Discussion List for campus-based and allied personnel working to end gender-based violence on campus.

["Lauren Sogor" <>]

Hi all,
I wanted to share the response I sent to the American University
student, Robbie, regarding social marketing for SV prevention. This is a
topic that is close to my heart, given my training, so I'm always
interested in learning who else out there does work using the social
marketing model. Please feel free to contact me directly at

 if you have any comments or would like to chat more
about it (or totally disagree with my comments, below!) Thanks!
Lauren

My name is Lauren Sogor and I work at the National Sexual Violence
Resource Center. I was passed along your request through a listserv I am
part of and I wanted to respond because I focus my work on social
marketing and sexual violence. I received my MPH from GW in Health
Communication and Marketing and now work at the NSVRC as our Prevention
Campaign Specialist. Here are my thoughts on your questions:
Unfortunately, sexual violence is significantly more complicated than
many other health issues that we tend to use the social marketing model
to address. My first word of advice is to take some time and really
educate yourself and your classmates about the underlying causes of
sexual violence (e.g., a culture that devalues women and objectifies
them; a tendency to blame victims; masculinity norms; a belief that this
isn't anyone's business, etc.) The other important thing to recognize is
the difference between prevention and awareness. If your goal is to do a
campaign to raise awareness about sexual violence on campus, there are
many examples of that. However, true primary prevention (stopping it
before it happens) is a totally different monster. Quite honestly, I
don't think anyone has found a way to really address prevention well
using social marketing, but few have really tried (others may disagree
with me on this point). The only example I can think of is California
Coalition Against Sexual Assault's social marketing campaign, My
Strength (www.mystrength.org). The director of the program there, David
Lee, would be more than happy to speak with you more about it. His email
address is 
.
 To address your other questions, I don't
really think a campaign targeting victims (for reporting) or
perpetrators would be effective. Based on what I know, the use of
bystander intervention theory seems to be the direction in which the
field is heading (I can tell you more about this if you want). I would
base any social marketing campaign on messaging to students around how
to a) identify sexually violence behavior, and b) do something about it.
See Bringing in the Bystander at UNH and the Green Dot campaign at UKY
for more information. The Red Flag campaign out of Virginia has used
bystander intervention for their campaign as well, and it's fantastic.
The target audience is likely to be students who are most likely to
witness inappropriate behavior, like sororities and fraternities, or
student athletes (really, you want to get to the "party" culture on your
campus, and also students most likely to believe common rape myths).  

 

I am developing a campaign for our 2010 Sexual Assault Awareness Month
focused on college campuses and have been/will be doing a lot of
research on campaigns and audience research related to this group. I'd
be happy to share it with you as well, and please send anything you find
my way.  I'd also be happy to talk more with you about the challenges I
see in using social marketing for this topic, as well as where I see
some great strengths. Please let me know if you have any other
questions!

Lauren