Abstract
At the beginning of 2016, the World Health Organization (WHO) declared the infection caused by Zika virus a global health emergency, what triggered alarms worldwide. Social marketing campaigns had a fundamental role to prevent transmission, raise awareness, and involve citizens in solving the problem.
In this paper, the application of social marketing in the case of this disease will be studied in depth. In order to do so, an exploratory study has been conducted. Images from 47 campaigns launched in 19 countries of the American continent have been analyzed.
These campaigns are characterized by being designed mainly with illustrative pictures and simple texts so as to reach the whole population. The message focuses on providing information about the Zika virus and on catching the attention of all the population in order to prevent the disease. Different tones have been used: imperative, informative, interrogative, and alarming (causing fear). All kinds of media were used to broadcast the message: radio, TV, the press, billboards, the Internet (websites, YouTube, social networks such as Facebook or Twitter), and different apps.
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- 1.
This virus was discovered in 1947 during surveillance studies of jungle yellow fever in rhesus monkeys in the Zika forest, in Uganda (Red Nacional de Vigilancia Epidemiologica 2016).
- 2.
For example, in Brazil, according to the data provided by the Ministry of Health (Secretaria de Vigilancia em Saude – Ministerio da Saude 2018), it has gone from 216,207 probable cases of Zika virus disease registered in 2016 to 17,594 probable cases in 2017. In the first five months of 2018, 2234 probable cases had been registered, of which only 677 had been subsequently confirmed.
- 3.
Between 2 and 7 days (De Benito 2016)
- 4.
Radio was the main mean chosen by UNESCO, IFRC, and WHO to develop the joint Zika virus prevention campaign in Latin America and the Caribbean, in 2016 (because of the proximity to the population and its low cost). International networks and broadcasting organizations (20,000 radio stations) transmitted informative and preventive spots against the spread of the virus in four languages of the region (English, French, Portuguese, and Spanish).
- 5.
For example, in Brazil: 220,000 members of the Army, the Navy, and the Air Force visited houses in 350 Brazilian cities to explain to the population how to stop mosquito breeding (Martin and De Oliveira 2016).
- 6.
The fall in the birth rate presents differences according to the socioeconomic level.
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Galan-Ladero, M.M., Galan-Ladero, M.A. (2019). The Importance of Social Marketing in Global Health Emergencies: The Case of Zika Virus Infection. In: Galan-Ladero, M.M., Alves, H.M. (eds) Case Studies on Social Marketing. Management for Professionals. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-04843-3_7
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-04843-3_7
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