Would you like carrots with that?

I love a good cheeseburger and fries. There is nothing that I enjoy more than a large fountain Dr. Pepper with crushed ice and 400 calories on a hot summer day. But, I only eat/drink these things a few times a year. Why? Because if I ate those types of things regularly I'd be increasing my chances of heart disease and diabetes. And, I'd probably be part of the 28.7% of Texans who are considered obese.

Obesity is now considered an epidemic, according to the World Health Organization. AN EPIDEMIC. Like AIDS or the Black Death of the Middle Ages. And yet, addressing obesity is very different than addressing HIV/AIDS, famine, or cancer. Obesity is, largely, a product of over-abundance and some say, the American lifestyle and culture. When we talk about fighting obesity we are really talking about changing the American way of life. Dr. David Ludwig, Director of the Optimal Weight for Life program at Children’s Hospital Boston says "If we just expect that inner-city child to exercise self-control and walk a little bit more, then I think we’re in for a big disappointment" in a NY Times blog.

With all this in mind, I've been trying to aggregate knowledge from The Tipping Point, The VW Fun Theory, and all my other experiences to come up with a silver bullet to get people to stop eating things that are slowly killing them, costing the healthcare system (read: you and me) tons of money, and making the American life expectancy decrease.In fact, “We’re in danger of raising the first generation of children who could live sicker and die younger than the generation before them” says Dr. James Marks in a July 2010 Newsweek article.

However it seems a "Bunch of Carrot Farmers" have figured it out already. They hired Crispin, Porter, and Bogusky to design a campaign around baby carrots. Crispin, Porter, and Bogusky decided to market pre-packed baby carrots like junk food, it's called the "Eat em' like junk food" campaign. The campaign has a few different ads: Extreme, Indulge, Future, and Munchies. All are pretty funny. I love the tag line at the end of the video below: "Now in extreme junk food packaging!"

This bunch of carrot farmers put baby carrot vending machines in a high school in Ohio and a high school in New York. The school couldn't keep the machines stocked. Kids were choosing baby carrots over a bag of Dorito's en mass. Advertising got kids to make healthier choices even when real junk food was available. They did it by making baby carrots cool.

Countless government agencies, nonprofit organizations, chefs on a crusade, and nutritional experts have been trying for YEARS to get kids (and adults) to make the right food choices. They've used all sorts of programs and marketing tactics and scare tactics and we, as a nation, are fatter, eat less vegetables, and are less active than ever.

It took a group of carrot farmers, trying to make a profit, to make vegetables cool. Which leads me to believe that, perhaps, for profit companies who make healthy lifestyle products are the ones with enough advertising dollars, enough to gain, and enough to lose to really make social impact. Maybe, we've been going about it all wrong.

Buckle em' up. Click it. Just do it.

A 13 year old boy is in critical condition at Dell Children's Hospital this afternoon after an accident on TX 130 on Monday afternoon. His two siblings and his mother were killed. Tragic, yes. Even more heartbreaking when I read that "A preliminary investigation showed that Morfin [mother] and Sparkman [other driver] were wearing seat belts, but none of the children were..." in the article linked above.

Adult decisions to not wear seat belts are just that, adult decisions. But, if a child is not wearing the proper restraint, it is still an adult decision. That child has no choice in their plight. I wondered how many traffic deaths involved unrestrained children? And, how adult behavior could be modified to ALWAYS buckle up the tiny lives they are responsible for.

According to 2005 data (which seems to be the most up-to-date), "among passenger vehicle occupants over age 4, safety belts saved an estimated 15,632 lives in 2005. If all passenger vehicle occupants over age 4 had worn safety belts, 20,960 lives (that is, an additional 5,328) could have been saved in 2005." You can peruse through the data at your leisure, but, you'll conclude that children should be buckled in. Always.

Buckling your child into a car seat or into a seatbelt takes a minute, maybe 2. How do we insure that caregivers are making the decision to buckle em' up? The Texas Department of Transportation has initiated a comprehensive campaign to encourage restraint use across the state. This campaign targets two audiences, one being adults buckling in themselves and the second being caregivers buckling in their charges. The campaign operates under the tag line "Click It or Ticket."

This campaign has outdoor, radio, TV, theater, and oodles of press materials. You can even request materials for your organization through the website. The campaign kicked off with renewed energy on May 3 at The Long Center. A massive public installment caught the attention of passerbys. Check it out:


Below you'll find an example of an outdoor ad. Click here to watch one of the 30 second TV spots. It's pretty cute.



TxDOT seems to have taken time segmenting their audience and then reaching out with specific messaging for those audiences. Adults, parents of small kids, parents of older kids, etc. And yet, for whatever reason, two kids died on Monday afternoon along with their mother. Who knows if they could have been saved if they were buckled in. Their mother wasn't saved by her seatbelt.

And that's the hard part of trying to change behavior with advertising. Sometimes bad things happen to people, no matter how many ounces of prevention you throw at them. Keep up the good work TxDOT. What you don't hear in the news is how many lives Click It or Ticket will save.

Every Ounce Counts, unless it's formula.

"If most new moms would breastfeed their babies for the first six months of life,
it would save nearly 1,000 lives and billions of dollars each year,
according to a new study published Monday in the journal Pediatrics."
- Study: Lack of breastfeeding costs lives, billions of dollars

In the state of Texas 78.2% of babies are breastfed at some point according to the CDC's Breastfeeding Report Card. This number meets the Healthy People 2010 goal and is above the national average of 73.9%. Louisiana and Alabama come in last at 49.1% and 48.3%, respectively. Utah and Oregon top the list with 92.8% and 91.4%. In sum, most women in Texas attempt to breastfeed their babies at some point.

When we look at the numbers for women who are still breastfeeding at six months, Texas falls below the Healthy People 2010 goal at 48.7%. The numbers are even lower when we consider those Texas women who are exclusively breastfeeding at six months--a mere 14.2%. This is especially worrisome considering that the World Health Organization (WHO) recommends that infants be breastfed exclusively for 6 months.

The Texas Department of State Health Services Women Infants and Children (WIC) is the overseeing government agency that supports women and their babies. The national WIC website describes their target population as "low-income, nutritionally at risk" women and children under five years old.

WIC recently launched an integrated social marketing campaign to encourage moms to breastfeed their babies, the Every Ounce Counts campaign. There are several components to this campaign including radio, outdoor, TV, and web. The image below is one of the outdoor advertisements. This particular one can be seen on South 1st Street.
The Every Ounce Counts campaign message seems to have a lot of supporters and supporting organizations. Although not specifically associated with the Every Ounce Counts campaign, an event to celebrate the Breastfeeding Awareness was held at City Hall in Austin. There was also a Flashmob that was organized by Central Texas Healthy Mothers Healthy Babies. Check out the video below. Skip to 4:00 to listen to the rap about why breastfeeding is important, and apparently, really hip.

Clearly, a lot of men and women think breastfeeding is important. Again, 78% of Texas moms attempt to breastfeed their babies at some point. Which begs the question: Why do they stop?

After doing research, the problem isn't getting women to try breastfeeding. The problem seems to lie in a woman's ability to keep breastfeeding . Then, wouldn't the more impactful message on women and babies health be to keep breastfeeding? This is an important distinction and a problem that requires a very different tactic than educating a woman on the benefits of breastfeeding. Lots of factors can discourage a woman from breastfeeding, all of which are complicated and nuanced.

The Every Ounce Counts campaign does a great job of making breastfeeding look pretty and sound really wonderful. For those women who are able to successfully and easily breastfeed their babies, Every Ounce Counts stands as a validation point that they are doing the right thing, that their baby will be a rocket scientist, and that they will lose that baby weight if they just keep nursing.

Every Ounce Counts outdoor ads, radio, and TV spots don't prepare women for the problems that breastfeeding can bring, for the inconvenience, or any tactics for overcoming those real obstacles for the greater good of your baby. For that information you have to go to the Every Ounce Counts website which provides an inclusive and helpful troubleshooting section as well as links to get personalized help from a lactation consultant. This is a crucial piece of moving the needle on improving continued breastfeeding rates through six months.

The CDC gives some outlines of how social marketing can effect breastfeeding attitudes but not how social marketing can work to change persistent breastfeeding rates until six months of age. It should be said that perhaps the Every Ounce Counts campaign was not ever intended to focus on keeping women breastfeeding or provide practical advice on how to do so. Perhaps the goal of WIC is to increase the percentage of babies that are ever breastfed to 100%.

It just seems that to make the greatest social impact on the lives of small babies and women in Texas, social marketers must also understand that scientific data and numbers behind the social problem and then make tough decisions about target audience and on where their talents can change the most, for the most good. I do not think it is sufficient for social marketers to seek to change attitudes, social marketers must seek to change behavior.

I'll leave you with this for levity: