Glenn Close sets back Disability Rights 50 Years

Glenn Close has won an Emmy, a Golden Globe, a Tony, and has been nominated for an Oscar, but she still can’t seem to get a simple PSA right. She and her sister Jessie, who has bi-polar disorder, have recently launched a new campaign to reduce the stigma associated with mental illness- but are they doing more harm than good?

The main PSA for “Bring Change 2 Mind,” does anything but. It shows a crowded train station with hundreds of people milling through, with a few in white t-shirts. These t-shirts have titles and labels on them – such as from sister, better half, to schizophrenia to bi-polar. The purpose, I’m assuming, is to put a face to the diagnosis…

But, I have a real problem with this set up. You have PEOPLE wearing labels – isn’t that what disability rights activists have been fighting for years to overcome? When these individuals walk through the train station, we don’t see them as people, we see them as diagnoses. I don’t know Glenn Close’s sister’s name, but I know what her mental illness is…

When did we stop trying to put the person first???

And what about the people who are walking with the diagnosed? Their shirts have roles written on them- sister, battle buddy, better half. But the schizophrenics, depressed, and bi-polar  are sisters, brothers, better halves, battle buddies…..are they not?

How does this video show us that people with mental illness are real people too?

It’s doesn’t.

We are not learning anything about them as people, about their lives, their daily struggles… just their diagnosis. And in my opinion, that’s damaging.

Contrast that with a stigma reduction campaign I reviewed just a few days ago from Scotland, whose tagline is “See Me” (as in, not my diagnosis). In this campaign, the PSAs share the commonality of the experiences of the people with mental illness, AND show how the people who care for them helped them out:

At no point is anyone labeled. Instead, their situation is described, concrete things to do are suggested, and in the end mental illness doesn’t seem like something we need to freak out about! It doesn’t need to show famous people donning “I’m With Stupid” t-shirts.

The only redeeming factor of the “Bring Change 2 Mind” video is that at the end of the piece, the t-shirts fade to colors, and they meld into the crowd. This is a nice touch, but only goes to undo the damage that has already been done. We haven’t gained any ground.

The more I think about it, the more I hate this campaign. The tag  line is “Change a mind about mental illness, and you can change a life.”

But how, Glenn? How do we change a mind? By wearing diagnosis t-shirts?

This campaign gives us nothing but a famous person, revealing the “skeletons in her closet,” set to a John Mayer soundtrack.

(The press that the campaign is getting is equally sickening…..but I’ll save that for part deux, tomorrow)

Can social marketing reduce stigma?

This was one of the questions I addressed in my masters thesis this past summer. Specifically, I wanted to explore how different cultural interpretations of disability would affect communication efforts to reduce stigma in developing countries. More on that later.

As I was doing research, I came across a very interesting campaign from Scotland. The tagline is “See Me,” and they have lots of interesting uses of media in their campaign. In addition to tv and radio ads, they have photography contests, polls and downloadable curriculum packs. They also have a great collection of evaluation tools.

Each TV ad has a very clear target audience in mind, whether children or adults, the ads are aimed a people who know someone affected by mental illness. Take a look:

For children-

For adults-

(My favorite line from this one is, “Patterns change, friends don’t”)

(This one has some great brotherly ribbing, showing how their relationship didn’t change as a result of the mental illness)

Its the subtleties that I appreciate most in the ads for the adults. The ones aimed at children are clear and hopefully incite some empathy and understanding….

What do you think? Do you have some examples of stigma reduction social marketing that you found particularly good. Or bad?

What now?

So, I’m all done. I turned in my Master’s thesis a couple of weeks ago, and unless it was WAY off, I’m finished with my MA in International Media!

Lisa Simpson reading a book

So, I’m finishing up the summer with the kids, hanging out, going to the pool, taking them to museums. But their school starts next week and I’m already getting a little restless. Especially when I hear from others who are starting up classes, buying books, going through syllabi…ah, I really do love school.

Of course, I’m applying or jobs – several applications are out, with more on the way. But I’ve decided to do something I’ve always wanted to do but never had the time… I’m going to go through some of the courses on MIT’s OpenCourseWare. I’ve been drooling over the course offerings there for years… and honestly, it took me several days to figure out which ones to start with.

In case you don’t know about it, MIT offers almost all of its course syllabi, readings, assignments, and in some cases lecture notes and projects for FREE online! Over 1900 courses are online, and more are added all the time! Now you don’t get credit for doing anything, but it presents an amazing opportunity to explore an area you are interested in with a little more direction than just browsing the library.

So, I’ve decided to try a couple. I’ve found LOTS of courses that I’d like to take “someday,” but two jumped out at me as something I’d like to take NOW. So, over the next few weeks, I’ll be taking the following two course, both from the Media Arts and Sciences Department:

Seminar on Deep Engagement- (MAS 961) Innovation in expression, as realized in media, tangible objects, performance and more,  generates new questions and new potentials for human engagement. When and how does expression engage us deeply? Many personal stories confirm the hypothesis that once we experience deep engagement, it is a state we long for, remember, and want to repeat. This class will explore what underlying principles and innovative methods can ensure the development of higher-quality “deep engagement” products (artifacts, experiences, environments, performances, etc.) that appeal to a broad audience and that have lasting value over the long term.

Designing Sociable Media- (MAS 961)This course is about social life in the on-line world. Its focus is on how the design of the interface influences people’s interactions with each other and shapes the cultural mores and structures they develop. We will examine the ways social cues are communicated in the real and the virtual world, discuss the limits imposed upon on-line communities by their mediated nature, and explore directions that virtual societies can take that are impossible for physical ones.

Since I won’t have a professor or classmates to answer to, I’ll be posting my reading reflections and assignments here on the blog. Posting related to these courses will be tagged with MAS961-Engage for the Seminar in Deep Engagement and MAS961-Social for the Designing Social Media class, if you’d like to follow along. Of course, I’ll continue my regular postings on media and communications for social change as well!

I’d love to hear feedback on anything I post from these classes – especially if you have taken one of them or a similar course. I’m hoping to maintain the schedule in each syllabus, but I’m not making any promises.

So, without further adieu, I’m off! I’ve got readings to do!

Got Water?

Bottle of B'eau Pal water

Its summertime in Washington, DC, and although it has been a comparatively mild summer, it is still hot and humid enough to make you want to jump in the pool, or have a tall glass of crisp, cold water.

How about the latest in boutique bottled water, B’eau Pal?

Unlike other high end aqua refreshment, it’s source is not some glacial mountain in the Alps, or natural spring in the Adirondacks. No, this water comes straight to us from India.

Bhopal, India, to be exact. Site of the world’s largest industrial accident.

The B’eau Pal campaign is the latest from The Bhopal Medial Appeal and The Yes Men, in an effort to raise awareness about the incident and put further pressure on Dow Chemical to be held accountable.

The launch of this campaign coincides with the 25th anniversary of the accident, which has killed 20,000, and continues to kill at least one person a day.

The campaign features a beautiful red label and even includes a nutrition label, which indicates the drink has:

• 0 calories
• 0 grams of fat
• 22 mg of sodium
• 400% Dichlormethane
• 200,000% Carbon Tetrachloride
• 250% Chloroform

The campaign is clever, but not designed for mass distribution. Rather, the Yes Men had hoped to present the bottles to Dow Chemical executives earlier this month. However, word got out, and protesters found the Dow building completely empty. Had there been some kind of confrontation, perhaps there would have been more press, and consequently more awareness.

Unfortunately, all that’s left is a pretty bottle of poisoned water.

While I like the idea for the campaign, I can’t help feel like it is just there to make US feel better. Sure its witty. If the Dow folks had been there, we could really smirk. And hopefully the coverage would have raised some awareness and possible generated some funds.

But was there really hope that the campaign would change Dow’s mind about taking responsibility?

I’d like to know how the campaign measures success in this case? What’s the return on investment here?

AARP catches the youth, hope train

Osocio is one of my favorite blogs to follow- they always have great examples of social marketing campaigns from around the world.

This one, is from AARP- The American Association of Retired Persons, and its a product of their “U@50″ video contest. (Getting young people to think about retirement is a tall order! Kudos to AARP for their Youtube contest. You can see the winners here.)

The play on words is great, and evidentally its based on an Argentinian election campaign ad by Lopez Murphy. He didn’t win, but his ad won the Silver Lion at the Cannes Lion Contest in 2006! (small consolation, I’m sure)

Don’t let your work hide on a shelf!

Last semester I took a course on children in international development. It was an amazing overview of some of the particular development issues that hit children – child labor, trafficking, education in crisis, early marriage, HIV/AIDS to name a few.

The final project for the course was a case study and we were partnered up with others with similar interests. My partner and I decided to focus on interventions that are in place for young disabled Iraqi refugees in Jordan.

Not only did we have to turn in a paper, we also had to present our research to the class. So, rather than bore everyone with another power point, we decided to create a website.

But not only did this give us a different way to present, it also creates a ‘living document’ so to speak. It makes the information available to others, provides resources, and gives us a way to keep our work from hiding on a shelf somewhere. Because, really, what good is it going to do there?

So check it out! We incorporated videos, photos and all kinds of links!

Feedback is welcome!!

http://www.rwdjordan.wordpress.com

Photo: Home and Garden Webshots

How to get people talking about condoms, in 4 easy steps!

The BBC World Trust is wrapping up a large public health campaign in India in an effort to curb HIV infections. The year long multimedia campaign began in December 2007 and has been running in 4 states. Its objective is to “make condoms more socially acceptable and improve the image of the condom user as a smart and responsible person.”

The campaign included four stages:

Stage 1- A Contest

A riddle was  distributed (via radio, tv, billboards and buses, etc) and people were encouraged to call in with their answer. Then one of the people with the correct answer would win a free cell phone with paid air time!

Nearly 400,000 calls were made by people attempting to answer the riddle, and 25 winners were randomly selected and won a camera phone with paid talk time. According to the BBC World Trust’s impact evaluation of the phase, the campaign reached 52 million men in just 3 weeks.

Stage 2- Changing sport

The second phase of this campaign came in the form of tv, radio and print ads, which integrated local culture with the message. The ads depict a kabaddi match, a team sport where chanting the word “kabaddi” during play is part of the game. In the ad, our hero wins the match by chanting “condom” instead of “kabaddi.” The ad also places more emphasis on an animated parrot, who appears throughout the campaign.

Stage 3- Ringtone

The objective of this phase was to show social support for condoms, and it used a “condom a cappella” ringtone to do it! The ringtone can be downloaded for free on the CondomCondom.org website or through an SMS shortcode in India, and it was promoted through several platforms incuding websties, online games, mobile advertising, as well as tv and radio ads. So far more than 675,000 download requests have been processed, and the website has received over 3.5 million hits. The tagline “the one who understands is a winner” is further reinforced in this phase.

Stage 4- What’s in a name?

This final phase comes in the form of a tv ad (on both broadcast television and in cinemas), and introduces a puppy named…what else? Condom.

The campaign ends this month, but already its producers say it has reached over 100 million men and women in India. A full impact evaluation report will be available in mid-2009.

You’re not the only one talking!

A great friend of mine and amazing woman, Jayne Cravens has just added a new resource to her website with information and tips on how to build staff capacities to communicate and present. The information she has posted was developed while she was in Kabul, Afghanistan, working with the Ministry of Rural Rehabilitation and Development. While she was there, she not only did outreach work, she developed materials to teach the local staff how to do the outreach themselves. (Yeah for capacity building!!)

A young man is presenting the objectives, acheivments and outcomes of this workshop for other Afghans residents in Sang Takht District.

As she points out,

Marketing and public relations is never just one person’s responsibility at an organization, regardless of everyone’s job titles; everyone at an organization will interact with other staff, partner organizations, potential supporters and the general public at some point, and therefore, everyone needs to be able to talk or to write clearly about his or her own work and that of the organization overall.

What’s really cool, is that she has made these materials available online – and you can customize them to fit your own needs. (Double yeah for more capacity building!)

Included on the site are

• a workshop for women in strict religious cultures to cultivate their presentation and public speaking skills
• a workshop and tip sheet to help staff write better reports
• a slide presentation to help staff take photos in the field that will serve a variety of communications and reporting purposes

Check it out, pass it along. Its a great resource!

What Law and Order taught me about fake purses

Was it just another dead end lead, or a teaching moment?

Law and Order must be longest running TV series on the planet. And it always finds obscure, or not-so-obscure, cases in real life in which to base its plots. Last night, I’m sure was no exception.

But what struck me about last night’s episode, was one of the dead end leads that the detectives followed, briefly, in the hunt for the elusive murderer

The victim had come to New York on a bus tour, from upstate. Most of the people on the tour bus went shopping in Chinatown, to purchase fake goods- purses, bags, watches, etc. And the tour bus operator had recommended a certain shop ( a different one than he usually recommends). And for a brief moment the detectives thought the murder was in retaliation for the switch.

It turns out it had nothing to do with shopping in Chinatown.

But in the course of the investigation, the writers took the opportunity to slip in a little fact about these counterfeit goods.

Sweatshops.

When I think of the fake stuff, I think of Intellectual Property Rights issues, not really child labor. When I think of sweatshops (whether children or adult laborers), I think of Wal-Mart, Kathy Lee Gifford, chocolate, or Persian rugs. For some reason, I don’t associate the counterfeit goods with sweatshops.

Maybe I haven’t been paying attention. Maybe its an aspect of the illegal trade that hasn’t been promoted enough.

Either way, there are 2 good reasons NOT to buy fake.

So to the “two separate yet equally important groups: the police, who investigate crime, and the district attorneys, who prosecute the offenders,” thank you for the info!

Looking for bargains this Cyber Monday?

Cyber Monday marks the unofficial start of the online holiday shopping season… something akin to Black Friday for the brick and mortar stores.

There are deals and steals and bargains galore. Free shipping, 20, 30, 40% off, buy one, get one free…. you name it, you can find it online.

But don’t forget the nonprofits! Giving online is just as easy, fast, and much more rewarding as shopping online. And, there are bargains to be found, too.

For example, Google is providing fee-free processing for online donations for Pearls of Africa, which serves children with disabilities and their families throughout Africa.That means 100% of your tax deductible donation goes straight to the charity!

Now, THAT’s a deal!

To make a donation, please visit POA’s Donation page!

Thanks!