The CDC Youth Media Campaign

Campaign Vision All youth leading healthy lifestyles Campaign Vision All youth leading healthy lifestyles. Campaign Mission To increase and maintain the number of tweens (ages 9-13) who are physically active. “Create an activity virus.” The goal of VERB is to increase and maintain the number of tweens (ages 9-13) who are physically active. We target tweens because this is the age when they are becoming independent in making decisions for themselves. IF ASKED WHY USE TV WHEN WATCHING SO MUCH TV IS A PROBLEM, SAY: If we want to reach kids, we have to go where they are! And, the reality is they are watching TV and consuming other media. The campaign aims to make physical activity an attractive alternative to excess TV, videogames, and internet use.

VERB…It’s What You do. There are over 7,000 action words in the dictionary. Everyone of them is a verb. Try a new action…find something new to do…pick a new verb that’s yours.

World class advertising companies Partner with the “big guys” Campaign strategies World class advertising companies Partner with the “big guys” In school tactics Community promotions : Longest Day of Play Doubletime Anytime Constantly changing campaign

Year One Tween & Parent Awareness 100 Year 1 goal of 50% total awareness And the early findings from our rigorous evaluation demonstrate this approach is working. We exceeded our goal of having 50% of tweens aware of the brand – our evaluation tells us about three-quarters of American tweens are aware of the VERB brand. Pleasingly, our findings also indicate parents are watching TV with their children or looking over their shoulder on the web – we have higher parent awareness of the brand than we expected. If asked about High-Dose The campaign was delivered nationally, however in 9 communities we increased the campaign activities – or gave these markets a higher dose of the campaign – such as increased local media buys, more in-market events etc. The evaluation findings indicate that tweens and parents in those high dose communities were more aware. Interestingly, and importantly for community partners, the findings seemed to indicate it was not the additional media buys that made the difference but the additional in-market activities. Partners can leverage the campaign to their benefit AND also provide the campaign added-value by executing in-market events (like VERB Summerscore Card).

Year One Behavioral Effects After one year, campaign impact was found in the reported number of free-time physical activity sessions among several important population subgroups including the nation’s: girls 9--10 year olds children from low-to-moderate income households We didn’t expect to see behavior change after just one year, however, … read slide. If asked what PA sessions are: As expected from their chronological development, tweens are not very reliable at telling you, “I spent 30 minutes engaging in moderate to vigorous activity last week.” During the national survey, if a child says, “I played basketball with my friends yesterday, and last Friday I had soccer practice, and today I went for a walk with my mom,” that is counted as 3 physical activity sessions. In the first year findings, we saw several segments of the tween audience that self-reported increased PA sessions, and our rigorous analysis indicates these effects are due to the campaign.

Parent General Market Print

African American Tween Print

Hispanic/Latino Parent Print The copy says something along the lines of physical activity is a good reason to yell at your kids.

Hispanic/Latino Tween Print

Asian American Tween Poster

Asian American Parent Print Our Asian American advertising agency tells us advertisements to reach Asian American adults in the in-language media vehicles need to be very literal. This series of ads give parents the messages that their children should be here. The ads were placed in Cantonese, Mandarin, Korean and Vietnamese, as well as English (to reach Asian Indian audience).

Native American Parent Print Our Native ads were produced depicting the various geographies of the Indian nations. This is the example of the plains region.

General Market Tween Print: “Basketball” Notice the press galley and announcers that give this backyard game the importance of televised sporting events.

General Market Tween Print: “Volleyball”

General Market Parent Print: “Grasshead”

Asian American Parent Print

“Heartbeat”

“Paddleball” This series of spots give kids the messages that activity can be by any rules, and it helps to elevate every day activity and games to the level of sports. (We know how important sports are in this country.)

“Street” This is an example of our full launch (phase I) Hispanic/Latino tween spot.

“Marco Water Polo” This is the African American spin on the “any rules, any time, any where” message. These are real kids that play in their real park.

“Hour of Power” This ad was placed in Indian Country.

“Venus Williams” Leveraging the celebrity appeal that kids are attracted to, this spot continues the “any time, any rules” messaging with Venus Williams.

For partners: cdc.gov/verb For tweens: VERBnow.com Want to Know More? For partners: cdc.gov/verb For tweens: VERBnow.com If you would like to know more, I invite you to visit the VERB campaign Web sites. You will find all of our current ads and other information about the campaign on the partnership site.