VERB Campaign

Case Study on CDC’s VERB Campaign

The Issue
Today’s youth spend less time being physically active and tend to exchange physical for sedentary play. So it is no surprise that an estimated 9 million U.S. children are considered obese. According to the Center for Disease Control (CDC) website, childhood obesity is on the rise and research shows that being overweight in childhood can increase one’s risk for Type 2 diabetes, high blood pressure, sleep apnea and gall bladder disease. Self-reported data indicates that almost one quarter of children 9-13 years of age engage in no free-time physical activity during a typical week.

MaThe Social rketing Campaign

“VERB™ It’s what you do” was a national, multicultural, social marketing campaign coordinated by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). Launched in 2002, the VERB campaign used a combination of paid advertisements with school and community promotions in addition to interactive Internet activities to encourage children 9-13 years of age, popularly known as “tweens” to be physically active every day. The program spanned across a multi-ethnic audience with several campaigns targeting different ethnic groups including African American and Latin American populations. This case study will look at how the VERB campaign’s strategy was implemented and directed towards achieving these goals and determine if the campaign was ultimately successful in the face of this growing problem.

Research

The nationwide issue of childhood obesity has been extensively covered in the media and during the late 1990s, a greater effort to educate the general public about the issue was made. This was not by any means a new issue, but an issue that needed to be addressed in a new way. The government proposed that a social marketing campaign be implemented that would address this issue and prompt behavioral change. The Youth Media Campaign Longitudinal Survey (YMCLS) is an annual national telephone survey of young people, ages 9 to 13 years, and their parents. Working with research corporation Westat, CDC designed the YMCLS to measure the physical activity-related beliefs, attitudes and behaviors of youth and their parents and to monitor youth exposure to the VERB campaign. Survey results guide the campaign's evolution and provide important information about the impact of the VERB campaign. They administered the first YMCLS (YMCLS 2002) during spring 2002 before the launch of the national VERB campaign, to provide the baseline for future studies. The baseline YMCLS 2002 was administered to more than 3,000 9-13 year olds and their parents nationally.

In their research, the CDC found that one of the many factors that contributed to low levels of physical activity among tweens is a media-dominated lifestyle. According to a Kaiser Family Foundation Study, on average, children 8-18 years of age spend more than 3 hours per day watching television. The irony of this statistic is that in this pervasive media environment, an opportunity arises to advertise the benefits of a healthy, physically active lifestyle. While this type of media intervention had previously been directed towards adults, a media campaign towards children appeared to be a potentially successful approach.

Previous evaluations of media campaigns that targeted adults showed effects on awareness, attitudes, and beliefs, but results for behavioral changes had been inconsistent. Additionally, the CDC found that achieving behavioral changes required very high levels of awareness, which are difficult to achieve without substantial investment. It is also difficult to measure behavioral change when competing trends or “noise” from other interventions can cloud the findings.
The CDC noted that the primary audience that should be targeted in order for this type of campaign to be effective are the kids themselves, specifically the “tween” set, namely 9-13 year-olds. The parents of these children will serve as the secondary audience in outreach efforts. Why tweens? The CDC recognized that it is at this age that children become more independent from their parents in their decision-making processes, although some influence is still apparent. If behavioral change can occur during this critical time in socialization-child development into teenagers-it may carry over to the later adolescent years when the numbers of non-active teens rises even higher.

VERB’s Vision, Mission, and Goals

VERB’s vision is for all youth to lead healthy lifestyles and their mission was to increase and maintain physical activity among tweens. The goals of VERB were multi-faceted and look to achieve behavioral changes in addition to informing their audience of the importance of daily activity. The VERB Goals (as listed on the CDC website) were to:
1) Increase knowledge and improve attitudes and beliefs about tweens’ regular participation in physical activity.
2) Increase parental and influencer support and encouragement of tweens’ participation in physical activity.
3) Heighten awareness of options and opportunities for tween participation in physical activity.
4) Facilitate opportunities for tweens to participate in regular physical activity.
5) Increase and maintain the number of tweens who regularly participate in physical activity.

Federal funding for VERB during the initial start up was $125 million. The audience reached was 21 million, which worked out to about $6 per child per year. This number decreased each year, though for the campaign run, funding totaled approximately $350 million in 5 years. In reality, this funding pales in comparison to the billions the food industry spends targeting children.

Pre-testing

The VERB campaign acknowledged that trends change and what motivates the tween sect can change fairly regularly, so the campaign relied on extensive formative research to drive the content, tone, and execution of the campaign. To do this, they consistently reviewed existing and new research, conducted primary audience research with tweens, parents, and influencers such as educators and youth leaders, local, state, and national organizational needs and reviewed other campaigns that targeted tweens. Doing this gave the CDC a better understanding of the beliefs, desires, and practices of the target audiences as they develop concepts and messages. Before new campaign advertising was launched, concept testing was conducted to validate the communication strategy. For more complete information on the pre-testing methods and formative research implemented for this campaign, visit http://www.cdc.gov/youthcampaign/research/formative.htm.

Implementation

The VERB campaign aimed to reach its audience through a variety of media channels, including paid advertisements, Saturday morning television programming, and a highly interactive website. The campaign derived the name for the campaign, VERB, from the action that any “verb” connotates. Television advertising, mainly on cable channels that target the tween audience, including Disney and Nickelodeon, served as their primary message vehicle. These 15-30 second spots featured different verbs such as “bounce,” which showed children and celebrities bouncing balls or on trampolines, and encouraged kids to “find their verb.” Simply, the program promoted physical activity of any variety that got kids off the couch and busy being active outdoors.

The campaign’s website (http://www.cdc.gov/youthcampaign/) served as a portal to a plethora of programs aimed at tweens, their parents, and their educators. The website offered specific tool kits of their various programs, and contained website for both adults and for tweens. Both of these sites also had Spanish-language counterparts to reach diverse populations.
The tween-specific website (http://www.verbnow.com/) was a flurry of interactive components that included the ability to create virtual character identities and blog about their physical fitness activities. The site offered a virtual “playground” that included jokes, games, and Playlibs for kids to explore, with the ending message of taking this knowledge to the real playground in your neighborhood. The site enabled this by providing a search mechanism to look for playgrounds and recreational activities by zip code.

To follow is a brief explanation of the many programs VERB offered to help change the behavior of the tween population. The majority of these programs targeted tweens from their teen friendly website: http://www.verbnow.com/.

Verb Yellowball

The VERB Yellowball was the campaign’s most visible program. The premise of the Yellowball was to pass the knowledge on, where tweens were encouraged to get out and play with the yellowball with their friends, and then blog about its whereabouts. One of the later celebrities to get onboard the yellowball bandwagon was Hillary Duff. Through the tween website, visitors could view photographs of her with the yellowball as well as read her blog about getting physically active. As the tween sect tends to be greatly influenced by what is “cool” and their idols, using Hillary’s celebrity status and influence was a key motivator to tweens. Community groups and academic institutions could also obtain toolkits for implementing this campaign with their youth by visiting the CDC website.

VERB Make It Up and VERB Crossover

The campaign recognized the difficulty in maintaining interest and motivation to be physically active amongst children. These two campaigns drew from the active imagination of this age group and encouraged them to develop new and exciting ways to get active. Whether it meant combining two sports such as basketball and volleyball to invent a new game, or encouraging kids to play traditional games with a creative twist, both of these activities motivated children’s minds and bodies. Start-up kits for community-based organizations and recreational facilities were made available from the CDC.

Evaluation

The VERB campaign came to a close in the Fall of 2006 after a five-year run at attacking childhood obesity through a large-scale mass media campaign. A longitudinal, quasi-experimental study was conducted of the campaign’s first year to determine the effectiveness of the campaign to increase physical activity among children. A random sample of children and parents were surveyed in April-June 2002, before the launch of the VERB advertising campaign. This same group of individuals was surveyed again in April-June 2003, after the campaign had been visible to the public for one year. This study was published in Pediatrics, the official journal of the American Academy of Pediatrics.

After the first year of implementation, the VERB campaign was very successful in achieving high levels of awareness and understanding the importance of free-time physical activity. The study showed that 74% of children surveyed were aware of the VERB campaign. This was 24 percentage points above the goal for awareness (50%) that the campaign had expressed at the beginning of the campaign. By achieving this type of awareness and understanding early on, the campaign paved the way for later influence on children’s attitudes and behaviors. There was a definite causal link between activity levels of those aware of the VERB campaign from those who were unaware. Specifically, the VERB campaign resulted in 34% more free-time physical activity among the informed vs. the uninformed.

The results of this study indicated that this campaign saw more success and influence over 9 & 10 year-olds. VERB’s influence with this younger tween population could be a result of the key messaging of the first year of the campaign and its focus on social and friendship aspects of physical activity, stating “getting active is fun.” Advertisements developed for the subsequent program years placed a larger influence on the mastery, inclusiveness and fun competition that resonates more soundly with 11 to 13 year-old youth.

The research concluded that the VERB campaign was extremely successful in its first year. The campaign achieved high levels of awareness and higher levels of physical activity reported for U.S. children after implementation. The results of this study ultimately showed that promoting physical activity with child-focused commercial advertising was a highly effective way of reaching the tween market. Future research on this campaign should include an analysis of the multi-media approach of their website in conjunction with the television advertising campaigns and programming.

For additional information on the VERB campaign, visit http://www.cdc.gov/youthcampaign/.