Co-designing social marketing programs with “bottom of the pyramid” citizens

Abstract

The significant challenges associated with adapting and delivering the co-design process with Bottom of the Pyramid (BoP) citizens are considered in this article, which tests a new “Empathy Building” step within the Trischler et al. seven-step co-design process model. A sequential, three-study mixed-method research design was applied to co-design a social marketing program with BoP citizens and experts, focusing on the problem of school dropout in a community in South Africa. Study 1 undertook the empathy-building step of the co-design process, which involved a 4-month ethnography in a community in South Africa. This study informed several subsequent co-design steps, including resourcing, planning, recruiting, and sensitizing. Study 2 engaged 38 participants (schoolchildren and parents) in a co-design session, challenging them to create a social marketing program for them and people like them. Study 3 delivered an evaluation session with seven key experts. This article contributes to understanding by offering a process to demonstrate how three studies used the (enhanced) co-design framework to provide a solution for a social issue, namely, prevention of school dropout. Finally, this article outlines how co-design can overcome challenges faced to work with BoP citizens through the addition of ethnography and involvement of experts at the fuzzy back-end of the co-design process to examine program implementation feasibility.

A review of social marketing interventions in low- and middle-income countries (2010–2019)

“…The handwashing intervention was able to address social norms among the target audience through positioning handwashing as a behaviour responsible mothers perform (Langford and Panter-Brick, 2013). A more recent example is a study by Schmidtke et al (2020) who used ethnography to build empathy to co-design a social marketing programme with citizens from a low-income community in South Africa to address school dropout. Hence, evidence is emerging showing that social marketing interventions which incorporate ethnography may be able to identify novel insights needed to address complex social and health issues associated with the achievement of the SDGs.…”

Co-creating Virtual Reality Interventions for Alcohol Prevention: Living Lab vs. Co-design

“…It is important to note that the co-design process at this point has not yet commenced a more detailed prototype development which is significantly different from the Living Lab process. Reflecting completes the analysis of all obtained data from the co-design workshops which often features a mix of qualitative and quantitative data ( 28 , 29 ) and more recently stakeholder input to assess feasibility of user generated ideas ( 12 ). These learnings can then be derived into key insights that shape the direction of the intervention development while carefully gauging feasibility, project team capacity, and target audience wants and needs ( 4 , 30 ).…”

“…Finally, and only at the building for change step, the process asks for the development of prototypes which should be based on the insights generated through the six previous steps. It is also important to note that this is a newer and more recent addition to co-design process ( 4 ), where stakeholder input is sought to assess feasibility of user generated ideas ( 12 ). Moving forward, working closely with experts, stakeholders and end-users to build concrete prototypes through fast moving iteration cycles is recommended as an addition to existing co-design processes to ensure that prototypes get tested to compare and contrast user acceptance of generated solutions.…”

“…Co-designed programs have demonstrated effectiveness across health ( 10 ) and environmental issues ( 1 ) and thus demonstrated value for researchers, users and society at large ( 11 ). More recently, the need to include wider stakeholder groups during the intervention design process has been identified ( 4 ) and processes seeking to involve stakeholders within the co-design process to ensure that user solutions identified are feasible have emerged ( 12 ). Co-design processes ensure that emphasis is placed on empowering participants and that all solutions emerging from co-design are user centered and stakeholder supported.…”

“…Co-design processes ensure that emphasis is placed on empowering participants and that all solutions emerging from co-design are user centered and stakeholder supported. Recent co-design process models ( 4 , 12 ) have begun to articulate the necessity to think beyond ideation and gauge how user generated ideas can be translated into effective intervention programs that are endorsed by end-users and stakeholder groups.…”