THE first two advertising phases of the Health Department’s Go for 2 & 5 campaign will be run in tandem with its latest Dame Edna promotion for 12 months, as the organisation galvanises the success of each marketing phase.
THE first two advertising phases of the Health Department’s Go for 2 & 5 campaign will be run in tandem with its latest Dame Edna promotion for 12 months, as the organisation galvanises the success of each marketing phase.
Health Department manager, marketing and campaign support, Meg Berry said the latest phase, the Dame Edna television commercials, was reinforcing key messages.
“It is all interrelated and very integrated and it is almost like a fruit and vegetable brand in WA,” she said.
Ms Berry said that, after the initial Dame Edna promotion, the campaign’s other two vegetable characters, Noni Hazelhurst and Aristos, would feature in new television commercials aimed at continuing a strong rate of campaign awareness.
“Eighty one per cent of the general public have recognition of the campaign, 87 per cent agree that is easy to eat more fruit and vegetables and 78 per cent are aware that they need to eat more,” she said.
Ms Berry said while the 18-month campaign – the first mass media nutrition campaign by the Department of Health in seven years – would continue for another year, the decision to sign a new star recruit had not yet been taken.
For example the next phase of the campaign could focus on boosting fruit and vegetable consumption by the Aboriginal community, she said, and a character could be sought to promote that.
“There are so many other issues though, like supply of fresh fruit and vegetables to regional centres, so we would obviously work with other stakeholder groups to encourage better supply,” Ms Berry said.
While the campaign had a strong television advertising component, public relations, in-store promotions and the production of a cookbook were all contributing to the campaign’s success.
“It is the most successful book in six months. We sold 23,000 copies,” Ms Berry said.
“We are working on a catering version for the current book and there are always moves to produce a second book, but there is not one in production at the moment.”
Ms Berry could not provide figures for the overall campaign spend but said the Dame Edna phase, advertising over a five-week period statewide, would cost $180,000. She said the latest Dame Edna phase of the campaign would be appropriate for outdoor advertising, although nothing had been formalised.
“With the big carrot nose it could work well and it lends itself to outdoor, but we’ll have to wait and see.”
Ms Berry said the department did not expect to see an increase in food and vegetable consumption overnight. She suggested this type of campaign was a long-term strategy similar to the Quit smoking campaign and Find Thirty exercise campaign.
“Social marketing is pretty different to traditional marketing. The overall aim is to increase consumption, but we wouldn’t expect to see a change in behaviour for some period of time,” she said.
