Marketing Behavior Change in an Era of Social Media: An Instagram Approach to Encourage People to Drink More Water

Background:  In health communications, social and digital media are at the forefront for potential outreach strategies. A main source of news and information gathering is now done through social media outlets and delivered straight to smartphones. Media websites are constantly updating developing and breaking news. An hour-old story is yesterday’s news. For public health communicators, it is essential to understand the value, the power, and the influence that digital and social media offers to reach targeted populations with education campaigns.

Program background:  Choose Health LA Kids is a program in Los Angeles County helping families with children ages 0-5 build and maintain healthy lifestyles. The program is administered by the Los Angeles County Department of Public Health made possible through funding from the First 5 LA early childhood development organization. Mass media and public education campaigns are common strategies used to promote behavior change, in this case, to encourage people to drink more water, especially young children, instead of unhealthier options, such as sugar-sweetened beverages. Effective education campaigns utilize a multi-tier approach leveraging out-of-home, radio, broadcast and more recently, an emphasis on digital and social media outreach.

Evaluation Methods and Results:  As part of a multi-tier health communications strategy, sponsored advertisements were placed on Instagram utilizing public education campaign visuals. A hard-hitting campaign with the visual of a warning label ran on Instagram for four weeks. Reaction to the creative generated over 497,000 impressions with strong, unfavorable reactions through likes and comments but users still took action and clicked on links. The hard-hitting visual was replaced with a more positive message about how water is good for proper nutrition. The positive sponsored spot received 708,000 impressions to date with positive comments, shares, likes, and clicks to links. A video was also placed on Instagram that received 272,000 impressions to date. The public education campaign is still active at the time of this writing. More data and social media analytics will be shared concerning the differences in community reaction to using a positive, feel-good campaign creative versus hard-hitting campaign creative on social media sponsored ads. Analytics will also include length of time the video was viewed, shared, and liked.

Conclusions:  Social media is ever evolving and it is important for public health communicators to stay abreast of trends but also to feel confident utilizing social media as a main conduit for sharing information, education, and as a means to raise awareness for health behavior change and social marketing.

Implications for research and/or practice:  It is important to understand the different ways that people engage with social media. Instagram, for example, is used for user enjoyment, sharing photos, positive and motivational images, and videos. It is important for public health communicators to understand the audience that they will reach on Instagram and other popular and trending social media platforms. The public health messages, campaign themes and images, can be misinterpreted or ignored on social media platforms if not presented in the appropriate context for the medium and audience.