By Nancy Lee

Recently I attended a TEDx (see sidebar) event and was inspired by a talk that Jane Fonda gave. She calls the last three decades of our lives “The Third Act,” and says it’s our “Prime Time.”

She encouraged us to see this time as a staircase—“the upper ascension of the human spirit, not a downward sloping curve.” She sees aging as potential, not pathology. And she concluded by asking us “How are you going to use this time?” I’d like to share my plan for the Third Act of my career in social marketing.

I see a world where people are healthy and safe, financially secure, contributing to their communities and protecting the environment. Since 1993, I’ve been studying, practicing, teaching, speaking and writing about social marketing as a strategy to help make this vision a real.

This discipline was distinguished 40 years ago by Philip Kotler as a process that uses traditional marketing principles and techniques to influence public behaviors “for good.” He launched it. It’s my passion now to put it and keep it in orbit and I have three strategies.

First, I will work with colleges and university accrediting programs to require a course in social marketing for degrees in public health, public administration, environmental studies, medicine and nursing.

These professionals are in positions, some on a daily basis, where influencing public behaviors is key to their job performance and success with their publics and patients. I can’t imagine getting my business degree without a marketing course. How can these professionals succeed well without one too?

I will begin with our very own Masters in Public Health program at the UW and will use this experience to develop a national strategy.

Second, I will help develop certificate programs for those professionals in the field who are past the opportunity to have had a course during their degree program. This year I will begin this at the University of Washington’s Evans School. Through a grant from the Puget Sound Partnership, we will be training 125 water quality program managers.

At the successful completion of their course, they will receive a certificate of completion from the University. I’m hoping to do the same for pediatricians, through the American Academy of Pediatrics. Reducing childhood obesity and increasing immunization rates are issues this model can support.

And, also working through the Evans School, I want to develop a “brown bag” session for legislators in Olympia on social marketing—what it is, how it can help them influence desired public behaviors and why it’s a smart investment of resources.

Third, I will help to create a Puget Sound Chapter of the recently formed International Social Marketing Association, similar to the Puget Sound Chapter of the American Marketing Association. A core group of us already are working on a strategic plan, hoping to launch the chapter with our own TEDx event, one that will inspire others through streaming presentations of social marketing success stories.

One behavior change strategy that impresses me the most is the power of making a public commitment. Research says that if you pledge to do something, it can increase the chances by at least 25% that you will follow through. If you make this commitment public, it can increase it by as much as 50%.

So, with this article, you have my commitment to complete these three strategies as part of my “Third Act.” Please feel free to “poke” me on Facebook, LinkedIn or wherever we might meet and ask if I’m on  track—and also tell me how you‘re doing on your Third Act.

•

Nancy Lee is president of Social Marketing Services, Inc. and an adjunct faculty at the University of Washington and the University of South Florida. She has co-authored eight books with Philip Kotler.