Selling good habits

When I used to sit at the cross-roads in Ndende and hawk condoms, I was proud of myself for using advertising for good, not evil. This New York Times article gets at a lot of the things we try to do in our job. I often wish we were more innovative in this type of approach - for example, a lot of people don't use mosquito nets to prevent malaria, they use them to get a good night's sleep free from buzzing and biting insects (of all kinds). Yet a lot of our behavior change messages still sell malaria prevention as a main motivator of net use. While most of us at my organization and at others doing similar work know (thanks to advertising and research) that formative research and understanding your audience is crucial to designing effective campaigns, this part of the process also remains underbudgeted.

Thanks to Jen, whose blog is great, for the link!