What's most likely to emerge from this elaborate cultural and political screening process is something that's close but just off, it's an ad. And that's what our teen pregnancy prevention marketing armada produced, some ads. A month after the campaign I was in California for a meeting of teens. I asked a fifteen year old, a member of our multi million dollar outreach audience, what she remembered most. My belief in the little things was reaffirmed.
Social marketing is a public event, held in a public place with everybody's money.
For social marketing to be any good at all it will most likely have to cause trouble, trouble with someone's belief system, trouble with business as usual. Sometimes it does, sometimes it doesn't. But quite often the very process for getting it done makes sure that it will not. The story has an interesting aftermath. Given what I had already learned about the ability of communities to pick up the ball and run with an idea, and the governor's already demonstrated proclivity to only disapprove, it was unlikely that we would be seeing much from this community effort.