This post is part of a blog series focusing on successful health marketing campaigns using multiple communications disciplines and media channels. If you have a campaign we should highlight, let us know.
I subscribe to the CDC’s “health tips” text messages and recently received a message reminding me to get enough sleep. Specifically it said: Get plenty of sleep to stay healthy. Call CDC 800-232-4636 http://m.cdc.gov for more info. Great use of 160 characters I thought.
I’m in graduate school so getting enough sleep is out. I decided I would do the next best thing (in my mind) and eat healthy. This reminded me of the 5 A Day for Better Health campaign. I thought to myself, of all the health campaigns, why do I remember this one? I turned to the literature to find out.
I found a chapter about the campaign in the 1995 book Designing Health Messages: Approaches from Communication Theory and Public Health Practice. The chapter looks at the campaign from an advertising theory perspective and analyzes the anatomy of the message.
The authors ask:
- What is the purpose?
- Who is the target?
- What is the promise?
- What is the support?
- What are the communication tools?
I thought back to campaigns I’ve worked on or read about. I realize I’ve spent more time thinking about my health problem and my target audience (BTW, see this great post about the meaning of audiences from On Social Marketing & Social Change) than anything else.
Promise and support are key. They are also where we miss the mark sometimes in public health. In my last post I shared my thoughts on the pitfalls of trying to sell health to people who don’t have health as a core value. Vitality and youth are core values. Pepsi found a way to promise those values to people and support that promise with visuals and lyrical aids. Pepsi is selling caffeinated high fructose corn syrup water to people promising that they will be forever young.
If Pepsi can sell their colored sugar water, we can sell health. We just need to package it in a way that people want to buy it.
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