Commit2Ten: A Digital Marketing Campaign to Increase Physical Activity Nationwide

Background:  More than 80 million Americans are physically inactive. Nationwide, children are not getting the recommended 60 minutes of daily activity and about 15 percent report getting no physical activity. Rising levels of inactivity contribute to the high rates of childhood overweight and obesity in the U.S., which the Alliance for a Healthier Generation seeks to combat. Media campaigns are an effective way to raise awareness and incite behavior change among individuals, particularly when accompanied by education about the pressing public health problem.

Program background:  The Alliance for a Healthier Generation, founded by the American Heart Association and the Clinton Foundation, works to reduce the prevalence of childhood obesity and to empower kids to develop lifelong, healthy habits. For #Commit2Ten, the Alliance partnered with corporate, celebrity and media partners to launch a comprehensive digital marketing campaign encouraging Americans to add ten minutes of physical activity to their daily routines. The Alliance developed a website, commit2ten.org, and coordinated with partners to push the campaign's messages through a multipronged outreach strategy that included media coverage, e-newsletters, Twitter chats, a video series, a mobile application with daily physical activities, downloadable toolkits and web-based tools including an interactive map, calendar and quizzes.

Evaluation Methods and Results:  The reach and impact of the campaign was measured through communication metrics including Google analytics, engagement and reach on social media accounts, downloads of campaign tools and resources and page views of campaign-related blogs and webpages, which will be detailed during this presentation. For example, the campaign produced 32.5 million social media impressions.

Conclusions:  Public health campaigns have the potential to reach broader audiences when they utilize multi-media channels, influencer strategies, gamification techniques and compelling health messaging as part of a coordinated approach, as demonstrated by the #Commit2Ten campaign.

Implications for research and/or practice:  This campaign serves as an example of how organizations can effectively reach consumer audiences to raise awareness and affect population-wide health behaviors. Findings from this campaign will inform similar efforts; however, the public health community would benefit from additional research into campaigns that use multi-media communication tools to encourage action around a specific health problem and quantify their impact to demonstrate effectiveness.