A response to health campaigns

Good evening,

Last week’s readings were a lot easier to read compared to the Scholten article. I especially enjoyed the Maibach et al (1997) article. I feel that this framework can change an individual’s behavior via mass campaigns and have success in doing so. I also was encouraged to see the successes of photovoice as a community empowerment technique because as someone mentioned in class, “a picture does say a thousand words.” I think this can be a good vehicle for communities that may feel they can’t change their community because it may be a less affluent community where they may feel their ideas and concerns don’t matter to politicians. I recall from 661 that photovoice was beneficial for change to occur in an individual’s own community. I also feel that it should be used more often because it has many advantages and does not take much effort to go around a neighborhood and photograph things that need to be changed within a given community.

As most of the class has mentioned, I too was touched by the Livestrong advertisement. It hit especially close to home because my grandfather battled cancer and thankfully, he was on the winning-side, however, I also know people who lost their battle with cancer. This ad elicited emotion and was a good example of reaching the audience via the peripheral route.

The many ads that seemed to stick with me were the low involvement advertisements. (Correct me if I am wrong, but in my notes I have that low involvement is emotional such as fear, etc. and those with high involvement are fact-based.) The four Ps of social marketing Product, Price, Places, Promotion will plays a more profound role than I ever thought. It will be extremely useful to this for our group assignment. We need to “sell” to the 6-8^th graders our intervention for it to be useful for them.

Hope you all had a Happy Valentine's Day :)