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10 CHAPTER 1 ■ Social Marketing for Public Health: An Introduction

Trend 6: Integration of Various Communication Formats and Media
The success of a social marketing campaign utilizes various communication for-
mats and media. The communication formats consist mainly of advertising (in-
cluding public service advertising, simply called PSA), public relations, special
events (like public meetings and national exhibitions), sponsorships, and per-
sonal communication (including word of mouth, such as clinic counseling and
family visits).
Communication media include traditional media (such as newspapers, maga-
zines, radio, television, cinemas, billboards, and transits), nontraditional media
(e.g., computer desktop kits, desktop wallpaper, plastic cups, posters, T-shirts, bike
lights, and point-of-purchase materials), addressable media (like direct mail, flyers,
postcards, pamphlets, and booklets), and digital and/or interactive media (such as
the Internet, video games, DVDs, and mobile phones).
What really represents a current trend in social marketing for public health
is not only the increasing number of communication formats and media, it is
also the integration of those different channels to achieve a “one-sight, one-
sound” effect (Schultz & Schultz, 2004, p. 23) in all those communication ef-
forts. The rationale and goals for integrating various communication efforts are
twofold:
1. To more effectively orchestrate the delivery of messages into the marketplace.
2. To apply the strengths of each communication discipline or technique so that
the whole is greater than the sum of the parts and the optimal message impact
is achieved. (Schultz & Schultz, 2004, p. 23)

In some social marketing campaigns covered in this book, emerging media
were actively adopted. As “the evolution of utilizing technology to share informa-
tion in new and innovative ways” (EM, 2009), emerging media involve:

an explosion in digital media with the development and expansion of social net-
works, blogs, forums, instant messaging, mobile marketing, e-mail marketing,
rich media and paid and organic search all the way to offline trends in discovering
the power of word of mouth marketing (WOM) techniques and strategies that be-
come a part of media and marketing campaigns. (EM, 2009, p. 1)

Due to the disparity in economic and technological development and in media ac-
cess to target audiences among those countries covered in the book, the adoption of
new and emerging media for social marketing has been uneven in some of those
countries.
As a sea of change is surging over the traditional media landscape globally, so-
cial marketers have begun to venture into social media (e.g., YouTube, MySpace,