SENSEI masterful health communications

Gillian Murphy
Consultant, Social Marketing

What is your role at SENSEI?
I am developing SENSEI’s Social Marketing practice, which we started on January 31, 2005.

How is Social Marketing different from SENSEI's other work?
Social Marketing’s ultimate goal is to promote a positive behavior change, or a shift in thinking about a health issue, not the sale of a particular product. The end goal is different. With Social Marketing, the health need is what drives the campaign or the communication -- the need is what initiates the campaign and how it’s measured. We may use similar techniques and tactics, but the impetus is coming from a different place.

What led you to Social Marketing?
As a freelance writer, I worked with many organizations that were doing really great, progressive, necessary work, but at the end of the day, they only had the capacity to reach a very limited group of people. I got really frustrated with that. I would be talking at dinner with friends about the discharge planning work Health Link did at Riker’s, for example, and they would be fascinated or horrified. Why didn’t everyone know about how necessary these programs were? Whatever innovative practice or model or idea my clients had come up with, people needed to know about it more broadly.

What’s holding organizations back from pursuing Social Marketing?
When you’re in it, it’s hard to get out of it enough to do the broader work. Whether it’s preventing child sexual abuse or HIV prevention, these issues are humongous. When you are working on the ground day-to-day, trying to change something that is an inherent part of the way our systems and our environment work, you don’t have the time to come up for air, much less than to think about how to link to media or how to promote and increase visibility for your program; you’re dealing with the overwhelming demands and needs that take place every day. That’s where consultants and agencies come in, so that the people who are working on the ground don’t have to be burdened with that as well.

Also, people think they have to have a lot of money to do it. But they don’t. They just need to see it as a priority.

What do you think is your unique contribution to this field?
I think that I’m very good at breaking relatively complicated concepts into easy-to-understand language. In the back of my head, I always have a reader who is not an academic, not in this field. I’m writing to the beautician or transit authority worker. Public health people often get really wrapped up in our own jargon and acronyms and lose sight of our audience.

What is your favorite thing about yourself?
I believe that there is such a thing as truth. It is extremely important to me to reveal the truth.

What did you want to be when you grew up?
I wanted to be a photojournalist. I wanted to work for National Geographic and be on the front lines taking photos and writing.

What are three things you could not live without?
My family, writing and good, strong coffee.