According to a new survey, parents are more likely to serve their children water or milk instead of sugary drinks after seeing our Sugar Bites campaign.
In October, we conducted on-the-street interviews with 99 parents with children birth to age five to assess the reach and impact of our Sugar Bite campaign. The interviews were conducted in English and Spanish and took place in Concord, San Pablo, and Richmond.
Most of the parents surveyed had seen the ads at least three to four times in places including transit shelters, BART, or convenience stores. When asked about the campaign’s ads, which were designed to elicit visceral reactions from parents to protect their kids from these harmful products, participants responded as follows:
- 95% felt the campaign was memorable
- 90% felt the campaign was convincing
- 84% reported being affected/highly affected by the campaign
- 83% said they agreed/strongly agreed with the message in the ads
While the survey didn’t measure behavioral outcomes, it did assess parents’ intentions about making healthy drink choices. A majority (almost 65%) of all participants reported they were more likely to serve their children more water or milk as a result of the campaign.
In addition, nearly 60% of the parents said they were more likely to talk to their children about sugary drinks because of the campaign. In fact, nearly half had already discussed the subject because their children raised it themselves after seeing the ads.
When asked if they were likely to serve less soda or juice, 54% said they would serve less soda and 39% said they would serve less juice.
Overall, we think these results are promising. The campaign successfully got the attention of our target audience, was well-received, and elicited the kinds of reactions and intentions to change behavior that we sought to achieve.
The fact that parents are less willing to give up juice over soda suggests that parents may not fully be informed about the unhealthiness of juice (thanks to the beverage industry!) and future campaign efforts should focus on sugary juice drinks.
Well, we’re on it. Our new Sugar Bites ads will be revealed next month. Stay tuned.
The ads are great! This is a great marketing campaign to raise awarenes about the many bad effects of sugary drinks in the body most importantly to the oral health of the children. While obesity in kids are one of the main issue, we also know that tooth decay are the most common problems seen in kids at an early age. With the help of the parents, teachers and the community, this will higtened attention of the importance of educating parents of young kids about early childhood obesity and oral health.