Serious Changes

Serious. Changes. Oh boy. Give me your thoughts, friends:

• FE: Michigan Steps Up!
• Competence: Motivation to live a healthier lifestyle
• Goals:
• Reduce smoking
• Reduce overweight/obesity rates
• Increase rates of physical activity
• Increase amount of healthy eating
• Time Frame: 5 years
• Category: Health information providers
• Customer Definition: Current user of Michigan Steps Up! materials
• MO: Acquisition
• SV: Stimulate demand
• Bodies: Frequent fast food purchasers (10 or more times a month)
• Beliefs: 
• Before: Cooking takes too much time/is too hard. I'm going to stop at McDonald's on the way home.
• After: Cooking is easy and fun.
• Behaviors:
• Before: I'm going to stop at McDonald's on the way home.
• I'd rather cook than eat fast food.
• Benefits:
• Weight loss (potential)
• Reduced health care costs (potential)
• Family time (potential)
• Better health
• Key Competitors: physicians, weight loss programs, supported and unsupported information (think Internet)
• Main Variable: Convienence
• Dynamic Variable: Ease of use
• Communications Plan: Basic awareness or information (must educate customers on both new brand and category)

Michigan Steps Up!'s Communications Objective

Since the target audience already wants to be healthier, the objective and measure focus will be on behavior, actually eating a healthy meal. One of the drawbacks of the Michigan Steps Up! campaign is that, to my knowledge, data was not collected on eating or exercising behaviors prior to the campaign. Of course, from secondary data (that 61% obese or overweight statistic) we can assert that eating and exercising behaviors needed to be changed, but surveying Michiganders on their current habits could have better directed the communications objective.

If this campaign's communication objective had been top of mind awareness, then they failed miserably. I suppose I can't say that with certainty, but at least very few of my classmates recognize this 5-year campaign. Nor did it encompass the consumption culture. It could have incorporated its materials to better fit healthy eating into the busy lives held by its target audience. While it offered snacking tips and recipes, it didn't do much for the single mother who works full time and has two kids. Nor did it do much for the middle-aged man who drives an hour to work every day and when he comes home, is faced with household and family duties.

Fortunately, this campaign neither chose to use an information communications objective. It's been tried and tested, telling people that fast food is bad for their health does nothing to encourage them to make healthy meals. Nothing.

This campaign may or may not have been successful with an image communications objective. The FE doesn't have awareness or information working for it, but MDCH has great credibility.

Regardless, I believe the Michigan Steps Up! campaign went for a behavioral communications objective. It's a call to action to eat healthier. Although I couldn't find a copy of the Michigan Steps Up! ad, I believe the campaign might have been based off the larger HHS SmallSteps campaign. Here's one of their ads.

Michigan Steps Up!'s Product

Product: Michigan Steps Up! Web site
Attributes:

• Search (can be evaluated prior to consumption):  Tips, recipes, health assessment plan, program to map out increased activity/healthy eating goals
• Experience (can be evaluated after consumption): Lack of bloated feeling, more energy, weight loss
• Credence (cannot be evaluated even after consumption): Attractiveness, healthiness

*Note: For this campaign, experience and credence attributes may not take place immediately. One of the difficulties in "selling" healthy behavior is that most of the time you cannot see or feel their benefit, and if you can, it takes too long.

Customer Definition Redefinded

So, what I wrote about Ted in my 5-box actually doesn't really describe his as well as it could for this marketing evaluation. After spending time in class going through Pinar's customer definition, I now understand that every sentence needs to relate to my target customer's wants, needs, beliefs and values. It should tell me my source of volume (whether I need to stimulate demand or steal my competitor's customers), as well as my marketing objective (my ideal customer - a Ted that eats healthy). So, I've re-described Ted. Give me your thoughts. (It's a little on the obvious side, but I'm an amateur.)

Ted drives a 45-minute commute to his middle management position at a firm in the city every day. Working long hours during the week, Ted often stops for dinner at the McDonald’s directly between his work and home. Ted likes to spend his weekends fixing up the house and playing with his 5-year-old twin daughters. Ted’s wife, June, also works full time and between their jobs and their children, neither Ted nor June find much time to cook. In fact, Ted has never cooked much more than macaroni and cheese and hot dogs in his entire life, but he does enjoy good cooking. Ted knows he’s overweight, but his weight hasn’t increased in the past six months so he’s not very concerned. Jim would like to be healthier, but the demands of work and his family are more important and too fatiguing to consider the extra efforts required to cook healthy meals.

4 B's Worksheet

Um, can we take a step back to Sources of Volume please? My usual tactic of ignoring what I don't understand and blindly plowing ahead is not so successful right now. It's going to be difficult to correctly do my segmentation, targeting and positioning without correctly identifying bodies, beliefs, behaviors and benefits.

Give me your thoughts, people. Am I earning share or am I earning share?

Value Props Worksheet

Feedback welcome!

Market vs Public Health: Compare & Contrast Segmentation

In Christine Nordhielm's book, Marketing Management: The Big Picture, support for segmentation argues that the more defined an audience is, the more likely you'll be able to convert them all to the attitude/behavior you want them to hold.

I can't help but think how we use this concept in public health initiatives. Instead of the terms "customer definition" and "main variable" we use "cultural competence" and "beliefs" and "barriers/benefits." When we implement a public health program, we segment our audience just as a market does its. The difference is that while a market can go after the single segment it's interested in, a public health practitioner must identify the beliefs, barriers and benefits of each segment and do them all well.