Brand Gardasil Now.

Branding. It's so important. When a person sees a symbol and instantly knows what it means, that is powerful marketing. There a millions of people in the world who see the McDonald's symbol and automatically know what it is for. Nobody gets confused and asks "Hey, what is that yellow M a symbol of?" People just know. It would be amazing to do this for health promotion. What is a symbol that could be used for HPV and Gardasil? I know that they already have a symbol that is associated with the shot, but to be perfectly honest, if I saw it without the Gardasil name beside it, I probably wouldn't recognize it. I have a hard time relating their symbol with Gardasil or HPV. They have a slogan " One Less". But really, how many people know what that phrase is in reference to (excluding those in the health care fields). If we could create a symbol that people could see and automatically think "HPV. Gardasil." that would be very effective in creating awareness of the vaccination and HPV at the same time. I know that it would be hard to do, but it is important to do. The hard part wouldn't be creating the symbol, but actually marketing it so that people will know what it is for. I know that this seems like a long shot, but I definitely think it's something worth looking into.  I'm thinking that maybe it's time to reevaluate the branding of Gardasil.

Branding Experiences

When I began working at my workplace three years ago the agency embarked on a name and branding change. I was naive to think that these changes were a simple process for the agency however, simply changing the organization's name was a huge ordeal. Although I was not directly invovled with the marketing strategies and changes I remember a lot of emails being sent to staff to prepare for the upcoming changes and give us information on how to relay the names and branding changes to patients and families. Staff members were given booklets that contained the new logos, slogan and specific fonts, colors, etc. that we would need to use.
It has been two and a half years (I think?) since the rebranding was complete and I still hear employees and people in the community calling the agency the wrong nameand not recognizing that we now have an entire divison of the agency that is devoted to education and research. I don't think this means that the rebranding failed however, it did show me how difficult it is for people to change their attitudes about a particular service that they've had experience with and/or simply referring to a service or product by another name.
This experience made me think about how important branding is to market products and services and this strategic process is crucial in engaging and understanding target audiences.

Believe it or not

Whilst attempting to do project #2, post-Halloween celebrations (terrible idea), we were trying to figure out which statistics we should put on our 'high involvement' poster campaign. As we were searching, we would come across numbers such as 1% of men get anal cancer from HPV. Obviously, that is not that impressive, scary, or memorable. And it most likely will not catch anyone's attention or make people feel that they are at risk. So, we don't use it. This does not mean that people shouldn't be warned of this risk, or that it is unimportant, it just doesn't grab attention. A lot of this type of thinking goes into marketing health campaigns, as well as any product promotion. It probably also works the other way as well. For example, a McDonalds marketing specialist finds out that if you eat Big Macs 20 times per month, you are 19 times more likely to prematurely have a heart attack (I made that up, but hypothetically ((and probably realistically)). He or she will probably not advertise that. For this reason, I find it very hard to trust commercials, because I know that whoever is putting them out is working for their own interests. Another good example is all of the political ads that are out now. I can't trust anyone. It makes me wonder how people view health campaigns, especially the ones that use fear tactics. Do they think that drug companies are just trying to make money? Are they? I heard recently that people thought that Dr. Oz was a hoax. I thought he seemed pretty legitimate...I guess other people didn't. It definitely makes it hard to make a campaign that addresses all these issues, makes an impact, as well as seems believable.

Branding Gardasil?

So this week's topic in class was about branding. Branding seems very difficult to do with any product. It seems like you are almost trying to create this feeling and memory of a product, service, or behavior; which is pretty much predicting what a person will think. How complicated does that sound? It is only predicting the future, no biggie. Each person can have such a different experience with any commercial or print ad that it seems difficult to guide them in the direction that you want them to go. With Gardasil I am not quite sure the direction we would go. Something that could create a feeling of protection and security, and overall a warm positive feeling towards the vaccine. Although I can't think of anything that would hold the attention of our audience and still evoke those feelings. I feel like it is a hard balance to keep. One positive thing about Gardasil is that it already has a symbol to represent Gardasil, unlike the nutrition and physical activity which would have to create one.

Gardasil image seen here:

Branding Alzheimer's

So, I finally got caught up on all of my TV shows through the wonder of the Internet (if you haven't heard of it, you should probably get it) and I realized how much more aware of hot topics I am in the media than before. This week the hot topic seemed to be Alzheimer's disease, which if you don't know, I'm a huge proponent of promoting, because there is so much that the masses don't know about it, hence why I am writing about it now, interning at the Alzheimer's Association, conducting my thesis on it and writing the world's longest run-on sentence!

So, it started last week when the Alzheimer's Association was promoting their most recent campaign: The Shriver Report. This is interesting on a number of levels. First, they named it after Maria Shriver, California's First Lady and longtime spokeswoman for the Alzheimer's Association. You can see videos about her promoting it all over the the association's website (www.alz.org). Secondly, this is a novel idea, because they are focusing solely on the impact this debilitating disease has had on women, whether they are suffering from the disease themselves or are caring for someone. Thirdly, the media campaign for this has been quite large. So, in other words, if you haven't seen anything about this you either don't watch television or don't receive remarkable channels like ABC (Jenn!). So to roll out the promotion of this there was a huge campaign every morning for the whole last week on GMA (see previous post for breakdown of acronym) they featured this campaign. Here is a link (tear warning again) to one of their interviews with Maria Shriver. So yea, they talked a lot about AD on GMA, but then I was watching all my shows and I started noticing a trend.

I first noticed it when I was watching Desperate Housewives (loyal fan since the very beginning) and when Tom's mom came to help with the new baby and kept referring to him as Rodney (Tom's dad's name), I realized that something was going to develop from this within the plot. This was validated when Allison (Tom's mom) asked Penny (Tom and Lynette's daughter and Allison's granddaughter) who she was and if she lived at the house. I checked with one of my contacts on the set of the show and told them how I was glad that they were using the show to raise awareness of this issue from the perspective of the family. I was told that this story would develop over the next few episodes, so I am interested to see how this plays out. In one of my other favorite shows, Grey's Anatomy, which has dealt with the issue of Alzheimer's earlier in the season (Meredith Grey's mom who died had Alzheimer's), also brought up the issue. However, I don't know that I really agreed with the way that they went about it, because in the story Meredith goes on to get a blood test to determine if she has the "Alzheimer's gene". I didn't agree with this, because they have never made it known whether or not her mother had early-onset Alzheimer's, which is linked to the ApoE-4 gene. This gene is a risk factor for general Alzheimer's disease, but not the number one risk factor (in fact, the number one risk factor is still age), so they way they referred to it in the show made it sound like if she did have the gene she would develop Alzheimer's. Regardless of how it was done though, I think it was interesting how both of these shows brought up Alzheimer's disease around the same time that GMA was highlighting the Shriver Report and their stories about women taking on Alzheimer's disease. In another note related to our HPV campaign, another episode of Grey's had a man who had been exposed to HPV and due to some kind of immune deficiency, his face was covered in warts and his hands looked like tree branches, because he had left it untreated for so long! And then his wife left him after the surgery and he was just sleeping there when she walked away! FEAR TACTICS!

Paranormal Activity

I know that I've mentioned this before, but scare tactics completely work on me. I get terrified into action. I've seen a commercial similar to the one that Brian showed in class (but the pansy American version), and once again, I was scared. Since the first time I saw the commercial, I've actively been trying to keep my phone out of my pocket while I'm driving, so that I will be less tempted to respond to a text because I don't want me and all of my best friends to die a violent, painful, slow motion death.

In contrast to fear, though, are comedic relief. I absolutely love commercials that use humor- the Old Spice guy , the most interesting man in the world- are some of the ones that stand out to me. Jack in the Box and Budweiser try to use humor, but I find most of it stupid. Any how, as much as I love funny commercials, I never really find myself wanting whatever product they are selling. It's definitely a good ploy to entice people into watching the entire commercial, and probably encourages people to talk about it, and therefore popularizing whatever they sell, but I just rarely feel inclined to buy whatever they are selling. Just my personal reaction. However, I feel that for health, humor may work better, to change someone's view on a health topic, or bring it to light, if people are unaware. Maybe.

Women's Health Fear Tactics

On Wednesday night after class, I was reading my November issue of Women's Health magazine and was excited to see that they had an article about HPV. This article discussed the correlation between oral cancers and HPV. The article started out by describing a healthy woman in her mid twenties who never smoked, exercised regularly and ate well, this women had persistant sore throats and colds and after visits to multiple doctors, she found out that she had HPV-16 related stage III oral cancer. The article did not discuss her demise but the article leads one to believe that the outcome was not good.
The article then discusses statistics such as "Between 1999-2007 rates of HPV related oropharyngeal cancer rose 28 percent" and "Those who've had six or moral oral sex partners increase their chances [of oral cancer] by a whopping 340 percent."
After I first read this article, I was pretty freaked out (especially because the article before this one was "Is your health on the line" an article about cell phones and cancer) because they used the description of a young person similar to the demographics of the reader and then related a story filled with statistics to make one believe that you or, anyone could be at risk.
I discussed this article with my roommate and after we were both convinced that our brains were fried (from keeping our cell phones by our heads when we sleep) and that the sore throats we once in a while get were due to HPV related oral cancer we decided to look up more information about HPV related throat cancer... though we found that the HPV article was mostly true, we did realize that some statics were written in a fashion to make the reader believe that they were at risk. Is this a bad thing? I don't necessarily think so but unfortunately, not all readers will investigate these matters on their own and will think that they are going to get things that they aren't at risk for. On the other hand, I bet that the demographics for women's health readers are health conscious women and because of this, maybe an article "scaring" readers isn't appropriate...

Scared into Action

Fear tactics. They work. I remember the first time I saw the video that Brian showed before his presentation. I was at the gym on the elliptical ( I think, I could be making this all up, but you would never know). I was watching the TVs while working out and they played the video on the news. Obviously, they would never play it on US television, it's way too graphic. But, I digress. When I saw the clip for the first time, I felt sick to my stomach. It scared me so bad, I started lecturing my younger sister on texting and driving. I know that it was said in class this week that fear tactics only work to a point, but I think that this "Don't text and drive" campaign, really worked. Since, it's so graphic, it gets the point across. I think that this also works for the "What if?" HPV campaign. It's not graphic, but it really does get the point across. It gets the emotions going to the point where you get to thinking that you should protect yourself and those you love. The goal now is too apply this our message. Do we want to use fear? I think that it would work if we decide to target the "unaware" group. Fear seems that it would work for those with low involvement. At least to get the emotions brewing. who know? Maybe we can scare them into action.

Fear of Humor?

When I consider the kind of message that we want to convey to men 19-26 years old in order to increase use of the Gardasil vaccine, I tend towards thinking we should use fear appeals for our group that is unaware of the Gardasil campaign. I say this because I think that using humor with something like STIs is very tricky. When talking with Stephanie about her presentation, she said that there wasn't anything about what types of topics were most appropriate for humor. I'm not sure what literature says, but I would guess that humor would not be most appropriate for spreading a message to increase the use of the Gardasil vaccine. For our campaign, we should focus on creating a message that not only instills fear about genital warts (seeing as our target audience doesn't seem to care as much about cervical cancer) and also shows them that the Gardasil vaccine is easy for them to get and works. The last step is the most important, because we don't want them to move into a mode of fear control.

Fear and humor

I am unsure how this week's topics will translate to our Gardasil campaign. Humor seems like it will be very difficult to use with such a serious topic as a vaccine that protects against an STI. Also Gardasil is a fairly new product, and humor probably wouldn't be appropriate. Fear on the other hand may be more appropriate because a cancer causing and wart causing virus can be scary. So just showing the real facts about HPV would probably arise fear in itself. Also we would be providing a way to partially relieve the fear by vaccinating against the four strands of HPV. One variable we will need to pay attention to, will be the level of fear we want to evoke in our audience; which I think is a difficult variable to gauge. We are segmenting our target audience into those who are aware of the vaccine and those who are unaware of the vaccine. So our next task will be figuring out how we want to target each audience; both with fear, one with fear one with humor, or just facts. It will be interesting when we have our focus groups to see if the responses that we get are what we expect. I feel like in the first portion of the assignment we were very surprised with the responses from our target audience, and again I think we will end up being some what surprised with our focus groups. I feel as though because a large portion of our group is women, we have a difficult time predicting what our audience will and will not like. The next portion of our project will be fun and we will really get a chance to be creative; I can't wait to start on it!

The Gardasil Controversy

When the Gardasil vaccine ads hit mainstream media, it was sort of a controversial topic. Parents were concerned that if they got their children vaccinated, then it would be sending them the message that premarital sex is ok. Although I sympathize with parents, I also feel that getting them vaccinated would be the smartest thing for them to do. I know that "kids will be kids" is a bad way to look at it, but kids really will be kids. If they are interested in sex, they will have it (or so I believe...I'm not trying to offend anybody). I believe that parents should get their kids vaccinated JUST IN CASE. A kid most likely isn't going to tell his or her parents when he or she begins to have sex, so why not protect them from the very start? Seems like it's the best way to go. I know that it's a touchy subject, but it's definitely worth thinking about rather then keeping a closed mind. As for Gardasil, I think that they picked an interesting target audience for their commercials. It really got parents thinking, and that can never be a bad thing.

The HIV for the Boys

Presentations this week were very interesting. I am always surprised at how creative we all are. Although nerve-wrecking, it is good to get input from everyone on our topic (I guess...). It definitely makes me think about all the public health things that we will actually get to do when we graduate, which is really exciting. Being in school is very time consuming and sometimes annoying, but listening to everyone's ideas, and hearing feedback on our own makes me glad that I chose public health as a field to pursue. I feel like we can actually make a difference in people's lives. Learning theory and how to evaluate things is not always the top of my "Things To Do When I'm Bored" list, but I realize that they are going to be super useful to me in my life, which makes me interested so that I can be a better public health official.

Presenting = dread.

Class presentation days are probably the days I dread most out of any semester. Give me a midterm or a final exam anyday but a presentation.... no thanks!!!!
I think I am mostly bothered about presenting in front of my peers and superiors and embarrassing myself and then having to see these people on a regular basis. I have bad dreams about tripping and falling in front of the class, completely drawing a blank and not knowing what to say, blurting out completely inappropriate words etc.... I'm not sure what my problem is because I'm not shy but I certainly do have issues in front of a crowd. Since I'm presenting my article this Wednesday, I've read the recommended articles and am doing everything I can do to prepare properly... I am what A. Goodman would call a "jitterbug." I think good presentation skills are an extremely important part of communication and in furthering a person's career and I want to commit to improving these skills... Anyone want to go to Toastmasters?
On another note, I really enjoyed the group presentations and appreciated the opportunity to learn about the other projects. It is nice to learn about each group's project at different points during the semester instead of just seeing the final products. Ultimately, I think that this is one of the best way for us to all learn from each other and communication amongst our classmates will only help us to improve our projects.

presentations....

Class was fun to see what all of the groups have been up to these last couple weeks. The ad campaigns for the other groups seemed like they could make big real life changes. I feel as though the campus nutrition campaign could even be a model for other campuses, since poor nutrition choices in on-campus dining halls are not isolated to only SDSU. From first hand experience, I definitely made poor choices my first year in undergrad, gaining a whopping 12 pounds, eating biscuits and gravy every morning because I could. Not to mention, since freshman are just learning how to make nutritional choices on their own, the on campus dinning halls should try to shape those decisions into healthy ones. The physical activity group seems like they have good connections and a really great target population that can affect the children and the entire family. It seems as though the children are a good place to start to make lifelong changes in the community. I can't wait to hear what everyone does for the rest of the project.

Moving Forward...

I really enjoyed watching everyone else's presentations, because it was an opportunity to see what they had done and get ideas for our project. I was really disheartened to hear how much resistance the Delish and Nutrish group was getting from university's food service department. Then again, it is very similar to the same reaction that Jamie Oliver got when he came to make changes at the elementary school in Food Nation. I think that getting some kind of buy-in from an organization is always helpful when developing a campaign. This works for many reasons. They will provide support and help bring new ideas to the table. Also, they will help foster an environment that is supportive of the campaign. I think this goes for anything that you are involved in and isn't just limited to public health. My grandmother, a member of my school district's board for a number of years, found it very frustrating, as the administration was very difficult to work with. Sadly, this hasn't changed and for that the children that can't transfer out of the district have suffered. I was excited to hear about the consultant for the immunization partnership was interested in our campaign. I look forward to hearing what he has to say once our campaign has been developed and pilot tested.

No internet...really?

Hi All,
As my weekend in Northern California comes to an end I must confess...my family is great but the fact that they don't have the internet DRIVES ME INSANE!!! Okay, now that I have that out of my system I can continue with my blog (but really, I can't get over it).
I really liked this weeks' article on "Word of Mouth" advertising and it made me contemplate a lot of different things. The first thing I thought about was how word of mouth marketing has probably changed over the last ten years due to websites such as Yelp! This site gives individuals the chance to read multiple personal reviews of businesses that would otherwise not be accessible. Essentially, Yelp offers a sounding board for those (like me) to complain about bad service or rave about excellent service.
After I started thinking about Yelp I realized that many people (like my parents) may not have the same access to the internet that I do (sorry, still cant get over the fact that my parents don't have the internet). I find that my parents use traditional word of mouth communication and often rely on their friends and families for tips about healthcare and healthy living. This is fine but it bothers me that they are relying on others and do not have the ability to look up their own health information. It reminds me of that game "telephone" that I use to play at slumber parties... You know the game when one person whispers a sentence into the next person's ear and by the time you get to the last person what is said is completely different than the original sentence. I don't know if the healthcare information my parents are receiving is factual and neither do they. In a time period where we do not think about health communications without considering the internet, it is often hard for me to communicate with my parents about certain topics because I'm often inclined to tell them "I'll send you the link" or "Why don't you google it."
Anyhow, reflecting on this has made me realize that I need to be more sensitive and think outside the box when it comes to populations that don't have access to the same technological resources that I do. Even though it angers me that I had to drive 15 minutes to sit in my 17 year old cousins bedroom to write this blog, I realize that I'm not going to help my parents by hassling them to join this century (I know, I'm really mature!!!) but I need to meet them where they are at and give them information that they might use...like printed resources, telephone numbers or television segments.

Health Literacy and PPPSW

When talking about health literacy in class it made me remember a patient that we had at Planned Parenthood not too long ago. The clinic that I work at is in Kearny Mesa in the middle of a lot of business parks and the patients some what represent the setting. At our clinic we do get some Spanish only speakers, which we are used to, which is why about half of our clinic workers are Spanish speaking as well. One day an older Mexican woman came in, and like always we asked her to check in with a check-in sheet, and after getting a fellow clinic worker that spoke Spanish, we realized that she could not read or write in Spanish. I felt very shocked, which I shouldn't have been, but she was the first patient I had seen at the clinic who couldn't check in with our normal process. Then we realized that she couldn't fill out the medical history or the Family PACT application form either, which every new patient needs to do. Luckily my assistant manager was available that spoke Spanish to talk her through the forms, check her in, and then work her up for a clinician, which probably took about 45 min. Also the patient had a history of abuse that needed to be reported, which took about an additional 15 minutes. I felt as though I was so glad that this woman had come in, even though she was faced with literacy barriers, because she seemed as though she really needed our services. The sad part is, she really pointed out how unready Planned Parenthood was to help an individual who can not read or write in Spanish or English. On the typical day at Planned Parenthood we are short one person, and rushing to keep from getting behind on our schedules with the patient's visits already lasting 2 hours. What if she had come in on a different day, would she have left the clinic feeling the same? Would we have had the time that she needed for the assistance? I am not sure. Although a majority of our patients can read and write, I feel as though there should be protocols to follow and training to be prepared to give illiterate patients the best care possible. I suppose a lot of it is common sense and just making sure your patient's needs are fully met. I feel as though this would be a good topic for one of Planned Parenthood's agency wide in-service days, and I think I will suggest it to them. Especially since our Planned Parenthood is now the Planned Parenthood of the Pacific South West (PPPSW), after including Imperial County, I think this would be a relevant topic.

Health Lit

I think my first experience with health literacy was volunteering at a Children's Safety Center. I was writing press releases to be distributed to the local media regarding the safety center's topics of the month. At the time it was a little challenging to write about health statistics in a way that could be easily understood by the general population. And, to be honest, I didn't have the knowledge that I do now about average reading level in America. Somehow I managed, but I have recently been using my health literacy knowledge and skills at the Alzheimer's Association to create educational pamphlets about living a brain healthy lifestyle. I am more aware now about wording and sentence structure to ensure that they are easy to understand and written in a way that is not too scientific and full of jargon. I think that these skills will definitely come in handy when writing about the new Gardasil vaccine for men. Especially because we want to increase knowledge about HPV and it's relation to genital warts and cervical cancer.

Interactions

I remember in college I read something not completely related to health literacy, but regarding interactions between officials and populations of differing socio-economic status. Health literacy is also the understanding of what doctors, nurses, etc. tell you. Anyways, the article was about how middle and upper class members of society saw themselves as equals to professionals and authority such as teachers, police, doctors, etc. They felt entitled to share their opinions with them if they disagreed, as well as question them if they were confused. Middle and upper class members felt it was their right to know information from those they interacted with. In contrast, lower and working class members were more intimidated of authority figures and therefore were more likely to accept what was being told to them without question, regardless if they agreed or understood. I think this understanding plays a large part in health literacy- if someone is afraid of speaking to a doctor, what is going to motivate them to even go to one for health assistance. For all doctors and health professionals, this also spotlights the importance of being culturally competent and speaking and interacting in a way that will make people comfortable. This will also increase the chances of patient adherence to advice.

Restriction on Food Stamps

This morning I was listening to the radio while driving to skypark...nothing special, just an ordinary music radio station. After playing a couple of over-played songs, the lady radio host begins to speak about New York's new policy on food stamps. Basically, people who food stamps to purchase food will no longer be allowed to use those food stamps to purchase sugary drinks, sodas, etc. The male radio host follows up the story with a "why not??". Needless to say, he doesn't understand the correlation between poverty and obesity. I once wrote a paper during my freshman year of college on the relationship between poverty and obesity. People who are poor can't afford healthy food so they eat cheap fatty food. It seems sort of ironic because one would think that if a poor person can't afford food, they would be incredibly skinny, not obese. Nope, it's pretty much the opposite. So, New York City's governor and mayor have begun an initiative to not allow food stamps to be used for sugary drinks and sodas. What a brilliant idea! Why has this taken so long to happen?? I'm not sure, but I'm glad that finally somebody is doing something. Not only that, it's New York City, a model city. Everybody dreams about New York City. Hopefully, just like people follow the fashion of New York, they will also follow this.

In our Program Planning class, Hala was talking about how if somebody has too many drinks at a bar, then the bartender is legally allowed to cut that person off from anymore drinks. BUT, if somebody is too fat, nobody can stop them from eating anymore fatty foods. Why is this? Maybe it's because it's insulting to tell someone that they're too big too eat something, but maybe that's what the person needs to be healthy and lose weight. I feel like this food stamp thing is one step towards semi-controlling what people consume. I read this article  (to read said article, click here) on the food stamp issue, and it said that 57% of New York City's population is either overweight or obese. FIFTY SEVEN PERCENT??? That's pretty ridiculous. Not only that, about 22,000 hospitalizations are due to diabetes and 46% of those people come from a low-income neighborhood.

I know that this is a bit off topic from health literacy or word-of-mouth communication, but this is something I am really excited when it comes to health. I am all in favor of this restriction on food stamps. It is the first step to ending the endless cycle of poverty and obesity. I can't wait to see what happens next and if other cities will follow in New York City's footsteps.

Real Life Commercial Experience!

Last week while I was studying and Dane was watching football (like usual) we received a call from Dane's sister, Chrissy. She called to tell us about her exciting weekend which started out by responding to an advertisement looking for workers to participate in a "pizza tasting." She showed up to this pizza tasting and was chosen as a "final pizza tester" the following day.
The next day, Chrissy showed up to the designated location and was taken in a limo to an undisclosed location with three other people. Before getting into the limo, an employee told the "pizza testers" that they would not have contact with the driver until they reached the location and they would not be able to ask questions, etc. 45 minutes later, Chrissy and her fellow "pizza testers" were getting worried about what they got themselves into when they were finally let out of the limo.
At this point, Chrissy said they were told to beware of the construction zone they were stepping into (she didn't go into detail about the location but said they were in the in a rural area- not too uncommon in Santa Barbara County). As soon as they stepped out of the limo, a loud drill went off and scared everyone. They were then led into an empty room with three way mirrors on one wall and sat down. The "pizza tasters" were asked what they would say if they were told that Domino's pizza used fresh spinach... and they took turns responding and mostly saying that they were doubtful of this claim. After everyone responded -and at this point I'm sure that I'm not delivering the story with the drama and excitement that she did- three of the 4 walls of the room collapsed and they were in the middle of a spinach field. Then... the Domino's employee said something along the lines of "Domino's gets there fresh spinach directly from this field!!!"
Needless to say, the "pizza tasters" were shocked to find out that they were in a Domino's commercial that was based on capturing the "Average Person's" response to finding out that Domino's used fresh ingredients.
I know this story was a bit off topic from our segmentation conversation this week (though I'm sure she was picked for the commercial because she fit the demographic they were targeting) but I thought this story was fascinating because it gives us a behind the scenes look at making a commercial. Clearly, the marketing team put a lot of effort not only into how customers would receive this low-involvement testimonial but also into deceiving the "pizza testers." The "pizza testers" were made to feel vulnerable and scared (the drill noise and not knowing where they were going) which clearly enhanced the shock they felt when the walls of the room came flying down. In addition, I was surprised to hear that these commercials used "real people." I've seen advertisements that made these claims before but, unless it was for a serious issue (definitely not Domino's) I never considered that the people in the ads were anything BUT actors....

oh segmenting....

How segmenting relates to our target audience was a little confusing at first. Our add campaign is going to be aimed at increasing Gardasil vaccines in young males (19-26). So, we need to figure out how we are going to divide them up. I was thinking of possibly dividing our target population up by those that are more concerned with genital warts and those who are more concerned with passing HPV to their partners. I feel as though the men in each of the groups will have very different views of the vaccine and motives for getting it.

Our group really wants to use the Prizm website to better target our audience. We were thinking of looking up the college area, Pacific Beach, UTC, and Linda Vista zip codes to better understand the college population, since these are popular areas for college students. Just to give an example, when I typed in the zip code for Pacific Beach it gave me: boomtown singles, up and comers, brite lites, li'l city, city start-ups, and second city elite. I think that city start-ups really captures our audience:

Low Income, Younger w/o Kids

In City Startups, young, multi-ethnic singles have settled in neighborhoods filled with cheap apartments and a commercial base of cafés, bars, laundromats, and clubs that cater to twentysomethings. One of the youngest segments in America--with ten times as many college students as the national average--these neighborhoods feature low incomes and high concentrations of African-Americans.

One thing that I am thinking about now is how we will use this information and where they like to shop, drive, and travel to, to better create our campaign. I think one piece of useful information is the information about the ethnic diversity of that segment; so while creating campaign materials they may be more culturally appropriate. I think that the Prizm website will be a good starting point for our campaign, but definitely further research is necessary.

McDonalds- The Best Segmenter EVER

The marketers at McDonalds-- best ever. Who can disagree? They are quick, cheap, and EVERYWHERE. Most likely more accessible than any Vons or Albertsons where at least some of their products contain at least some things that may not have been force fed corn (like an apple or banana). They literally have been the forefront of all fast food chains since their inception. They started the happy meals because apparently people didn't want to order more than one thing because for fear of being seen as gluttonous (Crister, author of "Fat Land") (and seriously, how ironic), then they came up with the value menus because they realized that people wanted the most food for the least money without having to buy 4 separate things, and then they came up with SUPER SIZE-ing, and they have the most iconic arches in America. What great marketing. Let's make every McDonalds have GIANT BRIGHT YELLOW ARCHES THAT CAN BE SEEN FOR MILES (duh that's a great idea).

They have something for everyone- happy meals for kids, value for adults, the dollar menu for the quick and cheap meal, and now they even have coffee and smoothies. You can now cut out Starbucks and Jamba Juice from your morning route, and get a breakfast sandwich too (made of most petroleum, probably)! I'm not sure if they still have those toys for kids, but that campaign definitely targeted kids, and kids that want their toys are kids that drag their parents and the rest of their families into the nearest McDs. Why focus on what adults want? Because more kids almost automatically come with two adults! Maybe even another kid! Adults can come as singles...and that's not maximizing the audience.

Some of their newer commercials present the ingredients to make a McDonalds hamburger- genetically perfect tomatoes, onions, and lettuce being freshly chopped, wet with the dew of the new morn [ethylene gas], then cue to the 'best quality beef.' Strange, because I didn't know a tomato vine could be grafted to a salt flat. Obviously, the new trend is that people are realizing that Americans are fat and unhealthy (WHAT?? The FDA would never let us eat something that wasn't good for us!!). Then that "Super Size Me" horror story came out. Awkward. So, McDonalds changed their strategy a little bit, to cater to what was popular, pulled out some new items (coffee, smoothies), and are doing well. Turns out, people still love them some McDonalds. I think the moral of the story is, public health should try to be a little more like McDonalds.

Follow in the Footsteps of Hulu

Segmentation. Interesting concept. It's interesting to watch TV or listen to the radio or even go on Facebook, while keeping the concept of segmentation in mind. All of the ads that I hear, see, come across, were picked out for my age range, for my likes and dislikes, because somebody somewhere in marketing thought that those particular products and/or ideas would appeal to me.

Hulu recently began playing commercials in between whatever television show you're watching. The thing about ads on Hulu is that while you're watching, a pop-up appears the top of the screen saying "Does this commercial apply to you?" and you can click either yes or no. So the next time a commercial pops up, it's more applicable to your likes. Basically, they're figuring out that people who watch this show also like these types of products. It's actually a really good way to do research. So smart, those Hulu people are. 

So how can Hulu's tactics be applied to Health Communication? Alot of research goes into designing campaigns. Formative research, focus groups, etc. How much research goes into how well the campaigns are received? How many people are these campaigns pilot tested on? Once our campaign is designed, it would be nice to pilot test it and see how compelling it is...if it actually motivates men to get the vaccine. Basically, we could ask them (as Hulu does) "Does this campaign apply to you?".