RESUMEN
BACKGROUND: Food and beverage (F&B) marketing practices that contradict health guidelines are particularly concerning for children and adolescents, who are developmentally more susceptible than adults to persuasive advertising and to Black communities, due to ethnically-targeted marketing, contributing to higher rates of obesity and other diet-related chronic diseases. Accordingly, here we evaluated Operation Good Food and Beverages (OGF&B), an online social marketing campaign calling for shifting toward more marketing of healthier F&B to Black youth and Black communities. METHODS: OGF&B was developed and implemented by a multidisciplinary team of academic, advocacy, and advertising partners and active for four months in 2022 during the COVID-19 pandemic. Primary campaign components were social media content (e.g., TikTok, Instagram), and an informational website with a signable petition and a social media toolkit. Our mixed-methods evaluation used qualitative data to contextualize quantitative metrics like online impressions, website visits, and petition signatures. Qualitative data consisted of analysis of social media content and thematic elements from 15 interviews with campaign advisors, youth consultants, and influencers. RESULTS: The campaign achieved 3,148,869 impressions, 3,799 unique website visits, and 1,077 petition signatures. Instagram Reels and content featuring people had higher engagement. Instagram Reels received more likes than static posts or TikTok videos. Interviewees who participated mentioned personal values and community welfare as key motivations. Social media influencers who declined participation noted time constraints and lack of compensation as barriers. CONCLUSION: Despite pandemic-related restrictions that precluded in-person engagement, this brief campaign implementation period provided useful insights for leveraging OGF&B or similar campaigns.
RESUMEN
Efforts to reduce disparities in obesity prevalence affecting Black Americans are having limited success. One reason for this may be the disproportionate, ethnically targeted marketing of foods and beverages high in fat and sugar (FBHFS) to Black consumers. Such marketing promotes high consumption of FBHFS, leading to excess caloric intake and unintentional weight gain. We convened focus groups with Black men and women (total n = 57) in collaboration with community groups in three localities to elicit their views, as consumers and parents/caregivers, about targeted FBHFS marketing and potential ways to combat it. At each location, trained community members facilitated two sets of focus groups: one for adults aged 18 to 25 years and another for adults aged 26 to 55 years who had a 3-to-17-year-old child at home. Each group met twice to discuss food and beverage marketing practices to Black communities and reviewed a booklet about ethnically targeted marketing tactics in between. A directed content analysis of participant comments identified and explored salient themes apparent from initial summarization of results. Results show how parents are concerned with and critical of pervasive FBHFS marketing. In particular, comments emphasize the involvement of Black celebrities in FBHFS marketing-how and why they engage in such marketing and whether this could be shifted towards healthier foods. These findings suggest a potential role for counter marketing efforts focused on Black celebrity endorsements of FBHFS, possibly with a youth focus. They also underscore the need for additional, qualitative exploration of Black consumer views of ethnically targeted FBHFS marketing more generally.