MyMediaLife - Population-Driven New Media Social Marketing and Branding

Format

Individual Presentation

Presenters

Kenny Shults, Connected Health SolutionsFollow
Victoria Sterkin, Connected Health SolutionsFollow
Emily Hanlen, Brooklyn, NY

Location

Sloane

Strand #1

Social & Emotional Skills

Strand #2

Mental & Physical Health

Relevance

This workshop is relevant to “Heart” and “Health” themes of the conference. The program MyMediaLife empowers teens to use their personal experiences to help create videos and other online content that promote social and behavior change. By leaving all decisions to the adolescents, the participants are empowered to motivate change in their community while building their self-efficacy and developing professional skills. The process of creating the campaigns creates an environment in which teens learn to respect diversity within the group while creating a positive sense of community throughout the process. Additionally, because each participant takes on different leadership roles this program increases self-esteem and helps to improve communication and leadership skills. This program has been proven effective in creating behavior change with regard to sexual health practices such as using condoms and accessing clinical services, and a host of other issues such as bullying, homophobia, and new media abuses such as sexting and social media oversharing. It has been implemented with a large variety of populations including HIV-positive adolescents, LGBTQ, Chinese-Americans, and more. These behavior changes among participating adolescents improve their overall mental and physical health while creating marketing and branding materials for the host organization and can be leveraged as outreach, marketing, and fund-raising tools.

Brief Program Description

This workshop is intended for adolescent service providers and anyone interested in discovering new ways to conduct community outreach and marketing. This workshop will:

1. Examine how youth are consuming and utilizing new media in their lives, and the impacts of the new-media revolution on adolescent behavior, learning, and socialization.
2. Demonstrate how behavior science is organically infused into social marketing efforts.
3. Provide practitioners with an overview of a program that both teaches adolescents the fundamentals of social marketing (behavior-change) campaigns, but structures a process wherein youth envision, design, produce, and disseminate the campaign on behalf of the host agency.
4. Present MyMediaLife evaluation results with four New York State Planned Parenthood affiliates and the Charles B Wang Community Health Center in NYC.

Summary

Video is a universal language with the power to effect incredible social change. The New Media Revolution has facilitated an unprecedented amount of video consumption in the last 10 years. In this more democratic new-media landscape, the people have unprecedented opportunities to find and broadcast their voice. The explosion of life-altering communications tools and video technology have not only changed the way we learn, navigate, communicate, and organize, but also revolutionized the way service organizations conduct and execute behavior change and marketing campaigns, community outreach, and agency branding. This workshop is designed to offer adolescent service providers a greater understanding of how new media can be leveraged for youth engagement, marketing and branding, outreach, and community-level interventions by structuring opportunities for youth to create and disseminate their own behavior-change messaging. This workshop will (1) examine how youth are consuming and utilizing new media in their lives, and the impacts of the new-media revolution on adolescent behavior, learning, and socialization; (2) demonstrate how behavior science is organically infused into social marketing efforts; and (3) provide practitioners with an overview of a program that both teaches adolescents the fundamentals of social marketing (behavior-change) campaigns, but structures a process wherein youth envision, design, produce, and disseminate the campaign on behalf of the host agency; and (4) present MyMediaLife evaluation results. This workshop will showcase and examine: key social marketing campaigns – beautifully-produced, digital-film public service announcements (PSA) – created by teens; activities typically implemented with youth in MyMediaLife to generate PSA content and structure; and the theoretical underpinnings of the program. The intended audience for this presentation is adolescent service providers, program managers, marketing and public relations professionals, direct and indirect service providers, and anyone interested in discovering new ways to conduct community outreach and marketing. Videos created by youth will be showcased and examined.

Evidence

MyMediaLife was born out of years of experience helping adolescent service providers around the country to implement adolescent-specific, evidence-based behavioral interventions designed to build cognitive skills, increase group cohesion, and change behaviors while having fun. Similarly, the MyMediaLife program fosters a process wherein youth learn to work together to structure behavior-change messaging (social marketing campaigns) around any issue they desire (or any issue the host agency desires). MML incorporates numerous evidence-based strategies and is based on sound behavior science and social marketing principals that rely on behavior science. MML is a cognitive-behavioral intervention that utilizes operant conditioning throughout the process. Also known as positive reinforcement, this involves the inclusion of reinforcing stimuli following desired behaviors that makes it more likely that the behavior will occur again in the future. MML utilizes Social Learning Theory in the workshop series. SLT focuses on learning that occurs within a social context. Youth learn from one another by observing, imitating, and modeling behaviors for one another. MML is structured to allow for these important peer dynamics to act as the foundation of the effort. Peers teach and learn from one another, make decisions, take on leadership roles, find new talents, and work through challenges. This results in greater self-efficacy, greater group cohesion, improved negotiation and problem-solving skills, and increased critical thinking, but it also ensures greater investment in the process and final product. MML uses psycho-educational activities similar to that of several evidence-based intervetnions. The Psycho-educational approach combines the skill sets of a teacher with that of a counselor to create a learning environment of comfort and support where the participants are free to explore the concepts presented in a judgment free environment and with lower vulnerability. The facilitator acts as an impartial guide through the activities, providing a forum within which the participants learn from their own experiences and those of their peers, resulting in participant-driven content and conclusions. Social Marketing campaigns organically employ behavior science theories (BST) throughout the process and MML helps participants incorporate simplified versions of these prescriptions for behavior change seamlessly and easily. Through creative storytelling that incorporates BST tenets, along with formative content produced by participants through fun activities, MML PSAs offer consumers AND participants an opportunity to consider their own relationship to the issues. What’s more, The PSAs can then influence viewers AND participants’ behaviors by incorporating BST prescriptions such as examining consequences they may not have considered; demonstrating healthy attitudes toward desirable behaviors; showing peer approval of appropriate norms; or by carefully and respectably generating concern over unsafe/unhealthy behaviors. We will be delivering evaluation results and are currently in the process of demonstrating efficacy through a research study slated for summer 2013. Objective 1 At the conclusion of this presentation, participants will be able to identify at least 3 ways in which youth are affected by, consuming and utilizing new media. As the CDC's Master Trainer for the evidence-based intervention called Street Smart the presenter has many years of experience helping adolescent service providers address the needs of their population. The presenter has also been researching and presenting around the country on the impacts of new media on adolescents for over 7 years. New media may be new to adults, but it’s the air adolescents breathe. The presenter will provide an overview for service providers on ways in which the explosion of these life-altering communications tools and video technology have changed the way adolescents learn, communicate, organize, socialize, date, form identify, and access sexual and reproductive information and services. Objective 2 At the conclusion of this presentation, participants will be able to identify at least three behavior science theories that are organically infused into social marketing efforts. Workshop participants will be provided with information (Theories and Models in Social Marketing, (Lefebvre, RC (2000). In PN Bloom & GT Gundlach (Eds.), Handbook of Marketing and Society, Newbury Park, CA: Sage Publications) that examines the ways in which social marketing behavior science is utilized in social marketing efforts. As a benchmark, a review of the most commonly used theories and models in 497 health education/health promotion articles over a two-year period found that the health belief model, social cognitive theory, theory of reasoned action, community organization, stages of change and social marketing were the most frequent cited ones among the 67% of cases where theories or models were mentioned at all (Glanz, Lewis & Rimer, 1997, p. 29). While this review highlights the most commonly used theories among health educators, it is not necessarily reflective of which theories are utilized in social marketing programs. Objective 3 At the conclusion of this presentation, participants will be able to describe a strategy that both teaches adolescents the fundamentals of social marketing (behavior-change), and structures a process wherein youth envision, design, produce, and disseminate a campaign on behalf of the host agency. This workshop will showcase and examine: key social marketing campaigns – beautifully-produced, digital-film public service announcements (PSA) – created by teens; activities typically implemented with youth in MyMediaLife to generate PSA content and structure; and the theoretical underpinnings of the program. Workshop presenter consistently incorporates best-practices into all training, workshops and capacity-building activities including tested behavior science approaches and adult learning methodologies. We consistently monitor and evaluate our process to ensure that organizations receive the highest level of expertise.

Biographical Sketch

Kenny Neal Shults has nearly 20 years of experience working and consulting with service organizations across the country to develop sound, innovative, and respectful strategies for engaging with key populations. Kenny specializes in public health and behavior-change program development surrounding a variety of at-risk populations, including adolescents, men who have sex with men (MSM), intravenous drug users (IDU), homeless and runaway teens, and trans populations. In 1999, he developed some of the first program objectives and evaluation strategies for agencies using the Internet to reach clients in online venues, and developed the first policies, procedures and protocols for agency use in minimizing liability and ensuring ethical service delivery. Kenny has been a pioneer in the development of Internet and social media-based approaches and travels the U.S. lecturing and training on social marketing for public health, using the Internet to reach youth and MSM, and the impacts of new media on public and mental health and at-risk-population behavior. As the CDC's Master Trainer for Street Smart, a multi-session, cognitive-behavioral skills building intervention targeted to adolescents, Kenny travels the country helping adolescent service providers to build their capacity to work with youth.

Victoria Sterkin, PhD.

Victoria's position as a behavior analyst varies from therapist, teacher, educational consultant, group facilitator, and data analyst. Victoria specializes in developing individualized and group level behavioral prescriptions; identifying antecedents to dysfunctional behaviors and behavioral patterns, changing behavioral patterns and imparting behaviors that increase positive outcomes. Additionally, Victoria specializes in increasing an individual’s access to behavioral reinforcement and pleasure to create more functional, and successful interactions with their environment. She received a bachelor's degree in Psychology from The George Washington University, a dual masters in Applied Behavior Analysis and Special Education, and a PhD in Applied Behavior Analysis from Teachers College, Columbia University. She has been a classroom teacher, and has trained, supervised, and conducted research with over 40 different teachers/practitioners. Victoria has facilitated change in behaviors of individuals with emotional and cognitive disabilities, autism spectrum disorder, the homeless population, individuals with HIV disease, individuals who have bullied and have been bullied, individuals struggling through a developmental milestone, individuals struggling with relationships and communication, and individuals who are simply interested in learning about their behavioral and emotional well-being. She combines theories of verbal behavior, mindfulness, and research-based learning tactics to achieve this goal. For a list of her publications and presentations visit https://drsterkin.squarespace.com/about/

Presentation Year

2015

Start Date

3-3-2015 1:00 PM

End Date

3-3-2015 2:15 PM

Recommended Citation

Shults, Kenny; Sterkin, Victoria; and Hanlen, Emily, "MyMediaLife - Population-Driven New Media Social Marketing and Branding" (2015). National Youth Advocacy and Resilience Conference. 83.
https://digitalcommons.georgiasouthern.edu/nyar_savannah/2015/2015/83