This is the second post in an occasional series: "Way Cool Resources." I use these posts to highlight resources for doing social marketing that I have found to be especially helpful, creative and/or strongly evidenced based--in a word: "Way Cool!" (Okay, two words...)
CDCynergy-Social Marketing Edition ("CDCynergy-Soc" or "Cynergy-Soc" for short) is a CD ROM based planning tool to help you develop, implement and evaluate best practice social marketing plans. The CD ROM has over 700 resources, including a tutorial to take you through the social marketing planning process, four best practice case studies, numerous templates, guidelines and examples in a PDF format, relevant journal articles saved as PDFs, video consultants who provide the art as well as the science of social marketing, even a "Social Marketing 101" slide show. As you make decisions about your plan, you can 
save them to your desktop in one of two pre-formated Word documents. It is like having your own, private social marketing consultant sitting on your desk!
Development.Cynergy-Soc was developed jointly by the Turning Point Social Marketing National Excellence Collaborative (SMNEC)-described in yesterday's post, the Academy for Educational Development(AED) and the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Cynergy-Soc is based on the CDC's series of CD ROMs for conducting best practice health communication efforts. The partner organizations utilized the social marketing process to create Cynergy-Soc. First, twelve social marketing practitioners reviewed the communications version of CDCynergy to determine if a social marketing version could be created, using the original as a model. SMNEC then conducted audience research with over 400 people nationally, representing public health stakeholders and potential users, to determine how they used social marketing and the desired characteristics of a planning tool. Content. AED and the collaborative reviewed existing models of social marketing to synthesize a logic model. AED wrote the content, developed case studies and identified other "on-board" resources. Technology. The Oak Ridge Institute for Science and Education (ORISE), under contract with CDC, modified the computer architecture of the communication version of CDCynergy, and added the social marketing content. Product Testing. The collaborative alpha-tested the new version with state and local public health personnel, and community based organizations, gathered by the Minnesota Social Marketing Collaborative.
Roll-Out. The collaborative rolled out the first edition of CDCynergy-Soc in August 2003 to Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Turning Point grantee states, through APHA, the Georgetown Social Marketing List serve, and social marketing conferences in the in US and Canada. The collaborative also created a media-on-demand web site where users can order a copy of the CD. Audience research revealed that users would welcome support, in order to get the most out of the CD. Therefore, the collaborative, in conjunction with AED and CDC, developed a user training, as well as a train-the-trainer training to insure continued dissemination of the user training. Staff delivered multiple trainings to Turning Point states and regionally in the US, and at APHA and at the University of South Florida's Social Marketing in Public Health Conference. The collaborative also created three publications keyed to the phases and steps of CDCynergy-Soc.
Monitoring and Revision. Being good social marketers, the partners monitored use of, and reaction to, CDCynergy-Soc, through on-going anecdotal feedback for three years, and through a formal survey of over 800 users in 2006. Based on this information, the partners made changes to content and added navigational and learning aids. They also update the trainings.
Roll-Out of the Version II. The collaborative rolled out CDCynergy-Social Marketing Edition, Version II in the summer of 2006, through the same venues as version one. To date more than 10,500 copies have been distributed in 34 countries and in all 50 states and the District of Columbia in the US! Users have utilized CDCynergy-Soc for program planning, grant writing and academic social marketing courses
Want your own copy of CDCynergy-Soc?! You can order it from the media-on-demand web site. You can also access the on-line version, and save resource documents and your plan to your own computer. What if I have a Mac? CDCynergy-Soc was quality controlled tested only on a PC. Therefore, the creators can only vouch for its stability on a PC platform. However, I know of several Mac users who regularly use CDCynergy-Soc without problems!
The target audience for CDCynergy-Soc are individuals and organizations that are already knowledgeable about social marketing. It can also be helpful for users to have had an 
orientation to Cynergy-Soc, in order to make best use of the 700+ resources and planning aids. If you want information on training and orientation opportunities, please contact me at sm1guru@yahoo.com!
