Looking for Low-Cost and Effective Advertising to Support Your Program? Try Using the Community Health Media Center

Background:  A lack of physical activity, poor nutrition, and tobacco exposure are risk factors for chronic diseases. Chronic diseases account for seven of the top ten causes of death and cost our nation billions of dollars each year. Strategic communication initiatives, including paid media or advertisements, are important elements of public health communication efforts. To be effective, advertisements and other public health communication efforts and strategies must be timely, well-defined, and well-executed. Limited budgets, time, and resources make creating and testing communication materials difficult for state, local, tribal, and non-profit health organizations. 

Program background:  The Community Health Media Center (CHMC) is an online repository of advertisements and marketing materials focused on preventing obesity and other chronic conditions (http://www.cdc.gov/nccdphp/dch/chmc). The CHMC allows organizations to find advertisements and marketing materials, best practices, and audience research to save time and cost associated with producing advertising. CHMC users can browse 14 topics (e.g., built environment, diabetes, heart disease, nutrition, physical activity) by 8 different media types  (e.g., television, radio, print, outdoor, social media, web advertising, marketing materials, video).  

Evaluation Methods and Results:  CHMC administrators contacted nine organizations who placed an order in the last 36 months. Emails were sent to these organizations requesting a brief phone meeting to discuss CHMC’s time and cost savings. Six organizations participated in phone calls, and two organizations provided information by email. Phone call summaries were shared with users to confirm accuracy of information captured. Organizations ordered between two and 17 advertisements or marketing materials from the CHMC. By using advertisements from the CHMC, organizations saved an estimated $140,000 in cost that would have been used to produce new advertisements. The estimated time savings ranged from 3-6 months to create new advertisements. By using CHMC advertisements, one organization saved approximately 100 hours of staff time. Another organization used CHMC advertisements to sustain chronic disease prevention work after federal funding ended. A third organization said the CHMC’s timeliness and cost-effectiveness helped coalition members understand and value how advertisements can support programmatic objectives. Many organizations also reported working more efficiently (e.g., working smarter not harder, quickly found advertisements to use). 

Conclusions:  There are no other comparable sites or services available focusing on chronic disease prevention advertisements and marketing materials. With the CHMC, nonprofit organizations and government agencies can easily find, review, and select low-cost, high quality audience-tested advertisements and marketing materials to support program goals. By using the CHMC, organizations can receive can invest the realized cost savings into local testing, strategic advertisement placement, dissemination efforts, and evaluation. 

Implications for research and/or practice:  The CHMC saves time and cost for nonprofit organizations and government organizations looking for advertisements and marketing materials. It also serves as a repository for gathering audience research on advertisement effectiveness. The cost and time savings can be used for advertisement placement, dissemination, and evaluation.