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.