Last Week of Class!

Well I have to say that I don't think I have ever been sad for a class to end. I really enjoyed coming to this class each week and have found it to be a valuable part of my education. I echo some of the other responses that I wish I had taken this class earlier. It has given me a lot of tools that will be very useful for the rest of grad school and in my future career. Now as I am preparing presentaions for other classes I find myself thinking aout how to make it more than just a boring, typical power point presentation.

I enjoyed the lecture this week mostly because I never thought of having public health professionals at PR or advertising firms. It is a career path that I have never thought of and something to think about.

I am looking forward to the presentations and of course the food! I have enjoyed my group and think we have all work very hard on these presentations. Hope everyone has a wonderful, restful, much deserved break and a Happy New Year! See you in 2008!

Presentations!

WOW! I cannot believe how fast this semester went by. It is a little scary how quickly it all goes. I almost feel guilty becuase I feel like since I've been in school all I do is wish my life away. "I can't wait for this semester to be over" over and over again. Here I am almost seven years later and it seems like it all went by unbelievable fast. And I'm sure it doesn't slow down from here.

Anyway...enough of that. I thought the presentations are coming along fantastically. It is so great to see the different groups ideas on how to present their message. Who know so many people were so creative in our class? I am really interested to see the final projects. I just know they will be great!

Media: Friends or Foes?

This week in class we had a guest lecture from Laura Walcher public relations guru. I found her presentation to be interesting and she had some good tips about how to get the media to pay attention to your campaign. Although I have a better idea - I must admit I'm still not too sure exactly what PR entails. One thing in her presetnation that I thought was interesteing was her statement that "the media may be friendly but they are not your friends". I think this statement is so true. Just like us health communicators the members of the media have a job to do and that might mean that we will not always like what they have to say.

I liked the advise she gave us about writing press releases and also about how to follow-up. Follow-up is something that you will have to do no matter what job you have and I always tend to feel like I am being annoying when in fact I am just trying to get my job done. So I am grateful for the tips! Another point Laura made was about being informed about what is going on in the news. I wish there was a one stop shop that has all the information I needed! It can be so overwhelming to try and follow what is going on in the world. It is so importatnt to be informed but also challenging when you already have limited time. I am going to try to be better about this one - although I'm not making any promises!

Message Strategies

After seeing the "teasers" for the projects I am really excited to see the end result for all the groups. I like that we have the mini projects to help us get started and also so you can see where all the other groups are and what they are doing. I know all of the projects are going to turn out great and be really interesting!

This week's topic in class was message strategies. We talked about ways to frame the message and different ways to get your message across like using humor or fear. Personally I think that fear is a pretty effective way to get people to pay attnetion to the message. It relates to "wrong reason" health promotion in that people will sometimes change a behavior in order to avoid a negative effect. Fear may even be pretty effective for our project. If people believe that climate change is an issue they may be "scared" into changing small things around them to impact the threat to our world. It is such a chellenge to get people to pay attention to your message out of the thousands they are bombarded with everyday so it is important to be a little creative!

Mean Joe Greene

So even though this is totally unrealated to health communication I thought this was kind of cool. I work at the University of San Diego as an athletic trainer and we had a special guest at practice on Wednesday - NFL Hall of Famer Joe Greene. Now he was pretty much done playing by the time I was born but as a sports fan I thought it was cool to have such a memorable player come to practice and talk to our guys. Below is the Superbowl Commercial with Joe Greene. Check it out!

Time Flies When You Are Having Fun!

Well we are now done with module two and in the middle of the semester! It is amazing how fast the time goes by...and it's a little scary when you are working on your thesis! = ) I really enjoyed this part of the class. I thought it was great to find ways to reach your audience. As health communicators we always know the message we want to put out there but how do we know it is being recieved? It is great to have tools like PRIZM and VALS that we can use to try to figure out what kind of message our target audience will listen to.

The most interesting part was looking at geography when segmenting your audience. I guess I just never really thought about it before that people who live by the beach may not value the same things that people that live in the suburbs or the city do. There are probably a lot of similarities but some differences that could be important when trying to provide health information. So far this class has been very interesting and valuable - I even kind of like blogging now! But don't tell anyone! I'm looking forward to getting some good info from these projects and finishing up the class.

Defining Our Audience

This week in class we discussed segmentation tools that can be used to identify characteristics of your target audience. We used VALS and PRIZM specifically. The VALS survey (Values, Attitudes and Lifestyles) was more geared toward consumer habits and the PRIZM tool looks at neighborhood make-up by zip code. My VALS type is an Experiencer which actual described me pretty accurately. According to the description I am an avid consumer that spends money on fashion and entertainment, and I am an impulsive consumer (Sounds right huh - Mom and Dad?!). I really enjoyed taking this survey and thought it was an interesting tool for audience segmentation.

I invite the rest of you to try this out!
http://www.sric-bi.com/VALS/presurvey.shtml

The PRIZM tool looks at neighborhoods by zip code. After looking up Pacific Beach I got the typical sterotypes of a beach town. Singles, athletic people, young professionals. I think these types of tools could be very useful when developing campaigns. Not only can we use it to learn more about our own neihborhoods but we can use it for our audiences too.

Here is the web address so you can try it out.
http://www.claritas.com/MyBestSegments/Default.jsp?ID=20&id1=1027&id3=92154

Finally, I want to mention that I am excited to get working on our projects! I am in the Climate Control group and I think it will be interesting to learn about the environment and how to protect it. I have been trying to do things to be "green" but I want to learn more! So hopefully I will have some good stuff to share with all of you soon.

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Spill Your Guts

This week in class we discussed our "Spill Your Guts: Part 1" assignment. For those not in the class, this is an assignment that we did to see how many strangers (a minimum of three) you can get to spill their guts to you by using the formative research skills we learned in class two weeks ago. A lot of people had some great stories about how they were able to get perfect strangers to have a conversation with them. Now I am going to be honest, I didn't talk to three people. I only did this once. I happen to find small talk with strangers one of the most awkward situations!

But I decided to give it a try again this week with "Spill Your Guts: Part 2". As an athletic trainer at USD I travel with the teams to away games - right now the football team. This week we are in beautiful Indianapolis, Indiana to play Butler University! Coming out here on Thursday our flight was delayed two hours so I thought it was the perfect opportunity to get someone to spill their guts. So I started talking! Now this time I kind of cheated because I was talking to my own athletes - but on a team of 95 there is no way for me to know every player well so I chose ones that I don't talk to very much (mostly freshman!). The goal this week was to get people to talk about their health. I must admit that I am probably at an advantage as medical personnel but everyone I talked to just opened right up!

Then I started thinking about it and I realized that even people that are not athletes at USD and I don't know well ask me very random questions when they find out that I am an athletic trainer. And while it is flattering that people think I know a lot - I am not a doctor and don't know everything! = ) Half of the time I can't even answer their question and tell them to call their physician. I think it is so interesting that as soon as people find out that you know a little bit more about the body or health than they do that they are very open about their own health. I think we could use this to our advantage when doing formative research. As long as people are comfortable with us they will tell us whatever we want to know! Of course after we convince them that we know what we are talking about! So this just may be another tool for our formative research toolbox!

Where Did Our Message Go?

On Tuesday morning I was reading the newspaper at work and I came across an article titled TV Ads Promote Poor Diet.

http://www.signonsandiego.com/uniontrib/20070918/news_lz1c18notes.html
My immediate reaction was "No kidding!" Now I know it's been awhile since I've watched Saturday morning cartoons (being a kid was so fun!) but I can remember seeing commercials for Lucky Charms and Captain Crunch, Lunchables, Gushers, Kool-Aid, and Squeeze-Its (remember those sugary drinks - BTW there is a petition on the Internet to bring them back!).

Of course not all kids are going to pay attention to all of these commercials but I think it would be a safe bet to say that a lot of kids remember most of these messages. This is their means of health communication for nutrition. No wonder we are in a battle against obesity!

I remember being in elementary school and wanting my mom to pack me a better lunch (meaning more sugary treats) because no one would trade with me at lunchtime. Now I'm glad that she didn't buy all the food I saw advertised on TV during Saturday morning cartoons! It's interesting that I don't notice these ads as much anymore. I'm sure they are still being run but I just don't choose to pay attention anymore.

This brings us to one of the topics we discussed in class on Monday - selectivity. Meaning we choose where to put our attention based on personal relevance. We are constantly bombarded by so many messages that it would be impossible to pay attention to all of them, so we only pay attention to certain ones. After thinking about it I realized that I must pass a lot of billboards when I'm driving and I can only think of one. There is a Sycuan billboard on the 94 East that I always notice - maybe I'm intrigued with the possibility of going there and winning lots of money! Which probably wouldn't happen - but the advertisers are doing a good job of appealing to people similar to myself (a poor college student)! This presents an interesting challenge for us health communicators. Just because our message is out there does not mean it is being heard! It is probably hidden under the flashy casino ads and cartoon cereal commercials just hoping for someone to choose to pay attention to it!

Going Through the Front Door

This week in class we discussed ways to help get our message as health communicators across to our target population. We discussed ways that advertisers use - does sex, beauty, fame and money sound familiar to anyone? Obviously that technique is effective but is it something we should be using as health communicators? Part of me feels that if it is going to grab the attnetion of people them yes, we should utilize these tools. But are we manipulating our popluation?

We also did a lab in class that got us thinking about planning health communication campaigns. Our group was working with teens and physical avtivty. We chose to target 8th grade females and so of course we chose Hannah Montana as our spokeswoman.
For those of you that do not know who she is I've posted a picture above! Of course it is not realistic that a celebrity would always be the source of the message. But wouldn't it be great if we had the means to have a well-know, influential person be a part of our messages. Maybe it wouldn't always lead to a behavior change but it sure would grab people's attention. So if sex, beauty, fame, and money are effective tools for advertisers, who says they can't be effective for health communicators?

http://www.whudafxup.com/?ref=http://www.protectthetruth.org/truthcampaign.htm

In class on Monday we watched a video produced by the CDC that showed how health communication has changed throughout the last 50 years. It was very interesting to see the different health related issues from past years that are still relevant today. After I went home I started thinking about one issue in particular...smoking. It is amazing to me that not only do people continue to smoke but that more people begin smoking everyday. With the amount of knowledge we have about the health effects for the smoker and those around the smoker how can this continue to be a problem?

Then it occurred to me that smoking can still be viewed as "cool", "sexy" or "glamorous". Above I posted a link to a commercial from "the truth" anti-smoking campaign. According to their website www.protectthetruth.com, 21 million U.S. youth aged 12-17 can describe at least one "truth" ad and 25 million or 90% from this age group said the ad they saw was convincing. So if these ads are working why does it seem like there are so many smokers in the world? Are non-smokers like myself just more sensitive to smokers around them? It seems like hardly a day goes by that I don't get smoked on by someone! I guess the question is how do we get people to view smoking in the way it is portrayed on the truth ads and not as it is sometimes seen in the entertainment industry? As we talked about in class entertainment is one of the biggest ways that health is communicated. Until smoking is no longer associated with being cool or sexy we may be fighting an uphill battle.