(Los Angeles Times)

“Leave it,” his master tells him. “It’s just an old double chin. Someone probably lost it playing here in the park with their kids.”

“ “Oh my God, that is hysterical!” said the Sherman Oaks, Calif., mother of three. “Very clever.”

“ Schwartz-Getzug likes the “selling idea” of the government’s new campaign to get Americans fit: that taking just a few small steps to improve diet and boost exercise can make people healthier, slimmer, even sexier. But will she — and millions of other Americans — buy the message?


This time, they might because the sellers have come prepared. Flushed with success from the anti-tobacco wars, they know more about the American people — and how to influence them. And this time, the sellers are joining forces.


In the last 18 months, the federal government, health advocates and private companies have begun to merge their efforts against fat and inactivity.


The Department of Health and Human Services has turned to a top Madison Avenue advertising company and a leading Internet design company to create the Small Steps campaign.


Media companies are rethinking their long-standing practice of marketing junk food to kids. And health advocacy organizations such as the American Heart Association are forming partnerships with companies willing to spread their message to a seen-it-all, heard-it-all American public.





A walk sounds nice, but...





Very few behaviors change because someone saw an ad.


You need social norms in place, environmental supports, the products, the placement, all the things that make the right decisions easy, said Carol Schechter, director of health communications for the Academy for Educational Development, a Washington, D.C.-based nonprofit organization.


Thus far, campaigns aimed at selling healthy behavior have persuaded Americans, in large part, to wear seat belts, quit smoking and refrain from drinking alcohol and driving.


But consider the 22.5 percent of Americans who smoke, the 18 percent who never wear seat belts and the 17,000 killed each year by drunk drivers, and one understands the limits of health campaigns.


Listen to Americans, including Schwartz-Getzug, talk about the crush of demands upon them and the temptations they face daily, and one perceives a sobering truth: Marketing campaigns aimed at changing behavior face long odds.


A full-time community-relations specialist with the U.S. Jewish Federation and mother of three children ages 5 to 13, Schwartz-Getzug can’t fathom how she could find time to get to the park, much less play with her kids there. Besides, she said, “I’m not convinced that those little steps actually have an impact. ... Taking the stairs certainly does something, but it doesn’t replace what’s really needed.”


She’s what New York advertising giant McCann-Erickson Worldwide calls a “jaded can’t-doer” — a parent too busy to eat right and exercise and too discouraged to launch a lifestyle overhaul.


Not all Americans have grown overweight or suffer the health consequences of inactivity, but many share Schwartz-Getzug’s personal assessment. “I’m still relatively healthy,” she said. “But I’m not in very good shape, and I don’t feel very good.”


A walk after dinner sounds nice, she said; but, by then, it’s time to get the kids to bed. The 30 minutes of exercise a day recommended as the minimum for a healthy lifestyle? “I’m always trying to figure out where to find that, and it always comes down to less sleep,” she said.


It’s clear the straightforward approach to changing Americans’ behavior will no longer work. Simply gathering the evidence, donning the white coat, warning the public and recommending a course of action won’t cut it.


Today, campaigns to prevent HIV and AIDS, discourage smoking, fight obesity and urge cancer screenings use humor, sex and sophisticated market research. They push fitness and health using one of the advertising profession’s oldest principles: Sell the sizzle, not the steak.


These new campaigns offer encouragement by instant message, downloadable cell phone games with disease-prevention ideas, reality shows, Web sites with attitude and information, and potty humor for kids.


The federal government’s Small Steps campaign features sexy soccer moms and a paunchy man whose healthy choices have transformed him into a buff daddy.


John Riley, president of Metrix Inc., a Rochester, N.Y., marketing company, says Americans respond to messages that emphasize social acceptance and status — not scare tactics or lectures.




Coaxing positive behavior





“We need to push that emotional button that’s going to get them to pay attention with their whole body and not just with their mind,” said Riley, a former New York public health official. “That’s an element of social marketing that more public health people are getting comfortable with. Ten years ago they thought that was cheap somehow; they thought that was tawdry.”


The government is betting on “social marketing,” especially as it tackles obesity — a threat to the public’s health that can lead to diabetes, heart disease and other serious conditions and that costs the nation an estimated $117 billion annually in healthcare costs.


Recently Schwartz-Getzug overheard one of the “Let’s Just Play” messages on TV and, despite a to-do list a mile long, suggested a family outing. “Yeah, OK, Mom,” the kids replied, “as soon as this show is over.” blog comments powered by Disqus