Mark Zuckerberg, CEO and founder of Facebook, recently had a few wise words for advertising executives. I think they apply to our efforts as well, as we are "advertising" the concept of immunization. Last Tuesday, Zuckerberg told an audience of advertising executives:
"Pushing your message out to people is no longer good enough. You have to get your message out to the conversations.... People influence people. Nothing influences a person more than a recommendation from a trusted friend."
The Immunization Branch does a great job of reaching people in traditional ways, such as print media, and I have high hopes for other tools such as this blog for reaching even more people, and finding new ways to get pro-immunization messages out to people.
There is a democratizing effect of the Internet in the way it lowers the economic barriers of entry for people to speak their voice and find others with similar views. We shouldn't find it surprising that people who are against vaccination have used the Internet to find each other and share information. We can't stop that discussion from happening (and we shouldn't), but if we can't beat them, we can join them by using the same tools.
By providing factual information through many different channels, we can find many ways to get into the conversations that sway people toward immunizations.
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The article also mentioned that My Space is expanding its ad sales networking program by "hypertargeting." We should look into this as a way to promote immunization in the technological age. Advertising and promotion has become a science & we need to examine our method of communicating and determine if we are capturing the target audience succesfully.
Yes, I agree so much. Myspace has done the "hypertargeting" for a while and is doing it more and more, and Facebook is starting to. There is more targeting of "micro-markets" and much less of "one size fits all."
If done right, consumers see this as convenient and appropriate, not as an invasion of privacy. For example, you're responding to an email in which a friend says she has the flu, and links to flu information sites show up in a column on the side. (Gmail does this a lot!)
John
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