T IPS FOR D EVELOPING TV A DS General

• Keep messages short and simple—just one or two key points. • Use language and style appropriate for the intended audience. • Repeat the main message as many times as possible.

• Recommend a specific action.

• Demonstrate the health problem, behavior, or skill (if relevant). • Provide new, accurate, straightforward information.

• Be sure the message, language, and style are considered relevant by the intended audience.

• Be sure that the message presenter is seen as a credible source of information, whether an authority, celebrity, or intended audience representative.

Development

• Select an appropriate approach (e.g., testimonial, demonstration, or slice-of-life format). • Be sure every word works.

• Use a memorable slogan, theme, music, or sound effects to aid recall. • Check for consistency with campaign messages in other media formats.

Appeal

• Use positive rather than negative appeals. • Emphasize the solution as well as the problem.

• Use a light, humorous approach, if appropriate, but pretest to be sure that it works and doesn’t offend the intended audience.

• Avoid high degrees of fear arousal, unless the fear is easily resolved and the message is carefully tested.

Visuals

• Use only a few characters.

• Make the message understandable from the visual portrayal alone.

• Superimpose text on the screen to reinforce the oral message’s main point.

Timing

• Identify the main issue in the first 10 seconds in an attention-getting way.

• Use 30-second spots to present and repeat the complete message; use 10-second spots only for reminders.

• If the action is to call, show the phone number on the screen for at least 5 seconds, and reinforce orally.

health care coverage, it is particularly pitching a news story or producing an important to have a source that the

intended audience believes is

unbiased, i.e., does not have a vested (profit-driven) interest in people taking the recommended action. For example, consumers may dismiss health

practices an employer or government agency suggests they take if they perceive the motivation is just to save the organization money.

• Be appealing:

— Produce variations of materials to appeal to specific intended audience segments. For example, NCI used several different covers on a

mammography booklet to appeal to different cultures. Similarly, audio materials can be produced using culturally specific voices or music. Of course, changing executional detail to appeal to specific intended audience segments is appropriate only if the underlying communication strategy and messages have been tested with those audiences.

— Get the intended audience’s attention. Given the number of health and other messages intended audiences receive, yours must stand out to be noticed. The best way to command attention will differ among intended audiences. It can be useful to know what has interested them before, but concept testing and message testing will help ensure that your program’s approach will grab their interest.

— Produce high quality materials. If you feel you have to skimp on production, choose a simpler way of presenting the message. Producing poor quality materials wastes funds and can damage your program’s credibility and your own. — Entertain while you educate when

using mass media. Whether you are

ad, remember that the mass media are viewed as a source of information and entertainment, not education.

Therefore, if the complete message is too complicated, or simply not

considered interesting enough for use by the media, redesign the message so that it is more appealing to media professionals and their perceptions about what their intended audience wants. Working with media professionals will help ensure that your program’s

messages are interesting as well as accurate and may help you obtain greater exposure for the program.

Tailored Communications

Tailored communications are much more refined than communications created for a particular intended audience or segment of the population. If you can tailor each

message for each individual, it is likely to be even more effective. Tailored

communications are produced for each person based upon what is known about the individual. Obtain this information from health plan data, surveys, medical records, and other sources. This information permits matching people with messages appropriate for them. The following are two examples of tailored communication:

• A series of letters (e.g., to give smokers information about and support for quitting) from which paragraphs are selected to send to each individual based on past behavior—on barriers to, for example, quitting, or on other unique combinations of characteristics

• A cover letter, referring readers to the pages of an enclosed booklet that most relate to their interests and concerns

ST

AGE 2

With the help of a computer and ordinary word processing software, individual letters can be tailored within a mass mailing, brochures can be printed on demand for a specific patient, or telephone counselors can appropriately focus their assistance and follow up with messages tied to the advice they gave.

When personal data are not available, interactive computer programs can prompt individuals to input key personal

characteristics that direct the software to prepare individually tailored messages immediately (e.g., on a Web site or at a kiosk in a public location). NCI’s 5 A Day Web site (www.5aday.gov/ ) allows users to chart their fruit and vegetable consumption and exercise and offers positive reinforcement in response to the behaviors they report. Evaluation has shown that tailored communications can, in some

circumstances, increase message effects, although much research remains to be done on how and why.

To use tailored communications, review the planning information from Stage 1 and determine:

• The important individual characteristics that affect a particular health behavior (i.e., differences in readiness to change behavior, or perceived benefits of or barriers to changing the behavior)

• Appropriate messages tailored to address individual characteristics (these messages may be identified or confirmed through primary research with each group, or through collaboration with a behavior change specialist or a subject matter expert, such as a genetic counselor or physician)

Then:

• Create a “library” of messages tied to each relevant characteristic, such as gender or risk factors (“as a woman who began smoking in the last five years…”)

• Use word processing software with a mail merge feature that will match variations in personal characteristics with appropriate messages and produce the materials in the desired format

Tailoring is not always possible or

necessary. However, think about using some of the principles of personalizing messages when appropriate and when funding is available. Find more information about tailored communications in the Selected Readings at the end of this section or use NCI’s quick-start tutorial on the Internet at http://dino.nci.nih.gov/public/glassman/ TailoringGuide.

Developing Effective Print Materials for Low-Literacy Intended Audiences

Many intended audiences have a hard time understanding health materials written in technical language. This is especially true of intended audiences with low literacy skills. Present the message in a more easily understood way to these intended

audiences by making specific choices about writing style, vocabulary, typography, layout, graphics, and color. These choices affect whether the message is read and how well intended audiences with low literacy skills understand it. A great deal of health information and promotion is organized around the use of print materials, often written far beyond the literacy skills of intended audiences. Differences in the ability to read and understand materials related to personal health appear to contribute to health disparities. The link