, days, or even weeks on a thread. And I can have several at a time without being rude.

I've actually caught myself recently stating that I had "had a conversation" with someone at over something important, when in fact we had just messaged each other a few times. Maybe that seems normal to you, but I'm still getting used to it.


Ownership

I was at a social media seminar last year where one participant raised concern about the idea of generating so much content for free: "How do I retain ownership of it, if it's out there for everyone to use as they see fit?"

The idea of ownership is changing — from collaborative authorship on Wikis, to hilarious copyright violations on YouTube.

This obviously bothers some owners of more valuable intellectual capital like U2's Bono, who actually went on record saying that ISPs should use Chinese-style policing of the Internet to stop illegal music sharing.

To some people, this might seem to make sense. But it goes against the ideals of Internet culture, and also seems petty coming from a millionaire rock star.

I'm not saying artists shouldn't have the right to protect, and profit from, their own work. I just don't know how they'll manage in a remixing, sharing online world.


Loyalty

This is more one I'd like to see change, rather than one that necessarily will. But the idea is that as people form more and varied connections with other people, they will stop being such all-or-nothing team players.

What I mean by that is that people will stop labelling themselves "liberal" or "conservative" or whatever, but will instead form loyal connections to the individual people and ideas that suit them best, while at the same time always be ready to change alliances if a person or thing lets them down. Think "cat loyalty" rather than "dog loyalty". I actually think that would make for a smarter, better world.


Responsibility

This is another of those old-school words that often gets misapplied in marketing and life. But I think you will see a new sort of responsibility continue to emerge in the next few years, where people can no longer feign ignorance about the impacts of their behaviours, and companies are answerable for their claims, practices, and supply chains.

At least I hope so.


Ad Agency

We've never really had ad agencies here in Ottawa. Because of the size of the market and the nature of the client base, most of us have evolved from design shops to a more integrated and strategic offering.

There have been times when I regretted not moving to a bigger market with "real" ad agencies, but not anymore. While I'm not ready to proclaim the post-advertising era quite yet, the long death of traditional mainstream media is brutalizing the old media commission model. At the same time, old ways of communicating are eroding as consumers just get their best tips from their extended network.

One of the great things about being at Acart is that we're constantly reinventing ourselves. Because we're always changing, we don't have to fear change.

So what will the Ad Agency of 2020 look like? Tune in for my next installment.