Greetings, dear readers! For the latest edition of Voices From the Field, we sat down with Kinetra Joseph, Senior Advisor for Social and Behavior Change Programs at the CDC Foundation. The CDC Foundation is an independent nonprofit — established by Congress — that helps the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the public health system save and improve lives by building partnerships to protect communities everywhere.
For this post, we’re bringing you a true interview-style piece — not live, but unfiltered! We hope you enjoy.❤️
One of the CDC Foundation’s most visible campaigns from the past few years is Live to the Beat, which focuses on promoting heart health for Black adults (and we’re so honored we got to work on this campaign with you). What made Live to the Beat special?
The process of creating the campaign wasn’t special — the fact that we did it was special. I’ve noticed there’s been fewer true social marketing campaigns over the past few years than when I started doing this work — meaning, campaigns that include audience research and a full marketing mix.
Tell us more!
Live to the Beat is a social marketing campaign. That means it uses marketing principles, like knowing and engaging your audience, and combines them with behavior change theory to encourage people to change their behaviors for the better. Social marketing campaigns can help us reach public health goals — like reducing chronic disease or preventing drunk driving. They do this by deploying the full marketing mix — product, price, place, and promotion — to create campaigns that make healthier choices more accessible and appealing.
In public health, our focus lately has been more on changing systems and policies — and there are good reasons for that. But systemic change takes time, it’s a long-term investment. Social marketing can reach a large, movable part of the audience and be a powerful tool for change.
What challenges did you face when planning and implementing Live to the Beat? And how did you overcome them?
Part of the way through, we realized we weren’t nailing it — we had to make a change because our messages weren’t resonating with our audience. We had to commit to prioritizing the audience’s culture and values — we needed to tap into something that would help us position our message (prioritize your heart health) at the core of our audience.
When we tested our campaign messages with audience members, what we heard was: “You can’t just tell us what to do, no matter how well you say it.” We had to find something that resonated with people’s lived experience and acknowledge their frustrations with what we were telling them — it’s not that people weren’t aware of what they should do. It’s that they were facing barriers that made heart-healthy behaviors difficult to execute.
What advice do you have for health communicators who are trying to create a social marketing campaign and find that their message isn’t landing with the audience?
My best advice is to both question your own assumptions and let the audience guide you. Focus on the reasons why you’re doing what you’re doing and commit to doing it right — even if that means diverging from your original plan.
Follow where the audience leads you and adjust based on what you learn along the way. Ask yourself why you believe a certain strategy will work, then go back to the audience — their data, feedback, and lived experiences — to test those beliefs. Keep asking “why” until you uncover the deeper insights: why a behavior feels difficult, why a barrier seems overwhelming, why a healthy choice isn’t winning against the competition, or why a particular motivator resonates. Be willing to revisit the data and adjust your approach as often as needed until you land on the insight that truly answers those questions.
How have social marketing campaigns changed over the past years? And how do you see them evolving?
The information environment has certainly changed. Audiences are being bombarded with information, so it’s more challenging to cut through the noise. At the same time, we have more tools at our disposal to reach people. The rise of direct-to-audience marketing channels — like social media, email, and text — and the explosion of user-generated and user-owned content have been game changers. These channels not only let us reach audiences directly but also allow us to better track and measure our impact. Partnering with trusted messengers and influencers offers another way to make our messages more relatable, credible, and likely to break through the clutter.
What tips do you have for working with influencers?
Think outside the box. Trusted messengers don’t always have to be experts in the health issue you’re addressing with your campaign, they just need to have a rapport with the audience. For Live to the Beat, we worked with a number of trusted messengers that didn’t have a health background — for example, we partnered with DJ Jazzy Jeff to throw a virtual dance party to launch the campaign.
It’s also important to think about what’s in it for them. Set aside some budget to create motivation. It doesn’t always have to be cash-in-hand — for example, you can use events as a space for influencers to create content that they can share with followers to add to their brand.
Videos are also so much easier to produce now, and that’s a huge opportunity for social marketing. An influencer can take a video with their smartphone and share it, and it’s likely going to be more successful than a highly produced campaign video (and a lot cheaper).
The bottom line: Today’s health communicators have many tools at their disposal to promote behavior change. The key is to think outside the box, follow your audience’s lead — and every once in a while, get down on the dance floor.
Copy/paste to share on social (and tag us!): CommunicateHealth sat down with CDC Foundation’s Kinetra Joseph to talk about how social marketing campaigns can promote behavior change. Check out this conversation: https://communicatehealth.com/wehearthealthliteracy/voices-from-the-field-kinetra-joseph-cdc-foundation/ #HealthLiteracy #HealthComm
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