SW2C : Developing a Media Outreach Campaign that Works

Good afternoon Mr. Chairman and Members of the Committee.  My name is Dr. Ronald C. Goodstein and I am honored to be before you today.  I am also humbled to be asked to employ my experience to help our veterans get the psychological help many so desperately need.  It is encouraging to meet members of our government who are truly as concerned about our soldiers after their duty is over as they were when our soldiers were on the frontline.  This Committee has been able to put aside political differences on the battles abroad in order to concentrate on the safety and mental wellbeing of our daughters and sons upon their return from those battles.  Improving the lives of our veterans is an issue that serves no political agenda, but instead focuses upon those that need and deserve our gratitude and assistance.  Thank you for making me part of that effort.

Background

By way of background, I am an Associate Professor of Marketing at Georgetown University’s McDonough School of Business here in Washington, DC and an invited professor to several executive programs throughout the world.  My executive teaching and consulting are in the areas of “voice of customer” research and training, building and managing brand equity, ethnicity in marketing, and integrated marketing communications.  My practical approach to these areas extends beyond the “ivory tower” and has guided executives at some of the world’s leading companies including HSBC, Microsoft, Dow Chemical, IBM, CR Bard, Kimberly-Clark, Coca-Cola, and others.  For the past 16 years, I have also been active in teaching and training directors of Head Start centers nationwide in the business skills they need to run their organizations in order to improve the lives of so many of our most challenged children and their families.  Additionally, I serve as an expert witness in these domains and have done so locally with both Williams & Connolly and Gibson, Dunn, & Crutcher.  In 2004, I was honored as Washington, DC’s “Hall of Fame Marketer” by the Capital Area’s American Marketing Association chapter.

I hope that the above information attests to my ability to speak on the matters at hand, but this hearing is not about me, nor my background.  This meeting is about supporting the letter sent by Rep. Mitchell and Rep. Brown-Waite that asks “that the full Committee use its resources to explore the potential efficacy of a broadcast public awareness campaign as a means of conducting outreach to veterans at risk for suicide.”

A Call for Research

In today’s turbulent times, the success of the VA’s mental wellness programs has become less assured than in any period in recent history.  A number of factors account for this uncertainty including tight budgets, a charged political environment, media reports questioning the quality of VA care, the presence of medical professionals that specialize in the same types of issues that the VA covers, and the pervasiveness of abusive alternatives such as alcohol and drugs to counteract the mental anguish experienced by many of our vets.  Though the VA is “working hard” to keep ahead of these factors, the idea of using media outreach to assist in these efforts is a prime example of “working smarter.”  The major contention of my testimony is that instead of focusing closely on its internal resources and services, the VA can guarantee an effective media outreach program only by focusing on the needs and desires of its constituents (e.g., veterans, their families, medical professionals, etc.).  That is, while media outreach will prove an important tool for the VA, its usefulness and success depend upon the VA doing adequate due diligence to analyze and develop the right communication tools and messages to affect its target audiences.

This issue is not new for public service organizations.  It is not at all unusual for vital service organizations to utilize media outreach to improve their effectiveness.  There are a host of public service announcements (hereafter, PSAs) that attest to this fact.  What the VA needs, however, is not a PSA per se.  Instead, the VA needs an integrated communications campaign that actually encourages its target markets to seek the help many so desperately need.  This is more than just semantics.  While many famous ad agencies have stepped forward to volunteer their services for PSAs, few of these firms do the research necessary to make these PSAs effective.  For instance, the latest PSA for the Head Start organization features great creative commercials, great metaphors in print and television, and a billboard and signage campaign that is interesting and compelling.  Many of the communications in this campaign feature very cute pictures of children holding up the faces they created with paper plates, pasta, and glue.  Yet, at Head Start, children are not allowed to use food for artwork as the families Head Start serves often cannot afford to put food on their plates at all.  So, here is an example of a lot of hard work and money wasted because it appears that the advertising firm did little to research the actual audience they wished to affect.  I implore the VA to not repeat these shortcomings and to begin this media outreach effort by taking the time and effort to do the research required for success.

Customers in Focus

The Veteran’s Administration cannot simply tell its “story” to constituents hoping this will generate support and visits for mental health.  Instead, the VA must determine what its constituents need and desire and how to best position the organization to satisfy these needs and desires.  This does not mean that current VA offerings are necessarily missing the mark with their targeted audiences.  For instance, The Annals of Internal Medicine published a study several years ago that compared veterans health facilities with commercial managed-care systems in their treatment of diabetes patients. In seven out of seven measures of quality, the VA provided better care (Washington Monthly 2005).  Yet, the VA’s mental health services and performance have not received the same positive reviews and in fact have often been under scrutiny in the past decade (e.g., NAMI Report 2008).  Before beginning a multi-million dollar communications campaign, it is imperative that the VA conduct research to determine the key criteria that will drive veterans to seek the services offered by the VA and to feel good in doing so.

Customer perceptions drive markets and if it is these perceptions, whether true or false, that are leading vets in need to avoid the VA then until the root of these issues are discovered through research and the underlying causes are resolved, an ad campaign will do more to harm than to help the VA and those in need.  The VA must undertake serious marketing research to better reach each of the target audiences, understand how to fulfill the potential customers’ needs and desires, and enact strategies that evoke the desired behavior from each --- whether a Marine who now feels too macho to come in for help or a family of an amputee unaware that the VA is there for them.

To be successful, the VA must influence the behavior of a wide range of target audiences.  These audiences go far beyond the veterans in need of care, and includes their families, medical professionals, peers and colleagues, the press, and the government among others.  Thus, the VA has three major questions that must be addressed to develop a great media outreach campaign: (1) which constituencies should we target, (2) what behaviors need to be enacted by each targeted group, and (3) what tactics will best evoke/stimulate these behaviors.

SW2C

Be cautioned that the marketing process from identifying target groups to developing the proper communications tactics to enact behavior is seldom accomplished in a single step.  Constituents typically move through a continuum of responses before they are ready to perform the desired behavior.  That is, it will take more than mere ad exposure to move these veterans from avoiding the VA to attending the therapy sessions that will help improve their lives.  In general, marketing professionals address five steps that must be achieved to move constituents to the desired behavior.

In the case of the VA, the first step is to build awareness that the VA offers the counseling services needed.  While awareness is a necessity in reaching veterans, it is not sufficient to arouse the outcome sought.  The second step is to develop comprehension, meaning that each constituency needs to understand what the VA does that is important from the veteran’s perspective.  Note that this is not a simple listing of what the VA believes are its good points, but instead educating the target in how the VA can help them to realize their own goals.  The third step is image management, as the VA wants to develop a reputation of caring and partnering with each veteran in need.  The fourth step is achieving a positive attitude.  An attitude is simply a predisposition to behave in a certain way, based on how easy it is to do business with the VA.  The objective is to build a positive attitude toward the VA so that behavioral change, the final step, occurs.  To achieve any of these steps requires the VA to have deep insights into the people they wish to affect---their behaviors, motivations, influencers, attitudes and perceptions, knowledge, reading and viewing habits, etc.

I am suggesting that there is much to be done before an advertisement is even developed by the VA.  Simply stated, a PSA is not enough.  The VA already has a campaign featuring Tom Hanks and while emotionally nice, the campaign does little to resolve the psychological needs of our veterans.  It is great that there are advertisements to welcome our veterans home, which is the theme of this campaign.  To get these veterans into counseling, often for a lifetime however, will require deeper insights than those used to develop the current PSA.  In my teaching and consulting work, I use a simple formula to summarize this approach. 

VA Success = ƒ(SW2C)

SW2C stands for the two questions that veterans will ask in response to the offers and communications delivered by the VA.  So what?  Who cares?  The only answer to “who cares” is the veterans whose behavior the VA wishes to change, not the VA itself.  And the answer to “so what” is what does this particular target audience care about?  That is, what will drives their behavior and opinions and how can the VA align itself with these in order to reach its goals?  There are many specific research techniques and questions that get at these issues, and my goal today is not to get into the technical details of how to conduct the research.  I am happy to offer my assistance to the VA, its selected agency, or to any other government organization that decides to take on such a worthwhile cause.  My goal today though is to emphasize the clear, irrefutable necessity of first doing the requisite research before the first advertisement is developed and aired.  The idea of advertising and media outreach is great, but without the proper inputs into the campaign, little should be expected of the outputs.  There are literally lives at risk if the VA gets this wrong, and lives and families that will be positively changed if the VA gets this right.

Concluding Remarks

In summary, the concepts and procedures reviewed in this report suggest a commonsense approach to understanding the VA’s marketing environment and the research required to develop a successful media outreach campaign.  The key premise in all of this is a central and in-depth comprehension of the VA’s constituencies, as the customer is the central figure in marketing not the organization that wishes to serve that customer.  If the VA truly champions its customer, the veterans in need of psychological services, by understanding who they are, the influence of their family, peers and friends, their perceptions and attitudes toward getting help through the VA, why they so often turn to harmful solutions to resolve their pain, the messages that will affect them, and the media outlets that they use, then a successful media outreach program is possible.  Without such research, the answer to “SW2C” will be “not me.”  In that case the VA, veterans they wish to serve, and public in general all lose out on what should be a great opportunity.  I ask this Committee to continue its efforts in making sure that a media outreach program for the VA’s mental wellness programs becomes a reality.  Yet, I plead that this campaign be based on sound marketing research that extends beyond the walls of Congress and the Veterans Administration and into the minds, hearts, and homes of the veterans we wish to serve.  Thank you.