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Finding the keys to successful adult-targeted advertisements on obesity prevention: an experimental audience testing study
BACKGROUND: Mass media communications are an important component of comprehensive interventions to address population levels of overweight and obesity, yet we have little understanding of the effective characteristics of specific advertisements (ads) on this topic. This study aimed to quantitatively...
Autores principales: | , , , , , , , |
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Formato: | Online Artículo Texto |
Lenguaje: | English |
Publicado: |
BioMed Central
2015
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Materias: | |
Acceso en línea: | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4546051/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26290169 http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s12889-015-2159-6 |
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author | Dixon, Helen Scully, Maree Durkin, Sarah Brennan, Emily Cotter, Trish Maloney, Sarah O’Hara, Blythe J. Wakefield, Melanie |
author_facet | Dixon, Helen Scully, Maree Durkin, Sarah Brennan, Emily Cotter, Trish Maloney, Sarah O’Hara, Blythe J. Wakefield, Melanie |
author_sort | Dixon, Helen |
collection | PubMed |
description | BACKGROUND: Mass media communications are an important component of comprehensive interventions to address population levels of overweight and obesity, yet we have little understanding of the effective characteristics of specific advertisements (ads) on this topic. This study aimed to quantitatively test audience reactions to existing adult-focused public health television ads addressing overweight and obesity to determine which ads have the highest levels of message acceptance, argument strength, personalised perceived effectiveness and negative emotional impact. METHODS: 1116 Australian adults aged 21-55 years recruited from a national online panel participated in this web-based study. Quotas were applied to achieve even numbers of males and females, those aged 21-29 years and 30-55 years, and those with a healthy weight (BMI = 18.5-24.9) and overweight/obesity (BMI = 25+). Participants were randomly assigned to view and rate four of eight ads that varied in terms of message content (health consequences, supportive/encouraging or social norms/acceptability) and execution style (graphic, simulation/animation, positive or negative testimonial, or depicted scene). RESULTS: Toxic fat (a graphic, health consequences ad) was the top performing ad on all four outcome measures and was significantly more likely than the other ads tested to promote strong responses in terms of message acceptance, argument strength and negative emotional impact. Measure up (a negative testimonial, health consequences ad) performed comparably on personalised perceived effectiveness. Most ads produced stronger perceptions of personalised perceived effectiveness among participants with overweight/obesity compared to participants with healthy weight. Some ads were more likely to promote strong negative emotions among participants with overweight/obesity. CONCLUSIONS: Findings provide preliminary evidence of the most promising content and executional styles of ads that could be pursued as part of obesity prevention campaigns. Ads emphasising the negative health consequences of excess weight appear to elicit stronger cognitive and emotional responses from adults with overweight/obesity. However, careful pre-testing of these types of ads is needed prior to their inclusion in actual campaigns to ensure they do not have unintended negative impacts such as increased stigmatisation of vulnerable individuals and increased levels of body dissatisfaction and/or eating-disordered behaviour among at-risk population sub-groups. ELECTRONIC SUPPLEMENTARY MATERIAL: The online version of this article (doi:10.1186/s12889-015-2159-6) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users. |
format | Online Article Text |
id | pubmed-4546051 |
institution | National Center for Biotechnology Information |
language | English |
publishDate | 2015 |
publisher | BioMed Central |
record_format | MEDLINE/PubMed |
spelling | pubmed-45460512015-08-23 Finding the keys to successful adult-targeted advertisements on obesity prevention: an experimental audience testing study Dixon, Helen Scully, Maree Durkin, Sarah Brennan, Emily Cotter, Trish Maloney, Sarah O’Hara, Blythe J. Wakefield, Melanie BMC Public Health Research Article BACKGROUND: Mass media communications are an important component of comprehensive interventions to address population levels of overweight and obesity, yet we have little understanding of the effective characteristics of specific advertisements (ads) on this topic. This study aimed to quantitatively test audience reactions to existing adult-focused public health television ads addressing overweight and obesity to determine which ads have the highest levels of message acceptance, argument strength, personalised perceived effectiveness and negative emotional impact. METHODS: 1116 Australian adults aged 21-55 years recruited from a national online panel participated in this web-based study. Quotas were applied to achieve even numbers of males and females, those aged 21-29 years and 30-55 years, and those with a healthy weight (BMI = 18.5-24.9) and overweight/obesity (BMI = 25+). Participants were randomly assigned to view and rate four of eight ads that varied in terms of message content (health consequences, supportive/encouraging or social norms/acceptability) and execution style (graphic, simulation/animation, positive or negative testimonial, or depicted scene). RESULTS: Toxic fat (a graphic, health consequences ad) was the top performing ad on all four outcome measures and was significantly more likely than the other ads tested to promote strong responses in terms of message acceptance, argument strength and negative emotional impact. Measure up (a negative testimonial, health consequences ad) performed comparably on personalised perceived effectiveness. Most ads produced stronger perceptions of personalised perceived effectiveness among participants with overweight/obesity compared to participants with healthy weight. Some ads were more likely to promote strong negative emotions among participants with overweight/obesity. CONCLUSIONS: Findings provide preliminary evidence of the most promising content and executional styles of ads that could be pursued as part of obesity prevention campaigns. Ads emphasising the negative health consequences of excess weight appear to elicit stronger cognitive and emotional responses from adults with overweight/obesity. However, careful pre-testing of these types of ads is needed prior to their inclusion in actual campaigns to ensure they do not have unintended negative impacts such as increased stigmatisation of vulnerable individuals and increased levels of body dissatisfaction and/or eating-disordered behaviour among at-risk population sub-groups. ELECTRONIC SUPPLEMENTARY MATERIAL: The online version of this article (doi:10.1186/s12889-015-2159-6) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users. BioMed Central 2015-08-20 /pmc/articles/PMC4546051/ /pubmed/26290169 http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s12889-015-2159-6 Text en © Dixon et al. 2015 Open Access This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated. |
spellingShingle | Research Article Dixon, Helen Scully, Maree Durkin, Sarah Brennan, Emily Cotter, Trish Maloney, Sarah O’Hara, Blythe J. Wakefield, Melanie Finding the keys to successful adult-targeted advertisements on obesity prevention: an experimental audience testing study |
title | Finding the keys to successful adult-targeted advertisements on obesity prevention: an experimental audience testing study |
title_full | Finding the keys to successful adult-targeted advertisements on obesity prevention: an experimental audience testing study |
title_fullStr | Finding the keys to successful adult-targeted advertisements on obesity prevention: an experimental audience testing study |
title_full_unstemmed | Finding the keys to successful adult-targeted advertisements on obesity prevention: an experimental audience testing study |
title_short | Finding the keys to successful adult-targeted advertisements on obesity prevention: an experimental audience testing study |
title_sort | finding the keys to successful adult-targeted advertisements on obesity prevention: an experimental audience testing study |
topic | Research Article |
url | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4546051/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26290169 http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s12889-015-2159-6 |
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