Social Marketing

The issue of obesity has been one that has affected a huge majority of America’s population. America’s population is known as one of the highly obese population in the world. As usual, some of the lifestyles adopted by the America population highly contribute to their health status. For long, obesity has been an epidemic and has also been a high health risk factors for other diseases such as high blood pressure, diabetes among others (Walker et al., 2016). Various states in America face different levels of obesity in their population. In response, there have been many social marketing campaigns designed to deal with this issue (Scarapicchia et al., 2015). This paper purposes to consider two campaigns, one conducted in Michigan and the other was a nationwide social marketing campaign concerning the issue of obesity in the American population.

According to CDC, Michigan is listed as one of the states that have the highest number of obese people in the whole of America. In specific estimates, Michigan ranks at number five as the heaviest state in the United States. In view of this, the Michigan Department of Health and Human Services saw it necessary to respond appropriately to the growing epidemic which was costing people significant health bills due to their unhealthy condition of obesity (Brogan & Partners, 2018). The result of Michigan is one of the heaviest states is that is costs the state billions of dollars in medical care annually. Therefore, a social marketing campaign was designed to help make people more aware of the effects of obesity and the different ways one can prevent becoming obese.

The health campaign was dubbed MI Healthier tomorrow. The social marketing campaign was focused on engaging with various brands which were well known by the target population. The brand integration was implemented through various channels. In addition to that, the social marketing campaign was promoted through various media channels such as radio, television as well as Internet-based media such as a microsite that was designed for interaction with the target population (Brogan & Partners, 2018). There were many things which were included in the social marketing campaign which are perceived to have cost a good amount of money. These things include shopping guides, coupons, helpful kits and fee gifts. All these items were bought and given to the population in Michigan which pledged to follow certain lifestyle rules to enable them to lead better and healthier lives.

The social marketing campaign also involved the use of social media platforms such as Facebook. This enabled the population in Michigan to log on to Facebook and interact with the campaign online through their mobile and computing devices. There was a specific Facebook page that was set up for the purposes of the social marketing campaign in Michigan. The purpose of the social media page was to provide the population with a platform where they can easily access information of how to go about changing their lifestyles for a better tomorrow (Brogan & Partners, 2018). This also enabled them access contact information to speak to various individuals who were involved in the campaign to ask any pressing questions concerning the health promotion campaign.

The social marketing campaign was further promoted by various commercial brands including McDonald’s, Compuware, the Michigan Association of Broadcasters, Quicken Loans, William Beaumont Hospital and Huntington Bank (Brogan & Partners, 2018). All these commercial brands supported the campaign in one way or another either through financial support or brand integration which increased the promotion of the campaign to the Michigan population to a whole new level.

The second social marketing campaign was the Adult Obesity Prevention Campaign. The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services was concerned with the abundance of materials, messages, and initiatives that address the issue of obesity in that they would often leave the consumers of such information overwhelmed and fail to tackle the issue of obesity in the proper manner (Ogilvy Washington, 2018). As such, there was a need for a whole new approach which would portray the effects of obesity practically and get people moving towards adopting healthier lifestyles. The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services hired Ogilvy Washington Studio to design a campaign that would properly address the issue of obesity by making people more aware of the risks of obesity and the benefits of preventing it (Ogilvy Washington, 2018). As such, the designed social marketing campaign was simple and straight to the point. The campaign, known as Adult Obesity prevention campaign, had a slogan that stated; “Obesity happens one pound at a time” (Ogilvy Washington, 2018). The basic purpose of this new approach was to cover new territory that had never before been envisioned in social marketing campaigns that focused on public health.

The approach used was practical in nature and was targeted at specific people that would often be located around parks. The campaign personnel would ask people to wear sacks filled with sand and walk in them to feel the effect of the additional pounds on their body. As such, most people, felt the effects of extra weight such as the pain in their joints and how tired they felt just after a few minutes of walking in the sandbags (Ogilvy Washington, 2018). This became a powerful wake-up call to most people. The campaign was majorly promoted through appearances of significant campaign personnel on radio and television interviews talking about the risks of weight gain (Ogilvy Washington, 2018). The approach of the campaign was majorly aimed at depicting the personal risk of being overweight.

Comparing the two campaign will regard the 4 Ps of marketing which includes, Price, Place, Promotion and Product (Truong, 2014). The product is considered in this case to be the materials used in creating different materials used in facilitating the social marketing campaigns. The campaign conducted in Michigan was more focused on passing on of information through posters, banners, billboards, Facebook posts among other things. The difference with the nationwide campaign was that the latter did not use many materials in facilitating awareness as it was done practically and demonstrated for the people to see in leisure parks. Location was different is size as MI healthier tomorrow was focused on the population in the state of Michigan while the Adult Obesity Prevention campaign was focused on the whole of the United States. In both cases, promotion included various media channels.

However, MI Healthier Tomorrow campaign focused more on promotion through brand integration with commercial brands such as McDonald and Huntington Bank. The latter did not focus on such brand integration for the purposes of the campaign. Price is well differentiated in both cases as one was based on statewide awareness while the other on countrywide. However, the MI Healthier Tomorrow gave away some of the aiding material such as help kits, coupons, shopping guides among other information providing materials. Nonetheless, the Adult Obesity Prevention campaign still spent a staggering amount of money with the value of the Ad coming close to $12.6 million spent in the whole country (Ogilvy Washington, 2018). Some of the outcomes include the high number of ad placements with the number standing at 75,000 and over 437.9 million impressions all over America (Ogilvy Washington, 2018). There are no specific estimates of how much the Michigan campaign cost but some of the outcomes include 32,000 individuals taking the pledge to led better lifestyles and have gained access to help kits provided during the campaign. Furthermore, due to the camping, Michigan has drooped for the fifth to the eleventh heaviest state in the United States (Brogan & Partners, 2018).

The comparison of the two social marketing campaigns stands to prove that the nationwide campaign had more coverage and was more effective due to two main reasons. First, the amount of money used, ad placements and location coverage was highly extensive. Secondly, the campaign made use of new approach targeting personal risk of being overweight which would give individuals a wakeup call and start leading better healthier lifestyles to Prevent Obesity.

In summary, the different aspects of social marketing when perceived in the two campaigns evaluated for this paper portray the significance of the 4 Ps of marketing. Every single component of the social marketing structure is well defined on its own to ensure a comprehensive outlook on the given health issue from the perspective of public health. As such, both social marketing campaigns proved to include different but nonetheless significant perspectives which worked well according to the scope of their social marketing campaign.

References

Brogan & Partners. (2018) How we gave Michigan the skinny on getting healthier. Brogan & Partners Convergence Marketing.

Ogilvy Washington. (2018) Adult Obesity Prevention Campaign. Creativestudiodc.ogilvy.com.

Scarapicchia, T. M., Sabiston, C. M., Brownrigg, M., Blackburn-Evans, A., Cressy, J., Robb, J., & Faulkner, G. E. (2015). MoveU? Assessing a social marketing campaign to promote physical activity. Journal of American College Health, 63(5), 299-306.

Truong, V. D. (2014). Social marketing: A systematic review of research 1998–2012. Social Marketing Quarterly, 20(1), 15-34.

Walker, B., Wolford, B., Sasser, D., Verbois, C., & Bell, L. (2016). Launching a comprehensive SNAP-Ed social marketing campaign utilizing the cooperative extension model. Journal of Nutrition Education and Behavior, 48(7), S84.