MAENDELEO, Kenya — Veronica Njeri, 45, says she has “never healed” since losing two of her six children to malaria 20 years ago, and she still feels vulnerable. While her oldest are adults or teenagers, and have presumably built up immunity to the disease, she worries about her youngest, Anthony, who is 4.
Would be interested to know what folks thought of social marketing vs. free nets...
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Great article. Things like these are difficult to judge. It is true that we relate cost to value; however, there are opportunity costs to not having the nets so this is not entirely a monetary issue. I may be wrong but it seems we have not done much research on the population itself. How it makes decision at the margin, what incentives or disincentives they are facing...this could really but perspective on the issue.
Dina- really great article. As a former employee of a social marketing firm, I of course feel compelled to reply! ☺ I am actually pro social marketing- particularly when agencies work through local markets to supply goods, when overhead and consultant costs are kept low and when product revenues are used to cover local salaries and public awareness campaigns.
One of the primary reasons why I’m pro social marketing is that donors are fickle and what they’ll support for free distribution today is not necessarily what they supported 5 years ago or what they will support 5 years in the future. Social marketing gives development orgs a small stream of revenue that they can use to pay local salaries and support public awareness programs that aim at “normalizing” use of a product.
In terms of malaria nets- the cost of insecticide treated nets is still pretty high. I think this is in part b/c there are only two companies that produce WHO approved nets, and despite increases in plant production, they are still struggling to meet the surge in donor/gov demand. In my experience at PSI, several donors told us that they would ONLY pay for the nets and not for any distribution or program costs (not just talking about marketing or advertising, but local staff salaries, warehouse costs and local transportation). As a result, in many countries, PSI sold nets for $1 or less and fed the revenues back into their programs- mostly to cover local staff costs. Revenue as such never pays for HQ salaries and very rarely covers short-term consultant costs.
That said, there are definite drawbacks to social marketing. One that the article pointed out is the concern that only the richest of the poor benefit, and the most vulnerable go unprotected. In the case of malaria nets, I think social marketing should probably complement targeted free distribution to pregnant women and mother’s of children under 5.
Dina- really great article. As a former employee of a social marketing firm, I of course feel compelled to reply! ☺ I am actually pro social marketing- particularly when agencies work through local markets to supply goods, when overhead and consultant costs are kept low and when product revenues are used to cover local salaries and public awareness campaigns.
One of the primary reasons why I’m pro social marketing is that donors are fickle and what they’ll support for free distribution today is not necessarily what they supported 5 years ago or what they will support 5 years in the future. Social marketing gives development orgs a small stream of revenue that they can use to pay local salaries and support public awareness programs that aim at “normalizing” use of a product.
In terms of malaria nets- the cost of insecticide treated nets is still pretty high. I think this is in part b/c there are only two companies that produce WHO approved nets, and despite increases in plant production, they are still struggling to meet the surge in donor/gov demand. In my experience at PSI, several donors told us that they would ONLY pay for the nets and not for any distribution or program costs (not just talking about marketing or advertising, but local staff salaries, warehouse costs and local transportation). As a result, in many countries, PSI sold nets for $1 or less and fed the revenues back into their programs- mostly to cover local staff costs. Revenue as such never pays for HQ salaries and very rarely covers short-term consultant costs.
That said, there are definite drawbacks to social marketing. One that the article pointed out is the concern that only the richest of the poor benefit, and the most vulnerable go unprotected. In the case of malaria nets, I think social marketing should probably complement targeted free distribution to pregnant women and mother’s of children under 5.
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