In the last couple of years, gift cards have been a widely used incentive in public service campaigns, offered in exchange for behaviors ranging from donating blood to turning in guns (no questions asked) to the police. So, why not to fight HIV/AIDS?
With the rate of new cases of HIV infection jumping sharply in young gay men in the last few years, the Associated Press is reporting that the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has committed $1.5 million to roll out a program to provide to use influencer marketing—a type of social networking—to increase awareness of the need to practice safe sex.
Based on a successful program in North Carolina, the CDC will ask popular, influential men in gay communities to hand out informational material and promote safe sex in nightclubs. Those influencers will receive gift cards as an incentive to take on the task.
Influencer marketing has been popularized in a number of business and general books, including Malcolm Gladwell's The Tipping Point, published in 2000. The idea is, essentially, the their are particularly popular people who can and do set wider trends, and that by influencing them, marketers can reach a much larger audience very effectively.
RSS
