Avoiding a knowledge gap in a multiethnic statewide social marketing campaign: is cultural tailoring sufficient?

In 2007, the State of Hawaii, Healthy Hawaii Initiative conducted a statewide social-marketing campaign promoting increased physical activity and nutrition. The campaign included substantial formative research to develop messages tailored for Hawaii's multiethnic Asian and Pacific Islander populations. The authors conducted a statewide random digital dialing telephone survey to assess the campaign's comparative reach among individuals with different ethnicities and different levels of education and income. This analysis suggests that the intervention was successful in reaching its target ethnic audiences. However, a knowledge gap related to the campaign appeared among individuals with incomes less than 130% of the poverty level and those with less than a high school education. These results varied significantly by message and the communication channel used. Recall of supermarket-based messages was significantly higher among individuals below 130% of the poverty level and those between 18 and 35 years of age, 2 groups that showed consistently lower recall of messages in other channels. Results suggest that cultural tailoring for ethnic audiences, although important, is insufficient for reaching low-income populations, and that broad-based social marketing campaigns should consider addressing socioeconomic status-related channel preferences in formative research and campaign design.

Formative research to develop a mass media campaign to increase physical activity and nutrition in a multiethnic state.

Poor nutrition and physical inactivity are the second leading causes of preventable morbidity and mortality in the United States. Mass media campaigns have tremendous promise for reaching large segments of the population to influence these behaviors. There is still insufficient evidence in the literature, however, to recommend mass marketing campaigns for physical activity and nutrition. Successful mass media campaigns should have a formative research base that includes conducting preproduction research with the target audience, using theory as a conceptual foundation of the campaign, segmenting the audience into meaningful subgroups, and using a message approach that is targeted to and likely will be effective with the audience segment. In this study, these formative research steps were addressed to develop a mass media campaign based on the Theory of Planned Behavior to increase physical activity and fruit and vegetable consumption in 35-55-year-old adults in the state of Hawaii. For the walking campaign, our results identified time, a control belief, as the major barrier. For fruits and vegetable, the data suggested social norm (if others around me ate them) and control (if they were available). These data then were used to develop a mass media campaign based on these principals.