Exchanging Health for Commercialization: The News Media's Mediation of the Baby Carrots Campaign

Another article just came out in press that I wanted to point interested readers to... This article, "Exchanging Health for Commercialization: The News Media's Mediation of the Baby Carrots Campaign," was a fun one to work on. It looked at how the mass media (journalists, really) covered a novel advertising campaign designed to increase consumption of baby carrots.

The abstract is:

The public receives a great deal of its public health information from the media, which has the ability to deliver such information and to affect public perceptions about issues. The study presented here examines the media’s mediating role in a recent marketing campaign with possible health implications. The baby carrots campaign targeted children and teenagers, advertising baby carrots as junk food. The campaign received much attention from media sources, and coverage of the campaign moved across a range of media from traditional outlets to digital news sources, mostly without putting a critical eye to the campaign or how relevant health issues were addressed. A census study of print and online media content over a four-month period beginning just before the campaign’s launch revealed the media relied heavily on campaign sources to frame the advertisements as positive and effective in generating buzz. Media coverage of the campaign offered little commentary from independent sources, such as message-design or public health experts, and limited input from the general public, thus presenting an imbalanced perspective. Blogs were more critical, framing the campaign as negative and non-effective. However, this study revealed that neither the media nor blogs raised relevant health issues such as the potential health benefits of eating more carrots. While the campaign’s marketers may have succeeded in promoting baby carrots ephemerally through the media, journalists and other media sources may have missed an opportunity to promote a more lasting public health discussion.

One of the first news stories about this campaign actually led to a great in-class exercise, where I asked grad students to increase consumption of baby carrots. I had eight teams that semester, and I don't think a single one picked the strategy in this campaign. It was a great exercise, though, I've used it once or twice since then - it gives students a chance to get very creative and think about non-obvious ways to increase sales of baby carrots.
You can get the full article in PDF form here.

The full reference is:

Holton, A., Love, B., & Mackert, M. (2011) Exchanging Health for Commercialization: The News Media's Mediation of the Baby Carrots Campaign. Cases in Public Health Communication & Marketing, 5, 2-25.