I would like to thank the Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations for inviting me here today to share my social marketing experience and thoughts on outreach to our veterans.  I have been working in the field of social marketing and communication for over 25 years. I have designed and directed outreach programs within the Federal government (National Cancer Institute and USDA) and have served as a strategic planning consultant for a number of Federal programs (HHS, NHLBI, FDA, CMS, EPA, CDC, NHTSA), foundations, nonprofit and private sector organizations.  I am not representing any organization today and my comments only reflect my views as a social marketing professional.

In preparation for today, I reviewed written testimony from the hearing held before this Subcommittee on May 22nd “Examining the Effectiveness of Veterans Benefits Administration Outreach Efforts.”  I would like to offer a social marketing perspective regarding outreach efforts by the Veterans Administration (VA) and address four areas of particular importance.  These are:

• The critical need for a strategic outreach plan and its essential components;
• The synergistic role of national and state/local outreach;
• The importance of audience research to build the plan, strengthen the VA brand, develop a message strategy and evaluate outcomes; and
• Opportunities and Challenges for outreach within the Federal government.

Sadly, it is common for government agencies to offer benefits and services to the public, but then place the burden on citizens to access them.  Many agencies fear the consequences of effective outreach in that it is believed the citizen response would overwhelm operations and resources.  Without accepted standards and approaches to outreach, that hold agencies accountable for outcomes not just outputs, it is easy to reward poor performance. 

The testimony previously offered by the AD Council and presented here today provides an insightful explanation of key marketing and outreach principles. It is important to add that these principles must be executed within the context of a research-based strategic plan that includes a commitment of sufficient resources and ongoing evaluation to ensure success.  A strategic plan establishes the goals and measurable objectives that will be achieved through outreach.  The following briefly describes elements of a strategic plan designed to serve as a foundation for effective outreach.

Strategic Plan

The strategic goals are based upon an understanding of the VA’s mission.  An analysis of current operations and their effectiveness will help establish priorities for program activities, audience segments and measurable outreach objectives.  The plan should include research-based profiles of key audience segments for the development of outreach strategies.   It should address any branding issues related to the VA’s image.  Outreach strategies would define specific audience actions, rewards for the actions, openings for reaching the audience and desired brand/image characteristics.  The plan would also lay out the integrated media outreach tactics – using multiple channels and materials to deliver campaign messages.  These should include print and broadcast public service advertising and paid advertising, media relations, electronic and interactive media, outdoor and point-of-purchase promotions, along with direct and interpersonal communication.  Potential community interventions and outreach support for state and local activities should also be addressed.  Finally, the plan would commit the requisite funding to achieve sufficient “media” weight to ensure messages break through to the target audience and specify evaluation metrics for campaign feedback.

One cannot overemphasize the importance of a strategic plan using integrated marketing communication with measurable objectives.  It is all too easy to create attractive campaigns that appear to fulfill an outreach mandate without delivering the desired outcomes.  Marketing-based outreach is not merely education or information dissemination. Social scientists and educators have acknowledged for decades that information dissemination does not lead to the needed behavior change to achieve program objectives. There is a huge gap between understanding a message and changing behavior.  “I know” does not automatically translate into “I do.” 

Much has also been written about the effectiveness of public service advertising, and one thing is clear, in most cases stand-alone advertising is insufficient for successful outreach.  Everett Rogers, renowned for his theory on Diffusions of Innovation, described conditions related to a successful outreach campaign.  He noted that it was “…financially well endowed, intensive, and multi-phased over a long time period; it used formative evaluation, utilized the mass media efficiently to initiate interpersonal communication, was very daring and original in its concepts and implementation, and was run by a very prestigious organization; and skilled people from different disciplines were integrated in a team effort. Unfortunately, all these conditions are seldom found in other media campaigns.” 

Outreach efforts in partnership with the Ad Council can provide the VA access to high quality creative and recognition among media outlets.  As air time and space devoted to public service has continued to dwindle the nature of a public service campaign has dramatically changed.  As the previous Ad Council testimony pointed out, there is a need to move away from a primary focus on advertising to an integrated marketing effort with a strong Web presence and community engagement.  In today’s technological world, a database of one’s clients is invaluable and offers many ways for direct and personalized communication.  Dollar for dollar, the efficiency and effectiveness of mass media pales in comparison to direct and tailored communication.  Previous testimony from the National Association of State Directors of Veterans Affairs calls for a mechanism for sharing information on veterans for outreach purpose.  I believe this recommendation should be strongly considered.

Role of State and Local Outreach

Understanding the roles for outreach at the Federal, State and local levels can increase the effectiveness and efficiency of a national campaign.  The fact that most states have the capability and infrastructure to leverage outreach to veterans is a significant advantage and outreach grants to state Veterans’ agencies [S. 1314] have been suggested as a means for improving communication with veterans.  However, like their private sector counterparts at the State and local level, most government and nonprofit entities do not have the marketing skill set necessary to create compelling outreach campaigns.  Even with additional funding it is cost prohibitive and inefficient to make the necessary investment to develop outreach campaigns within each state.  It is also difficult to access available marketing talent in the private sector that possesses an understanding of the special needs within the government and nonprofit sectors.

On the positive side, there is technology that allows national and international organizations to develop multi-faceted outreach campaigns at the “corporate level” that can be tailored and localized to meet specific community needs. Companies like Intel and Bank of America and nonprofits such as AARP bring highly skilled marketing and communication professionals to the task of message and materials development.  These new technological resources then allow for development of electronic material templates and the sharing of these “templates” in a manner that protects the national “brand” and ensures key messages are accurately delivered.  Partners at the state and local level then use these templates to tailor campaign materials (e.g., brochures, posters, websites, ads, exhibits, promotional items) with local information, photos, graphics and logos to share their organization’s contact information, explain state benefits, describe local resources, and highlight local events, meeting times, and so forth. 

Focusing State and local resources on the ground through community engagement and interpersonal communication offers an invaluable presence that cannot be accomplished through national level outreach.  It is recommended that State outreach grants be directed toward campaign dissemination at the local level and not message and materials development. That is, messages and materials would be developed at a national level and provided to State and local partners in electronic format that can be customized for local use and dissemination.  In this way, the dollars necessary to invest in campaign development are available for essential audience research, message creation, creative execution, materials testing and production.  Input from state entities can be leveraged across states and the VA can avoid the cost and inefficiencies resulting from the creation of individual state campaigns. This would maximize the incredible contribution that can only be made at the local level through interpersonal contact such as that provided by the state Veterans agencies and County Veteran Service Officers.   

It is reasonable to assume that a successful outreach campaign should cost a fraction of what the Department of Defense spends on recruitment but only if an ongoing integrated marketing effort implemented at the national, State and local level is pursued.

Audience Research

Like strategic planning, the role of audience research cannot be over-emphasized.  It is critical to understand the perceptions and attitudes of different segments of veterans and their families for planning and developing messages.  This requires appropriately designed audience research.  Likewise, materials testing must be an integral part of any communication effort.  What can appear to be a simple letter from the VA is an integrated part of outreach and brand building and should be tested among audience members to ensure clarity, believability and desired tone.

Audience research must be used clarify how to position outreach on benefits among other VA efforts such as:

• Veterans Assistance at Discharge (VADS) program (where the VA generates the mailing of a “Welcome Home Package” that includes a letter from the Secretary, VA Pamphlet 21-00-1, A Summary of VA Benefits, and VA Form 21-0501, Veterans Benefits Timetable with a follow-up letter mailed six months later)
• Benefits Delivery at Discharge (BDD) program and
• Coming Home to Work (an early outreach effort with special emphasis on OEF/OIF service members at military treatment facilities who are pending medical separation from active duty).

These initiatives may be seen as very distinct programs from the agency’s point-of-view, but to the consumer they may be an amalgamation of the “VA”.

There is a growing awareness of the need to seek greater consumer input into government outreach campaigns.  However, it is often difficult to conduct such studies for outreach purposes, particularly quantitative studies.  In the private sector, commercial research entities conduct large surveys annually on media habits, lifestyles, and buying behaviors that can be purchased and analyzed by other companies for marketing and communication purposes.  Unfortunately these surveys rarely include the questions important to government programs.  On the other hand, government sponsored surveys tend not to collect data on essential marketing variables, like media habits, that would be helpful to marketing initiatives. 

In addition it should be noted that there are also ways to connect VA data to commercial marketing databases (e.g., geo-demographic audience data) that would be useful for planning and implementing targeted outreach to veterans.  There is an opportunity to greatly increase the impact of outreach efforts by taking advantage of the available data the government has on its veterans and their potential benefits.  Legislative support to connect public and private sector databases to better serve veterans while maintaining privacy would assist VA access to this cost effective process.

The requirement that the VA conduct a survey (P.L. 108-454) (including statistically valid samples of:  (1) World War II veterans; (2) Korean conflict era veterans; (3) Vietnam era veterans; (4) Persian Gulf era veterans; (5) active-duty service members; (6) National Guard and Reserve members activated under title 10, United States Code; and, (7) family members and survivors) is a significant opportunity to obtain missing audience information on veteran segments to build targeted and compelling outreach. 

The VA is being directed to use the results of the survey to determine the collective awareness of benefits and services available to those groups under laws administered by the Secretary.  However, “awareness” is not the most appropriate marker to build or evaluate outreach success.  Research has shown that “increasing audience awareness” alone rarely leads to desired behavior change.  Effective outreach must purposely promote very specific actions and useful survey research should develop measures for assessing these actions.  It would be better for legislation to require the agency to specify program objectives and audience behaviors linked to achieving those objectives (e.g., contacting the VA).  Research measures that assess and track these variables across audience segments should then be required and used for accountability rather than audience awareness.

In the private sector, survey research is critical for targeting audiences, identifying appropriate communication channels and most importantly evaluating the effectiveness of campaigns.  Time sensitive tracking research can be done inexpensively and should be a routine part of any outreach campaign. The Institute of Medicine’s report on Speaking of Health strongly recommended that the OMB provide to health agencies a blanket approval for audience surveys necessary to design and evaluate public outreach. Hopefully the VA could be granted similar authority.

To ensure audience input into outreach campaigns Congress should not only ask agencies for evidence that it was conducted, but should also ask agencies to demonstrate how the agency responded to audience wants and needs and results from materials testing.  This would address agencies under time constraints that conduct consumer research after the fact only to ensure Congressional research mandates are met. 

Finally, while the private and public sectors reflect two different environments, research and experience have long shown that marketing is a discipline that can make significant contributions to both.  The basic marketing fundamentals do not change:

• The audience must be the driving focus as determined by audience research;
• A “marketing exchange” must be achieved where the benefit to the audience exceeds the cost;
• Identifiable behaviors or outcomes are targeted for change; and
• A brand must be established with audience appeal and relevance. 

Opportunities and Challenges for Government Outreach

Marketing and audience research can improve the VA’s ability to look at the world from the perspective of a veteran and his or her family.  By translating that perspective into outreach that is strategic and effective, the VA can support the veteran’s ability to act in his or her own best interest.

Marketing like other disciplines (e.g., accounting, program management) supports programmatic needs --- increasing the likelihood that an agency’s goals and outreach objectives are met.  But marketing does not specify what an agency’s goals should be.  That requires a research base along with policy formulation.  Once policymakers specify “what” should happen, marketing can then determine how to achieve it. Marketing does not offer a “magic bullet” for outreach – however its systematic, research-based application will provide strategies more likely to move such efforts toward successfully accomplishing agency goals.   

It should be recognized that there are cultural differences between private sector marketing organizations and government program that must be addressed.  The requirements of marketing to generate messages that are attention-getting, relevant to the audience and promote specific actions that promise appealing but potentially subjective rewards—can be troubling within any government context.  Philosophical differences become apparent exist over the government’s role when the marketing process is put into place.  Should government try to influence behavior?   To what degree should the government target audience segments versus “serving everyone?”  Does a government agency have a responsibility to ensure that messages reach and are understood by the audience? There is also confusion over the need for outreach messages to reproduce statutory or expert language or be consistent across audience segments regardless of differing audience needs.

The clearance process can also be a major hurdle to a consumer-oriented outreach program.  In the private sector the requirements for approval focus on objective audience research measures of clarity, appeal, believability and relevance.  As public messages move through the government clearance process, approval is more likely to depend upon internal criteria, such as appeal to the experts; a belief regarding what is or isn’t allowed; political risk and desire for the agency to receive credit.  

While it is not expected that the public sector will change its culture in the near term, one way successful endeavors balance the need to appeal to the audience within government realities is through public/private partnerships. Involving outside organizations from different sectors around a social issue allows strengths and weakness of each to come into play.  There are a number of examples of how differences in types of resources, skill sets, constituencies and perspectives have complemented each other building stronger and more lasting outreach efforts.

Conclusions

So it is not a question of whether or not the marketing discipline can improve the effectiveness of government programs and outreach.  One needs only to look at its application and effects in political campaigns and military recruitment.  Given its demonstrated contribution, the more important question is how to better integrate the marketing discipline within a government context.  We must continue to ensure that the needs and wants of the audience are heard even when they appear to be in conflict with today’s political considerations. 

In summary, the development of a strategic plan that specifies outreach objectives within a broader programmatic frame is essential. The plan must be based upon research and analysis of the role outreach should play to achieve policy goals.  Primary audience research, particularly survey research, is a prerequisite for effective outreach and must be readily available for campaign managers.  Government databases and other resources also should be tapped for planning and implementation of VA’s outreach efforts.  It is recommended that the outreach campaign be designed at a national level, and the valuable contribution of the State and local infrastructure, including Veterans agencies and County Veteran Service Officers, be leveraged through outreach grants focused on implementation and dissemination, particularly around community engagement and interpersonal communication.  This could be greatly enhanced through technology allowing easy local customization and the sharing of information on veterans with local agencies.   Government outreach must then be assessed based upon outcomes and not output.  This requires permission and support for ongoing quantitative survey research designed to be timely and cost efficient.  Finally, public/private partnerships are strongly encouraged to complement the government’s outreach efforts.