New York City Department of Health’s “Take Me With You” Nutrition Education Campaign

PUBLIC HEALTH NUTRITION MARKETING MATERIAL CRITIQUE:

New York City Department of Health’s

“Take Me With You” Nutrition Education Campaign

“Take Me With You” is an ongoing public health nutrition education campaign by the New York City - Department of Health and Mental Hygiene (NYC-DOHMH) first launched in 2014. Please see Appendix A for this nutrition education campaign’s five different posters. “Take Me With You” is targeted to people at a state and local level. The campaign is directed to populations of all ages, gender and ethnicities. The advertisements used on the subway, streets and public areas to target people who may not have enough time to prepare their own foods. The advertisements feature quotes such as, “No Time To Eat?”, “Grab and Go!”, and “In a Hurry?” (Department of Health and Mental Hygiene, 2015).

“Take Me With You” aims to encourage healthy snack preparation for health and wellbeing. The ad suggests “Packing Convenient Fruits Like Apples” as an easy way to add heart healthy fruits and vegetables to your day” (Department of Health and Mental Hygiene, 2015). The campaign exists amongst the DOHMH efforts such as Plate Planner, Farmer Market Finder and Recipe Maker. The ads focus on educating individuals on not only the benefits of eating fruits and vegetables (to be heart healthy) but also proposes an action of how to do so. Informing the population that they can pack their vegetables, allows them an easy and low-cost way to fit fruits and vegetables into daily meals.

The campaign acts to build awareness on the benefits of fruits and vegetable consumption. The campaign informed that they are inexpensive and heart healthy. By showing that people can pack these snacks with them, it makes adding fruits and vegetables more approachable and proposes an action for how to add these benefits of fruits and vegetables to your daily diet. The nutrition message first launched in 2014. There are four different posters that are used in the five boroughs. The posters are in public areas, such as subways, buses and billboards; suitable for attracting a target population that is low on time, and may be “on the go.” This works to target the target population which area working class individuals who cannot have the time to make their own food with fruits and vegetables.

The advertisement is effective in being simple and direct with its message to consumers. People often complain that they do not have enough time to pack their fruits and vegetables. The posters show this shouldn’t be an excuse: “Just Grab and Go!” your snacks instead. The advertisements target all cultures and ethnicities. The same posters are offered in both Spanish and English. The fruits and vegetables chosen in the ads (grapes, bananas, apples, tomatoes and celery) are used in various cultural diets. As a critique, the posters could be improved by including more detail in small writing on the sides of the poster about the benefits of eating fruits and vegetables, such as “packed with vitamins and minerals, full of fiber which is good for digestion and lowering your cholesterol!” This way the advertisements could offer this information to interested people who want to look at the poster close-up, without giving too much information from afar.

Using the Health Belief Model, we can see how the campaign creates a perception that people may not have enough time to pack their own meals, snacks or even have time to eat. The ad secondly informs people of the possibility of being heart healthy by eating fruits and vegetables. Thirdly, the ad shows how individuals can take action to become healthier by packing their fruits and vegetables with them. Aspects of the Theory of Planned Behavior can also be seen with the subjective norm of taking care of one’s health yet not having a low of time. The ad therefore proposes the planned behavior of packing snacks in advance with fruits and vegetables to gain health benefits. At the bottom of the posters, there lists a directed action, to send a text message to receive healthy meal planning advice, to furthermore gain attention to healthy eating (please see Appendix A).

In conclusion, the “Take Me With You” campaign offers a convenient way for the public to be educated and motivated on how to eat healthier. The advertisement normalizes not having enough time to prepare meals, and shows how consumers can still be healthy by preparing simple snacks with fruits and vegetables. The posters are successful at giving people a visual image of what a healthy snack is, by showing pictures instead of only having writing. However, suggestions of having more nutrition related information offered in smaller print may improve the posters. The campaign could be considered a successful attempt at raising nutrition awareness and increasing healthy behavior in NYC.

References

Department of Health and Mental Hygiene,. (2015). Take Me With You. Retrieved 9 November 2015, from http://www.nyc.gov/html/doh/downloads/pdf/cdp/fv-takeme-withyou.pdf

Department of Health,. (2015). Eating Healthy. Retrieved 9 November 2015, from http://www.nyc.gov/html/doh/html/living/sogood.shtml