An Introduction to The Health Campaign Focused on The Danger of Distracted Driving

My health campaign focused on the danger of distracted driving, with a specific focus on phone use while behind the wheel. My target audience was teenagers from about sixteen years old to young adults. The overall success of my campaign, based off of the print advertisement and six-sided brochure, could be analyzed from a few different perspectives. The issue of phone use while driving has been a difficult problem to fix for many years. The information I had to present was not groundbreaking or brand new. The issue has become worse and more prevalent in recent years, with the introduction of the smartphone.

The topic itself has also been addressed numerous times, whether from campaigns brought to you by major brands, or by targeting students in the classroom on an educational level. The major problem is the immunity teenagers and young adults feel when texting and driving. This mindset is what my health campaign aimed to remedy. However, I do believe the campaign, if actually distributed, would produce very little change in behavior, if any at all. I would like to further analyze this claim using various models and theories we learned in this course, illustrating my predictions for the campaign’s successes and failures.

It is important to first acknowledge that a low percentage of my target audience will actually take the messages to heart. Not many teenagers or young adults would pick up a brochure about texting and driving, let alone read the entire title when coming across such a brochure. Let alone the fact that today, campaigns are much more successful when they are distributed in a more accessible manner, like television or the internet. Taking that into consideration, it’s likely that those in my target audience who do pick up and read the brochure are interested in at least being education about the issue. The print advertisement also may not be taken very seriously; just simply due to the fact that anti-texting and driving campaigns are widespread. Most everyone has seen at least one ad for such a campaign, and has been accustomed to seeing messages warning about the dangers. The extent of the campaign’s effect is also important to take into consideration. This is why I mainly chose not to use a fear-drive, because the majority of people have become almost immune to these types of advertisements. Those campaigns and videos leave their audience with a pit in their stomach, but that feeling doesn’t last for long. A person may avoid distracted driving for maybe a week or month after viewing the fear drive video, but it usually doesn’t last much longer than that. When high school students take driver’s education, they are exposed to a huge amount of devastating statistics regarding death and injury due to distracted driving. They are also shown these videos, either staged or real-life, where people are killed or injured due to someone’s distracted driving. The immediate effect of this type of persuasion is strong. After being educated of the serious, real danger, many students vow to never text and drive. Yet, years later, they end up doing it habitually. Why does this happen? The effects of the persuasion, however strong they may be at their initial impact, are not lasting for this type of issue. It’s a shame, but it’s true for a majority of my target audience. With my print advertisement image, I hoped to overcome this problem by going about the center image differently. Rather than focus on a direct fear-drive, I chose to create an image that featured the point-of-view of looking out a windshield, with various phone notification icons blocking the view. I attempted to create a sort of busy image, which draws attention to the fact that phone use while driving really does impair your ability to focus on the road in front of you. In doing this, and using familiar images, I hoped to create something that people would remember the next time they were in the driver’s seat and think about grabbing their phone. I hoped that it would make them think twice about just how much their phone activity blocks their view of the road and hinders their ability to drive. If I had an actual opportunity to make this advertisement the way I wanted it, I would have used a much more professional image with the same motive. I originally wanted the windshield to reveal an accident about to happen, with a bunch of text bubbles popped up in the way of the driver’s view, much like the icons are displayed in the image I used. Despite the attempt at being unique, I do not believe the print-ad or brochure would have produced major behavioral change for my target audience. As Charles Atkins discussed, the percentage of people who are affected by health campaigns is very low, and even at that low percentage, the amount of change is minimal.

An internal factor I was aiming for was a sort of needs appeal. When you look at the image of the cluttered windshield, it should make you nervous or anxious. The idea of things blocking you view should stress you out. I think the image itself would spark a needs appeal with my target audience when they see the image, because to drive, you need a clear view of the road and a focus on what you’re doing. The campaign overall does not really address a needs appeal, because those who already text and drive feel that they do not need to change. They are set in their ways and probably do not see a problem that needs to be fixed.

When creating a health campaign, it is always important to be cautious of possible boomerang effects. One possible boomerang effect of my campaign could be the teenage disposition to go against the rules. Teenagers who are just beginning to drive are in the point in their life where their friends may begin to peer pressure them, and it may seem cool to do the wrong thing. Seeing an ad that deems texting and driving dangerous may spark a teenager to begin doing that act more, just to spite the message and to prove that they can handle it. An example from my advertisement that may explain this further is the line “You are not the exception,” because teenagers may feel that they truly are capable of multitasking behind the wheel, making them the exception to this issue.

I do, however, feel that one successful part of my brochure, coincidentally the last thing I added, is the story of Liz. I originally listed a few startling texting and driving statistics in place of a real-life testimonial. I found this approach to be less meaningful to my target audience. Statistics don’t mean much to a teenager, even if they talk about death and injury, but actual images of a young girl affected by an accident can be powerful. I implicated identification as a way to get teenagers and young adults to associate with Liz and her story. She was just a normal high school student when her car accident occurred. Teenagers can identify with this because many of them begin driving when they are still in high school. The focus of her inclusion in the brochure is the damage to her face after the accident. That type of damage is something that will change a person’s life forever. I also stated that she became blind in one eye, lost some hearing and sense of smell, and needs medication to produce tears and fall asleep. This is the most affecting part of the entire campaign. Teenagers and young adults are often exposed to messages warning against texting and driving, but not many of those messages go into depth about what can actually happen to you if you’re involved in a car accident. I think using expressive language like this is important to properly illustrate a situation to an audience. The juxtaposition between her picture from before the accident and the pictures from after the accident definitely add to the severity of the situation.

The likelihood of peripheral processing, as opposed to central processing, is a huge factor in whether or not a campaign will be successful. Although the inner section of my brochure could be effective if applied to the public, it may not been seen by those who skim quickly past my print ad and brochure cover. My print ad may have a slightly higher chance of catching a peripheral processor due to the unique image. However, this image may also prevent people from centrally processing, because it is such an intentionally noisy image. This could come across as annoying and make someone pass on reading the actual advertisement. The text on my print-ad is also pretty small, which is not helpful in turning a peripheral processor into a central one. The action step is in a good spot for a peripheral processor to pick up on, but it is a little lengthy. Also, the last line, “You are not the exception,” seems to be out of place without much context. This, read as a secondary headline, could also be confusing. As for my brochure, with the same major headlines, the cover does nothing to catch the eye of a peripheral processor. To avoid looking too busy, I took the image from the print ad of the windshield, and removed all the icons. In the end, I knew this was not the best decision as an ad maker, but I wanted to keep the same theme throughout my campaign. I believe the inner part of the brochure could be potentially life changing to a teen who reads Liz’s story, but there’s a good chance a teen wouldn’t choose to pick up this specific brochure based on the cover and the main image.

For design strength, I could have improved on the colors and formatting of my advertisements. The black background works for the brochure, but the formatting of text did not look very professional. The print-ad used a while background, with black text and a black border, while the brochure had a black background with white text and a white border, establishing thematic unity. They also have the same general central image. The advertisements look uniform, but they could have been improved upon. The flow of my print-ad could have been fixed by making the image smaller. The action step is in a good place and stands out as the main headline, but the image would make a reader stop and focus on it for much too long. It takes up almost half the page, and overpowers the important text that lies at the bottom. In my brochure, I should have used a different image instead of the picture from the point-of-view of a texting driver. This image models the behavior I am trying to eradicate, instead of modeling the behavior I would like to advocate. This unfortunately runs the risk of norming the problem.

For my source, I chose the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. I chose this source because I thought it had the most authority to be delivering a message regarding safety on the road, and what drivers should or should not be doing. It provides high source credibility. However, the weakness in choosing the NHTSA is that my target audience does not identify with it. When a person sees their logo, I do not think it sparks any sort of emotion or connection in this case. I do not think the source would make people want to listen to what they had to say. If the message had been coming from a different source, like Apple or MTV, I think it would stop a peripheral processor to see what that source had to say.

There is no counter persuasion to combat this issue. There are no campaigns or persuaders advocating for texting while driving. The audience has not been inoculated by anyone but maybe their peers who also text and drive. This campaign is more about persuading the target audience to reconsider their abilities to multitask while behind the wheel. I believe this is a very hard target audience to address, due to the fact that people are going to do what they want. If a person texts and drives, and has always chosen to do so despite any warnings, their behavior is most likely not going to change based off of a new campaign. This age range is not very susceptible to suggestion, because they can be stubborn in their ways, in regards to young adults. The “everybody’s doing it” mentality is very prevalent in high school, which is when most teenagers start driving and their driving behavior becomes habitual. The audience I’m targeting has had a lot of prior exposure to campaigns such as mine, which makes it more likely to fail. The social judgment positions we discussed in class come into play when discussing my target audience. Many people have heavy anchor positions when it comes to texting when driving. Usually people are either sworn against the behavior, or see it as no big deal whatsoever. If you take one of those people who thinks it’s fine to text and drive, and try to change their mind too forcefully, you may push them into the latitude of rejection. If you tell someone their behavior is wrong, you automatically risk pushing them into this realm. They also may start doing the behavior even more often, just to spite the message being thrown at them. The power of a good health campaign is being able to tell someone that their behavior is wrong or harmful, and gently push them to change by telling them how to fix their behavior, and the benefits this will have. I do not believe that my campaign did this. Although it had its good aspects, it probably would have been a failed attempt at solving a problem that has already been beat to death.