My health campaign focused on the dangers of distracted driving, with a specific focus on phone use while behind the wheel. My target audience was teenagers aged around sixteen to young adults. The overall success of my campaign, based on the print advertisement and six-sided brochure, could be analyzed from several perspectives. The issue of using your phone while driving has been a difficult problem to solve for many years. The information I had to present was not revolutionary or brand new. The problem has gotten worse and worse in recent years, with the introduction of smartphones. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an original essay The topic itself has also been addressed numerous times, both through campaigns proposed by big brands, and by addressing students in the classroom in an educational level program. The main problem is the immunity that teenagers and young adults feel when texting and driving. This mentality is what my health campaign aimed to remedy. However, I believe that the campaign, if actually deployed, would produce very little, if any, change in behavior. I would like to further analyze this statement using various models and theories we have learned in this course, illustrating my predictions about the successes and failures of the campaign. It's important to first recognize 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 pamphlet about texting and driving, let alone read the entire title when they come across such a pamphlet. Not to mention that campaigns today are much more successful when they are distributed in a more accessible way, such as television or the Internet. Taking this into consideration, those in my target audience who pick up and read the brochure are likely to be at least interested in being informed about the topic. Even print advertising may not be taken very seriously; simply because anti-texting and anti-driving campaigns are widespread. Almost everyone has seen at least one advertisement for a campaign of this type and is accustomed to seeing messages that warn of dangers. It is also important to consider the scale of the campaign's effect. This is why I primarily chose not to use the fear drive, because most people have become almost immune to this type of advertising. Those campaigns and videos leave audiences with a pit in their stomach, but that feeling doesn't last long. A person can avoid distracted driving for perhaps a week or a month after seeing the fear video, but it usually doesn't last much longer. When high school students take a driving course, they are exposed to a huge amount of devastating statistics regarding death and injuries due to distracted driving. Also shown are these videos, both simulated and real, where people are killed or injured due to someone's distracted driving. The immediate effect of this type of persuasion is strong. After being informed of the serious and real danger, many students vow to never text or drive. Yet, years later, they end up doing it habitually. Why does this happen? The effects of persuasion, however strong they may be at their initial impact, are not long-lasting for these types of issues. It's unfortunate, but it's true for most of my target audience. With my publicity image in print, I hopedto overcome this problem by analyzing the central image differently. Rather than focus on a direct wave of fear, I chose to create an image that represented the point of view of someone looking out of a windshield, with various phone notification icons blocking the view. I tried to create a sort of busy image, one that draws attention to the fact that using your phone while driving really impairs your ability to focus on the road ahead.You. By doing so, and using familiar images, I hoped to create something that people would remember the next time they found themselves in the driver's seat and thought about reaching for their phone. I hoped this would make them think twice about how much phone activity blocks their vision of the road and hinders their ability to drive. If I had the actual opportunity to make this ad the way I wanted it, I would have used a much more professional image with the same motif. I originally wanted the windshield to reveal an accident about to happen, with a series of text bubbles appearing in the driver's view, just like the icons appear in the image I used. Despite trying to be unique, I don't think the print ad or brochure would have produced a major behavioral change for my target audience. As discussed by Charles Atkins, the percentage of people affected by health campaigns is very low, and even at this low percentage, the magnitude of change is minimal. An internal factor I was aiming for was a sort of appeal to needs. When you look at the picture of the messy windshield, it should make you nervous or anxious. The idea of things blocking your vision should stress you out. I think the image itself would appeal to the needs of my target audience when they see the image, because driving requires a clear view of the road and concentration on what you are doing. The campaign overall doesn't really respond to a call to need, because those who are already texting and driving feel they don't need to change. They are set in their ways and probably don't see a problem that needs solving. When creating a health campaign, it is always important to pay attention to possible boomerang effects. A possible boomerang effect of my campaign could be the predisposition of teenagers to go against the rules. Teens who have just started driving are at a time in their lives where their friends may start to put pressure on them and it may feel good to do the wrong thing. Seeing an ad that deems texting and driving dangerous can push a teen to start doing that act more, just to spite the message and to show that they can handle it. An example from my advertisement that can further explain this concept is the phrase “You are not an exception”, because teenagers may believe that they are truly capable of multitasking behind the wheel, making them an exception to this problem. However, I think a successful part of my brochure, coincidentally the last thing I added, is Liz's story. I had initially listed some amazing text messages and driving statistics in lieu of a real life testimony. I found this approach less meaningful to my target audience. Statistics don't mean much to a teenager, even if they talk about death and injuries, but real images of a little girl in an accident can be powerful. I implied 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 accident happenedby car. Teens can relate to this because many of them start driving when they are still in high school. The focus of its inclusion in the brochure is the damage to the face after the accident. This type of damage is something that will change a person's life forever. I also stated that she has become blind in one eye, has lost some of her hearing and sense of smell, and requires medication to produce tears and fall asleep. This is the most touching part of the entire campaign. Teens and young adults are often exposed to messages that warn against texting and driving, but not many of these messages delve into what can actually happen to you if you are involved in a car accident. I think using expressive language like this is important to adequately illustrate a situation to the audience. The juxtaposition between his pre-accident photo and the post-accident photos definitely adds to the severity of the situation. The probability of peripheral processing, compared to central processing, is a huge factor in whether or not a campaign succeeds. While the inside section of my brochure might be effective when applied to the public, it may not be seen by those who quickly skim through my print ad and brochure cover. My print ad may have a slightly higher chance of catching an edge processor due to the unique image. However, this image can also prevent people from processing it centrally, because it is an intentionally noisy image. This could be annoying and cause someone to stop by and read the actual ad. The text on my print ad is also quite small, which is not helpful for turning a peripheral processor into a central one. The action phase is in a good position to be detected by a peripheral processor, but it is a bit long. Also, the last line, “You are not an exception,” seems to be out of place without much context. Even this, read as a secondary title, could cause confusion. As for my brochure, with the same main titles, the cover does nothing to attract the attention of a processor peripheral. To avoid looking too busy, I took the image from the windshield print ad and removed all the icons. Ultimately, I knew this wasn't the best decision as an ad creator, but I wanted to keep the same theme throughout my campaign. I believe that the inside of the brochure could potentially be life-changing for a teenager who reads Liz's story, but there is a good chance that a teenager would not choose to pick up this specific brochure based on the cover and main image. Because of the strength of the design, I could have improved the colors and formatting of my ads. The black background works for the brochure, but the text formatting doesn't look very professional. The print ad used a white background, with black text and a black border, while the brochure had a black background with white text and a white border, establishing a thematic unity. They also have the same overall central image. The ads seem uniform, but could have been improved. The flow of my print ad could have been corrected by reducing the image. The action phase is in a good place and stands out as the main headline, but the image would force the reader to stop and focus on it for too long. It takes up almost half the page and overwhelms the important text at the bottom. In my brochure I should have used a different image instead of the image from the perspective of a texting driver. This image models the behavior I am trying to eradicate, instead of modeling the behavior I would like to support. Unfortunately, this is at risk.
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