Using Social Marketing and Branding to Engage Tweens: An Example From Best Bones Forever!

Background: The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s (CDC) VERB campaign effectively used social marketing and branding strategies and provided a strong foundation for developing an engaging campaign to improve bone health in tween girls.

Program background: In 2001, the CDC, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ Office on Women’s Health (OWH), and the National Osteoporosis Foundation launched the National Bone Health Campaign to increase calcium and vitamin D consumption and physical activity among girls ages 9-12. In 2007, OWH adopted sole leadership of the campaign. Research revealed the campaign appealed only to the younger end of the audience, so OWH engaged Hager Sharp to rebrand it to appeal to the entire audience and better address barriers. The new campaign was launched in 2009 as Best Bones Forever! with an expanded target audience of girls 9-14. Like VERB, Best Bones Forever! uses social marketing and branding to make behavior change appealing, easy, and popular. Qualitative and quantitative formative research was conducted to understand the target audience’s needs and wants, explore creative concepts and messaging, and guide creation of a brand promising friendship and fun in exchange for bone-strengthening behaviors. Social marketing principles were used to address the audience’s opportunities, motivation, and ability to engage in target behaviors. Campaign partners provide opportunity by offering access and helping to remove barriers. The brand and campaign activities deliver fun, providing motivation. Specific campaign components address ability by giving girls and parents knowledge, skills, and self-efficacy to perform the behaviors.

Evaluation Methods and Results: Best Bones Forever! measures success using process and outcome measures. To date, the campaign has engaged 60+ partners, distributed five million materials, and reached hundreds of thousands of girls and parents through events and social and earned media. Evaluation of the pilot sites found that they successfully integrated Best Bones Forever! messages into existing community activities and that a multi-week parent-daughter educational program increased bone health knowledge, attitudes, self-efficacy, intentions, and behaviors. It also provided insight into which bone health activities engaged girls and their parents and how to support community implementation efforts. An October 2010 survey (n = 64) measured brand equity and girls’ increase in knowledge, change in attitude, and intent to change behavior related to bone health after interacting with the Best Bones Forever! campaign. The results showed girls strongly agreed that their awareness of and attitudes about bone health positively increased and brand equity was high, with girls indicating they had a favorable view of the campaign.

Conclusions: Use of social marketing and branding has led to greater interest and engagement from Best Bones Forever! target audiences.

Implications for research and/or practice: Lessons from Best Bones Forever! can be applied to future campaigns that target a tween audience, including: using of research to understand the audience’s core values; using social marketing to improve audience opportunity, motivation, and ability to engage in a behavior; and  using branding elements that are appealing and attention grabbing to strengthen the campaign’s core promise and increase audience satisfaction and engagement.