Mediaboss Marketing

WASHINGTON--(BUSINESS WIRE)--

Social media campaigns are proving vital in reaching disparate populations to promote family planning and safe sex in developing countries according to DKT International. Social media has become an integral weapon in the U.S. marketers arsenal and the Washington, D.C.-based social marketing organization is successfully leveraging these powerful new tools for social change in international family planning.

DKT focuses on family planning and HIV/AIDS prevention and is no stranger to employing innovative and groundbreaking tactics to reach communities in Africa, Asia and Latin America. A family planning Facebook page in Mozambique reaches 9,500 Mozambicans and is a key educational and promotional tool to reach women. In part as a result, DKT provided family planning to more than 97,000 couples in 2011, an increase of a marked 153%. In Ethiopia, online videos and TV commercials feature footage of native tribes interacting with condomstruly revolutionary.

In Brazil, the Condom Tester Program invites Prudence condom users via Facebook ads, blogs, mens magazine ads and Google ads to submit sexual adventure tales for the opportunity to win a year of free condoms. In addition to submitting his story, the condom tester is encouraged to pin where the adventure took place and share the story on social networks including Facebook. Nearing the end of its fourth season, the 2012 contest has sparked 88,000 website visits and 2,400 stories submitted from countries around the world including the U.S., Canada, Mxico, Uruguay, Argentina, South Africa, Japan and many European nations.

DKT Turkey, a commercial company established to engage the private sector in increased condom use, created a new website, Facebook page, Google Adwords, e-newsletter, viral marketing, banner advertisements and advertisements on a Turkish gay and lesbian rights organization website to promote DKTs own brand of Fiesta condoms. Fiesta condoms experienced twice the growth of a lower-priced condom brand not bolstered by digital media and reported an above-average proportion of online condom sales.

DKT has been effective in reaching people through social media in the Philippines, Brazil, Indonesia, Vietnam, Ethiopia, Mozambique, and Turkey to promote safer sex and family planning on a significant scale. In Turkey specifically, a modest investment of $50,000 in social media programming helped sell 350,000 condoms, says Chris Purdy, Executive Vice President ofDKT International. With the growing availability and use of the internet and social media globally, our experience demonstrates that family planning organizations might consider incorporating these technologies into their educational, outreach and marketing programs.

Since 1989, DKT International has provided safe and affordable options for family planning and HIV prevention through social marketing and serves more than 22 million couples annually, establishing it as the largest private provider of family planning products and services in the developing world. http://www.dktinternational.org

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Social Media Sells Safe Sex and Family Planning