VERB Campaign

Before campaign planners launched or named the campaign, they conducted research on tweens and parents to gain an understanding of their attitudes, beliefs, and behaviours related to participation in physical activity. Research included in-person focus groups, interviews, and ethnographic inquiries among multiethnic groups across the country. Additional audience research was conducted separately with African American, Hispanic/Latino, American Indian, and Asian American tweens and parents. The understandings gained contributed to the creation of VERB™, a "for tweens, by tweens" brand that is not an acronym but is the word "verb" as a part of speech, meaning an action word.

Campaign planners applied the four Ps of commercial marketing - product, price, place, and promotion - along with findings from the audience research to develop VERB™ as a social marketing campaign:

Product: The campaign's strategy was to influence participation in physical activity by associating it with benefits that tweens say they value, such as spending time with friends, playing, having fun, having an opportunity to be active with parents, and gaining recognition from peers and adults. Early VERB™ advertising stimulated curiosity about the brand and enticed tweens to identify and try the activities or VERB™s (e.g., swim, run, jump) that most appealed to them.

Price: For physical activity, the costs can be financial (e.g., price of dance classes), psychological (e.g., the tween is too embarrassed to participate in organised sports), environmental (e.g., the neighbourhood does not have sidewalks), or related to time (e.g., both parents work, leaving tweens with no time for supervised physical activity). VERB™ messages were designed to convince tweens and their parents that physical activity has the "right price" - that benefits outweigh costs.

Place: A campaign commitment was that, as interest or demand rose, parents and communities needed to increase the supply of accessible places and opportunities for tweens to be active every day. Partner organisations such as parks, schools, and youth-serving organisations were asked to participate in creating and sustaining VERB™ places, while also keeping VERB™ a "cool brand for tweens".

Promotion: To make the product of physical activity compelling and cool to tweens, VERB™ messages diverged from the "just-the-facts" delivery that is central to many public health campaigns. Rather than say, "Engage in moderate-to-vigorous physical activity for at least 60 minutes each day," the campaign asked tweens to discover new activities they like to do by showing them the options through appealing visuals. Casting for television and print ads included children of varied racial and ethnic backgrounds, body weights, and ability levels - including children with disabilities - to convey a sense of "kids like me do this" and "I can do that." VERB™ shows tweens playing backyard games in addition to participating in organised physical activities such as team sports. To sell VERB™ successfully to tweens as "their brand for having fun," the campaign associated itself with popular kids' brands, athletes, and celebrities, and activities and products that were cool, fun, and motivating. VERB™ featured positive "can do" messages, not negative adult-delivered or adult-enforced "must do" or "don't do" messages. VERB™ gave tips to parents on how to communicate to tweens and engage them in being active in creative, positive, and fun ways; facts on the health risks of inactivity were also provided in campaign messages intended for adults. All VERB™ campaign messages and the way they were presented in ads (i.e., television, radio, print) were tested with tween-aged focus groups to ensure they were motivating, clearly understood, and resonating positively. The messages were tested primarily with mothers to ensure they were acceptable and not offensive or inappropriate.

The primary vehicle for reaching into the home was paid advertising in general market and ethnic media channels. VERB™ commercials aired on age-appropriate television and radio channels; print advertising was placed in youth publications and parent publications; Spanish and Asian in-language advertising and advertorials appeared. VERB™'s media partners produced VERB™ public service announcements (PSAs) using their television talent. The VERB™ Campaign website was another medium for sharing campaign messages and materials (in English and in Spanish). On this internet resource, as in all other VERB™ media, communications for parents and tweens were separated from each other and geared specifically to each audience, as part of a strategy of maintaining tweens' positive affinity for the VERB™ brand and avoiding associating physical activity with something adults say "they have to do."

Children, Youth, Health.

Evidence cited in Preventing Chronic Disease indicates that, since the mid-1980s, the combination of decreased physical activity and unhealthful eating has resulted in a doubling of the percentage of overweight children and adolescents in the United States. Reports indicate that 5 of every 8 children aged 9 to 13 do not participate in any organised physical activity during their non-school hours, and almost 25% do not engage in any free-time physical activity. More than 1 in 7 USA children aged 6 to 19 years are overweight.