Name of Intervention/ Program
Shape Your Future Gardening Print Ad
Background and Situation Analysis
Shape Your Future (SYF) is a well-recognized public health education program whose purpose is to reduce obesity and improve public health in Oklahoma. The main pillars focus on educating Oklahomans about nutrition, drinking water, getting more sleep, physical activity and living tobacco free. SYF provides free resources to parents, children, teachers, businesses and health care providers to help Oklahomans make the healthy choice the easy choice. Oklahoma remains one of the nation’s most obese states, ranking 4th highest in obesity prevalence. Shape Your Future equips Oklahomans with resources and easy ways to take control of their own nutrition. Gardening is a great way to improve a person’s access and healthy foods and allow them to have control over their food security. By helping our audience reach their basic need for access to food, SYF can take them one step further to feeling safe and secure with their needs for resources.
Priority Audiences(s)
Shape Your Future’s priority audience is a general statewide population of all ages that encounters similar barriers and challenges to healthy living. Common healthy-living barriers faced include limited time, money and access. The SYF audience tends to skew more female than male and resonate to households with children in the home. Due to Oklahoma’s large rural population, lots of people struggle with access to nutritious food options, opportunities for physical activity and essential healthcare services.
Behavioral Objectives
The behavioral objective for this print ad was to inspire the reader to physically use the ad to start their own garden. By giving them the information and a resource, Shape Your Future hoped to spark curiosity and interest in the practicality of producing fresh produce at home. Composting is a great way to help a vegetable garden grow and flourish. There are amazing benefits to growing your own foods. From self-sufficiency and food security to eliminating harmful chemicals used in fertilizer, the benefits are worth it. Beyond nutrition, gardening can improve a person’s physical and mental health by exposing them to sunlight and the outdoors while connecting them with family and community members.
Description of Strategy/Intervention
The goal of the print ad was to bring forth action and inspiration to the reader that went further than just reading. Shape Your Future urged the audience to take an actionable and tangible step towards cultivating a vegetable garden for themselves. The hope was to meet the audience where they were at and find a solution to a very basic need most rural Oklahomans face every day. Shape Your Future empowers Oklahomans to take ownership, responsibility and control over the food they eat daily. Shape Your Future aimed to give the rural and urban populations in Oklahoma a tangible solution to a real problem. According to a report by the Oklahoma Regional Food Bank, 54 out of 77 Oklahoma counties contain food deserts and 76 contain areas of low access to large grocery stores. This presents a major problem to communities who face food insecurities and access to healthy foods. By growing a garden, one can have more control over their family’s food supply. The strategy behind this print ad creative was to educate the audience that they can plainly start their own garden by ripping up the ad and burying it in soil. To execute this concept, Shape Your Future ensured all publishers were printing on biodegradable materials such as newspaper. In addition to giving the audience the tools to start planting, Shape Your Future also included a QR code for them to scan. The destination URL leads the audience to a popular blog on the SYF website that includes charts based on when to plant certain fruits and veggies in different Oklahoma climates and how many days it takes to harvest. This resource can help the audience decide the best time of year to plant and which produce items are well worth the wait. The main headline, “Don’t read this ad.” was intended to grab the reader’s attention and hook them with curiosity to continue reading about the benefits of composting and gardening. This print creative was easy to read and straight to the point with a clear call to action. Shape Your Future strategically uses brevity to make messages about public health plain and simple.
Implementation
This print ad was designed to be colorful and inviting, yet disruptive and intriguing among common ads seen in publications. For a more in-depth look at implementation strategy, please see Description of Strategy section..
Evaluation Methods and Results
This specific print ad was published in 30 different publications across the state of Oklahoma beginning on March 6, 2024. The readership of all publications combined is approximately 680,000. In the following 14 days as a result of multiple tactics, the Shape Your Future website saw a 213% increase in new user traffic to the website with a total of 46K new users. Data extracted from GA4 showed that from all new users, 34K of them had engaged sessions. An engaged session is any session spent on the site that lasted longer than 3 minutes. In the same period of time, the QR code landing page had 677 sessions and 483 engaged sessions. By meeting the needs of Oklahomans and delivering real solutions, Shape Your Future continues to be a driving force in statewide health education.
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