Campaign Media

Campaign Media

“Fitness and Diet: Key to Health”

The Message.

Message in this communication campaign is meant to create awareness of the importance of keeping fit and having proper diet. Failure to observe these two factors is known to contribute to obesity which acts as a gateway to poor health.

The key message for this campaign will be: keep it balanced:

1. Nutrition is vital for health and wellness
2. You are what you eat
3. To keep life going, be active; it doesn’t hurt; you will only sweat

Media Channels

Social Media

 The use of social media has become very powerful in the health communicators’ toolkit. Almost everybody is connected on different social media platforms. Social media is being put in use by public health organizations as a platform for broadcasting key messages and for collaborating and co-creating content with the target audience. Social media will be crucial in this communication campaign as it does not only get the message to the audience but offers a chance to engage with the users who offer their one-on-one feedback with regard to the message. Use of social media offers a great opportunity of network due to the sharing capabilities where one may share a post or retweet.  Social media will also accommodate the message in different formats such as video, info graphic, and animation among other. For this campaign, it will be a highly relevant tool.

Mass Media; Television

The television has been one of the most used media tool used for health promotion and prevention programs. Televisions offers a relevant channel for promoting wide programs needed to support healthy eating and enhance increased physical activity. This campaign will use an advertisement broadcasted through the television to encourage people to take proactive stands in ensuring healthier lifestyles (O’Hara, Bauman, & Phongsavan, 2012)

Other than advertisements, television can be used to deliver the campaign message through reality television series. Examples on such series that have been screened include “Losing it with Jillian” and “The Biggest Loser”. Such show have the capabilities of inspiring mullion of users. With televisions, there is also the option if featuring reality shows that tackles the topics such as health, diet, exercise, therapies and other forms of management practices (Al-Haifi, et al. 2012).

Print media

This media channel will be used to the specific group who acknowledges the aspect of tangibility. The elder population amongst the American have much more trust on what is printed and they seem to associate this with being more real. To some Americans, newspapers is a way of culture and this particular group educates themselves by consuming the content. A large portion of Americans have subscriptions that allows them receive the direct mails of print media thereby delivering the message to the doorstep. The print media offers what other media described above do not; attention to content. In social media and television, the audience gets almost a glimpse of the message. However, information presented in print captures the attention of the readers thereby evoking deep reading. This allows for moments of deep thinking there a greater understanding of the message (Wakefield, et al 2010).

Constructing culturally sensitive messages

It is clear that the society which forms the part of the audience for the communication campaign is culturally diverse. It therefore prudent to come up with culturally sensitive and culturally appropriate message for the communication campaign on fitness, diet and health. Creating a culturally sensitive message requires a deep understanding of the deep structure of the culture of the target audience (Kreuter & McClure, 2004). This implies the need to have an elaborate understanding of the race and ethnicity of the target audience. It also requires an understanding of the label of lifestyles which may be perceived to be insensitive. In this process, one seeks to understand the values, beliefs, norms and behaviors present in different cultural groups.

In the use of television as a media channel for the communication campaign, the message will be structured as form of entertainment education. This approach makes use of longer programming formatting to deliver key message. Through this form, the message is structured in a manner that it evokes a parasocial interaction with media actors who elicit identification with the target audience. This allows the creation of messages that directly connects to a certain group of audience (Romer, et al 2009).

References

Al-Haifi, A. R., Al-Fayez, M. A., Al-Nashi, B., Al-Athari, B. I., Bawadi, H., & Musaiger, A. O. (2012). Right Diet: a television series to combat obesity among adolescents in Kuwait. Diabetes, Metabolic Syndrome and Obesity: Targets and Therapy, 5, 205–212.

Kreuter, M., & McClure, S. (2004). The Role of Culture in Health Communication . Annual Reviews of Public Health.

O’Hara, B., Bauman, A., & Phongsavan, P. (2012). Using Mass-Media Communications to Increase Population Usage of Australia’s Get Healthy Information and Coaching Service. BMC Public Health.

Romer, D., Sznitman, S., DiClemente, R., Salazar, L. F., Vanable, P. A., Carey, M. P., … Juzang, I. (2009). Mass Media as an HIV-prevention Strategy: Using Culturally-Sensitive Messages to Reduce HIV-associated Sexual Behavior of at-risk African-American Youth. American Journal of Public Health, 99(12), 2150–2159.

Wakefield, M. A., Loken, B., & Hornik, R. C. (2010). Use of mass media campaigns to change health behaviour. The Lancet, 376(9748), 1261-1271.