MECM90034
Marketing & Media in a Global Context
Week 9 Lecture- Health Communication
Dr Ali Saha
WHAT ARE HEALTH CAMPAIGNS?
The study and use of communication strategies to inform
and influence individual and community decisions that
enhance health
Source: Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
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Why Health Communication Matters?
• Populations behaviour change
• Policy change
• Identify and support people in need
• Exchanging information, ideas and beliefs
• Organise stakeholders (boards, coalitions)
• Diffuse/translate successful programs
• Shift norms and beliefs
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Examples- Public health and safety campaigns
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Strategies
Demarketing
Efforts made by a company to reduce or discourage the consumption of goods
and services
Or
“advertising to reduce demand for a product in short supply.”
• General demarketing: aims to reduce overall demand
• Selective demarketing: aims to reduce demand for a
specific target segment
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Strategies
Demarketing Can also be used to encourage healthy behaviors
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The ‘One Drink’ campaign (2021-2024)
Campaign objectives
1.Decrease the proportion who consider a ‘small amount’ of alcohol to be okay at any stage of pregnancy.
2.Increase the proportion who believe alcohol use when pregnant can result in a range of lifelong harms to
the baby.
3.Increase the proportion who are aware it is recommended women who are pregnant or planning a
pregnancy should not drink alcohol.
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https://alcoholthinkagain.com.au/about-us/current-campaigns/one-drink
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Strategies
Demarketing
Broader business strategies:
• Price manipulation
• Increasing taxes
• Warning labels
• Packaging updates
• Limited supply
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Strategies-Promoting positive outcomes: SLIP,
SLOP SLAP, Cancer Council, 1980
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Strategies-Promoting positive outcomes: MOVE IT
AUS, Australian Sports Commission, 2018
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Spread Freedom – COVID-19 vaccine campaign by
Australian Department of Health
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Message appeals
MESSAGE
APPEAL
Emotional
Informational
message
message
appeal
appeal
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Message appeals
Informational
• Informs and educates
• Typically includes facts,
data, statistics
• Focuses on objective
reasoning
• Straight-forward
messaging
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Message appeals
Informational appeal examples
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Message appeals
Emotional
• Evokes strong feelings and emotions
• Can be positive or negative
• Vivid imagery, storytelling and music
• If too strong can lead to negative outcomes
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Message appeals
Emotional appeal examples
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Message appeals
Fear appeal
• Commonly used in public health campaigns
• Can be a strong motivator of behavior change
• Emphasizes negative consequences
• Assumes that people are more motivated to avoid
negative outcomes than to achieve positive outcomes
• Risks if the message is too extreme or dramatic
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Message appeals
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Message appeals
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Message framing strategies
Gain-loss framing
Phrasing a marketing
communications message to
describe a choice or outcome
• Gain frame: Focuses on the
positive. Stressing the
benefits of following advice
• Loss frame: Focuses on the
negative. Stresses the risk of
not following advice
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Message framing strategies
Research suggested that smokers do
want to quit but lack the confidence
and resolve.
Eight out of ten smokers have tried to
quit at least once, while more than
half have tried to quit multiple times.
The campaign was developed to
inspire hopefulness and self-efficacy
in smokers, by informing them that it
is normal to make several quit
attempts before ultimately succeeding
and by encouraging them to keep
trying to quit.
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Which strategy is better?
Gain framing or loss framing?
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Protection motivation theory
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Weekly readings
Required readings
• Lafont, A., Rogé, J., Ndiaye, D., & Boucheix, J.-M.
(2022). Road safety communication effectiveness:
the roles of emotion and information in motorists’
ability to detect vulnerable road users. Cognition,
Technology and Work, 24(2), 333–333.
https://doi.org/10.1007/s10111-021-00692-x
• Yan, Y., Jacques-Tiura, A. J., Chen, X., Xie, N., Chen,
J., Yang, N., Gong, J., & MacDonell, K. K. (2014).
Application of the protection motivation theory in
predicting cigarette smoking among adolescents
in China. Addictive Behaviors, 39, 181-188.
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