Campaign Title:
Don't Be Fooled: The Truth About Fruit Drinks
Produced For:
University of Washington
Topics:
Nutrition: Unhealthy food/drink, Nutrition: Healthy food/drink
Audiences:
Adults, Females, Hispanic/Latino, Males, General Audiences, Parents, Children Under 12, Decision Makers
Goals:
To decrease the purchases of fruit drinks by parents for their children and increasing the purchase of water.
Strategy:
The campaign uses counter-marketing approaches to increase awareness of deceptive marketing of fruit drinks by sharing knowledge of harmful health effects of fruit drinks, and weakens brand favorability and trust. It also presents a healthier alternative to drink water instead.
Results:
The initial messages were tested in 5 focus groups across the US with 45 Latino parents of children ages 0-5. Parents responded most positively to messages that provided fact-based fruit drink information from reputable sources, included healthy beverage alternatives to fruit drinks, employed fear-based scare tactics connecting fruit drinks to negative health consequences (e.g., rotten teeth, diabetes, obesity), and called out beverage industry deceptive marketing practices using misleading health claims (e.g., “natural”). Parents were surprised by how unhealthy fruit drinks were for children and described feeling compelled to change their purchasing habits. Parents felt these types of messages were memorable, convincing, and likely to influence them to reduce fruit drink purchases. After the campaign was launched, we assessed recall and perceptions of messages. They felt the messages conveyed important information that they were likely to talk about.
