Social marketing and sustainability in child abuse prevention campaigns

¶ … Social Marketing NAPCAN Prevent Child Abuse Case Study

The threat of child abuse is still very real within even our modern society. Child abuse and neglect is still a major issue within Australian society and politics. According to the research, about 5-10% of all children under the age of eighteen have experienced physical abuse, 4-8% witness abuse within the family structure first hand, with between 12-23% being abused verbally (Horsfall, Bromfield and McDonald 2010). Over 55,000 cases of child abuse were investigated in 2008-2009 alone (Horsfall, Bromfield and McDonald 2010). This is creating a situation were nonprofit organizations like NAPCAN are struggling to find effective preventative measures to help curb these unacceptable rate of child abuse and neglect within Australia, as well as setting a model for success for similar programs across the globe.

NAPCAN's more recent campaigns to prevent child abuse have used innovative strategies on social media platforms in order to better spread the message of their campaigns. The 2006 campaign's purpose is clearly to open parents' eyes to their own behaviors in an attempt to direct new modes of behavior that prove to have a much more positive impact on their children. NAPCAN began its 2006 campaign on Youtube, with the message of "Children see. Children Do. Make your influence positive." (NAPCAN 2006). It was a broad strategy that is targeted to parents. Essentially, NAPCAN's campaign is taking a primary intervention approach. Thus, it "carried the message that all adults are modeling behavior to children all the time, and encouraged all adults to consider their behavior and make their influence on children positive" (Horsfall, Bromfield and McDonald 2010 p 9). It was an innovative approach to prevention of child abuse and neglect within Australia.

Prevention of Child Abuse through Parent Education

The campaign remolded older strategies of parent education as its primary vehicle for prevention. Parent education strategies are one of the most commonly used to combat child abuse. Parent education is "a systematic and conceptually-based program intended to impart information, awareness and skills to the participants on aspects of parenting" (Tomison 1998 p 3). It is the targeting of parents in order to change potentially harmful behavior that could be contributing to the abuse or neglect of Australia's children. According to the research, "parent education programs are based on the premise that interventions that promote caring, consistent, and positive parenting are central to creating safe and supportive environments for children" (Holzer et al. 2006 p 8). These strategies aim to educate parents on how their behavior impacts their children. Many parents have no idea how their behavior can be negatively affecting their child's development, because they do not see themselves as being perpetrators of abuse. As such, "research has documented that the risk of child maltreatment is heightened when parents lack necessary child rearing skills, social supports, and knowledge of child development," (Holzer et al. 2006 p 8). Prevention strategies focusing on parent education aim to increase parents' awareness of their own knowledge and impact on their children. These strategies aim to increase their positive parenting skills in order to avoid having a negative impact on their children's development. Here, the research suggests that "all parent education programs are thought to assist families primarily by increasing parental knowledge and reducing parental stress" (Holzer et al. 2006 p 9). Parent behavior directly impacts the welfare of the children within the family (Barth 2009). Thus, parent education has proven a huge element to most modern prevention strategies. Due to its power as a strategy, "parent education is currently advocated as a significant component of any comprehensive set of preventative services for parents at high risk of abusing or neglecting their children" (Tomison 1998 p 1). The notion has dominated popular prevention strategies since the late 1980s here in Australia. As such, programs and strategies aimed at prevention have long utilized elements of parent education, and thus target an audience that can specifically benefit from such education. Here, the research states that "proactive programs are targeted at parents who have not already developed severe parenting problems or become abusive or severely neglectful" (Tomison 1998 p 4). NAPCAN used this strategy as a platform for its 2006 campaign, but also many others and often its strategies revolving around parent education went beyond just what parents could do to protect their own children, but also what they could do to help protect other children as well.

Media Platforms

Media has long been a method of implementing strategies for prevention of child abuse. Prevention of child abuse often is most successful when behaviors and attitudes that allow such abuse to happen are changed (Saunders and Goddard 2002). The media plays a huge role in facilitating the change of behavior in the public arena. Here, the research suggests that "the essential role of the media in increasing society's awareness of, and response to, child abuse and neglect" (Saunders and Goddard 2002 p 1). The media is powerful in terms of helping shed light on child abuse, especially the realities of sexual abuses conducted on children. It can convey powerful images to a broader spectrum of people, thus impacting more individuals that other types of platforms for preventative campaigns. One example is how "media coverage of child sexual assault has contributed to demystifying and reducing the secrecy that has characteristically surrounded its occurrence" (Saunders and Goddard 2002 p 2). Moreover, Rheingold et al. (2007) show that prevention strategies using mass media campaigns have often proven successful at changing behaviors to a certain extent. Media campaigns are a primary prevention strategy. Thus, "media campaigns have been used frequently to educate the public about various health-related issues and offer the advantage of broad-based dissemination to large audiences with minimal costs" (Rheingold et al. 2007 p 354).

NAPCAN has used traditional media campaigns in the past to help increase the power of the organization's prevention strategies. In 1995, NAPCAN launched the Use Words That Help Not Hurt campaign, which used images of positive parenting "and positive adult relationships with children and young people" blasted all over Australian televisions (Saunders and Goddard 2002 p 18). However, any campaign's success relies on its support. Without supportive services, media campaigns often fall on deaf ears. Thus, "a media campaign ca be effective, but it means nothing unless the campaign is integrated into an overall approach dealing with the various aspects of the problem being addressed" (Saunders and Goddard 2002 p 3). Advocacy organizations often operate in a multi-faceted approach, where integrated strategies may include publicly presented messages through modern media, in-home visitations, and one-on-one programs.

Traditional media campaigns directed at the prevention of child abuse have often found their successes limited by a number of circumstances. For one, traditional media campaigns are extremely expensive to conduct, especially for prolonged periods of time or by a greater number of advocacy agencies that are working under the restrained conditions of limited non-profit budgets (Saunders and Goddard 2002). Here, the research illustrates how "expensive media campaigns may be hard to justify in a political climate where limited funds and resources are provided to address children's needs" (Saunders and Goddard 2002 p 1). Many nonprofit and government agencies often have trouble footing the bill for such expensive campaigns.

Social Media Campaigns

Social media is a modern innovation that has adapted with the spread of social networking programs and technologies. It is now considered a very cost effective strategy that can be easily disseminated by the very audience it is targeting. Therefore, "social marketing campaigns are a common strategy for raising awareness about social problems such as child abuse and neglect" (Horsfall, Bromfield and McDonald 2010 p 1). The power and capabilities of social media make it a potentially successful medium to deliver messages promoting prevention and adaption of behavior to fit prevention strategies. Essentially, "social marketing involves the application of commercial marketing techniques and technologies to influence the voluntary behavior of target audiences to improve their personal welfare and that of society" (Horsfall, Bromfield and McDonald 2010 p 1). Kaplan and Haenlein (2010) show how Youtube is an incredibly popular social media platform, with over ten hours of content being uploaded onto the site each minute. Social media platforms attract a number of users that cross over major demographic boundaries, thus making it a tool that can access an incredibly vast audience quickly and efficiently. In fact, social media is a lucrative tool for nonprofit and government agencies because of its cost advantages (Kaplan and Haenlein 2010). Thackery et al. (2008) also illustrate the positive benefits of social media. Social media campaigns "directly engage consumers in the creative process by both producing and distributing information through collaborative writing, content sharing, social networking, social bookmarking, and syndication" (Thackery et al. 2008 p 338).

NAPCAN has recently adjusted its strategies to structure its dissemination of its campaigns through social media platforms. Social media campaigns have proven successful in fighting other child and adolescent issues. Its current strategy has been to employ social media campaigns directed at prevention of child abuse and neglect is essentially primary methods of prevention. These "interventions are strategies that target whole communities in order to build public resources and attend to the factors that contribute to child maltreatment" (Holzer et al. 2006 p 3). In NAPCAN's 2006 campaign, the organization was promoting parental education through social marketing. NAPCAN's campaign is directed at individuals in order to bring awareness of how their parenting can negatively impact their children.

SWOT Analysis

Strengths

One of the biggest strengths the campaign boasted was its price tag. The cost effectiveness of social media is a major strength to the overall campaign. Prevention programs are often less likely to be rigorously funded and supported by government agencies and institutions, with most funding coming only for short periods of campaign management (Tomison 1998). As a result, social media serves as an extremely beneficial platform because of its cost effective nature. The cost of the campaign is much less than other forms of media, and thus is a major strength.

Moreover, another strength is the use of a broad strategy that appeals to a wide audience. The campaign does not limit itself by isolating a very small target audience, but rather appeals to parents in general. Most social marketing campaigns either rely on a positive emotional connection to the message, or one of fear, where the individual is shocked into producing the desired change in behavior. NAPCAN's ad is clearly a shock to many parents, who might then be prompted to examine and possibly adjust their own behaviors based on what they had seen.

Weaknesses

Still, there are some issues that could be improved from an internal standpoint. There is no clear link to other supportive services -- no mentioning of other programs NAPCAN offers within the context of the actual ad that is at the center of the campaign. As such, audience members may want to know more about what they can do to change their behaviors, but are forced to go search for such information elsewhere. The Youtube page does not have clearly defined links to NAPCAN's website or any of its other programs. As such, it is not using the integrated approach that further supports social media strategies. Including more information in the side bar of the Youtube video, along with more identifiable links to NAPCAN's website and other programs would help strengthen the campaign's approach and support it with more integrated elements.