Week 5

We watched a Video this week called “Breaking through the clutter” about advertising and what motivates a consumer to buy. It was interesting to learn that we are exposed to 2,400 pieces of advertising per week. I never realized it was that much, which brings me to, how do we grab people’s attention? When we are constantly being bombarded, there is a limited amount of information that is actually absorbed. How do we make our messages stand out?

It was also interesting to hear Dr. Engelberg say that we need to know what triggers our own responses and what motivates us first. Sometimes I think I overlook myself and I try to think about what other people want to see or feel. However, how am I supposed to expect other people to know what they want, when I don’t even know it myself? Now I am thinking...

The main topic for this week was segmentation. We did a little exercise outside where we segmented ourselves demographically (by gender), geographically (by where we live), psychographically (by our values and beliefs) and behaviorally (by what we actually do). It was really interesting to see that even though we are all in the same class and have similar interests in regards to health, that we could be so different in our values and beliefs on health. I thought was particularly interesting as students getting our master’s in public health that we rank health as something very important to us and most of us believe that exercising regularly is important, yet we don’t all do it. It makes me wonder, if WE don’t do it, how can we expect others (those who don’t even think about health regularly) to do it?

Week 4 blog: End of module 1

The top 3 things from module 1 that stick out in mind:

*Duel process persuasion: The duel processing approach ties into some different areas we’ve covered in class. Not only do we need to realize that maybe generally people think heuristically, therefore we need to think about how to grab people’s attention with health concerns, but this ties into the “house” example Dr. Engelberg was talking about with the idea of just getting people in the house. It doesn’t have to be through the front door, it could be the window or chimney, but once you get people to take a step in the right direction then the work will take care of itself. We also need to consider the population we’re working with. As Jennifer commented on my page, blogging is great to communicate to the younger population, but not so much to the elderly. My grandmother already emailed me back and said sorry, but as much as I love you, I refuse to do anything on the computer besides email. Leading into how important it is to know your audience. It is good to be confident in our knowledge of public health and everything that we have learned, but we have to also realize that no matter how much we study, we don’t know what it is like to be in someone else’s shoes and we have to show the respect to the community of people and ask them. This all falls into what we have been talking about in class with formative research, S-M-C-R-D, wrong reason, selectivity and simply what motivates people to care about an issue?

*Focus groups: In Monday’s class we learned about focus groups and how they are facilitated and generally how they go. Then we did a great exercise with partners where we had an “interviewer” and an “interviewee” and we asked each other to talk about a topic. The interviewer’s job was to ask open-ended questions to keep the other person talking, use probing techniques and restatement and clarification responses. I think that this is a great way to communicate with someone, it lets the other person know that you are interested, you’re paying attention, you care about what they’re saying and that you understood it. However, I think that most of us do not talk this way and when we do, especially in peer group situations, the other people think we’re crazy. Example: I was trying to use these techniques this week with a friend and as I was probing for more about her story and trying make comments like “wow, really?” she was like, “what are you doing?” Sometimes I think when you probe you almost seem nosey or as if you’re intruding in some weird way. It sounds so funny on both ends. I think that this is a really nice and considerate way of talking to someone, so why don’t we do it more often outside of focus groups so that it is the norm? Are we too busy to care to get the full story or really hear out what someone is saying? Or are we too self-absorbed that we just don’t care what they say? Or do we think that we interpret everything the way the story-teller meant us to?

*Presentations: Also in class on Monday we talked about the do’s and don’ts of giving a good presentation. I think presentation skills are a really important part of communication and getting across a message. Unfortunately my education thus far has not required me to do many presentations, which I feel puts me at a real disadvantage. I realized after listening to the lecture on presentation skills that I DO everything that I am NOT suppose to. One key point was to “own your space” and “be confident”. I think that if you show a lack of confidence it makes your message seem less important. I stand like a stork on one leg looking like I’m about to fall over, clearly not owning my space. Another tip was to “put a smile in your voice”. I don’t know how many times as a stubborn teenager I heard my step-dad say that to me. It used to make me so mad. However, I now understand the benefit especially at work when talking to people over the phone, they can tell when you have a smile on your face. Never before have I really thought about giving a presentation as a way of health communication, but I have now learned that it is really important to have good presentation skills because it will get your message across in a much more efficient and easy to understand way without the audience being distracted by your random body language and behaviors.

Week 2 - 663

This week in class we talked about how people think, more specifically the idea of dual processing. We read an article www.as.wvu.edu/~sbb/comm221/chapters/dual.htm that discusses how generally people think in 1 of 2 ways, either heuristically or systematically. Heuristically meaning, thinking just enough about the situation to be aware, but not thinking carefully enough to catch flaws, errors and inconsistencies. Systematically being where someone mostly thinks carefully and effortfully, “the thought process is active, creative and alert.” The article mentions that most people generally think heuristically.

If this is true, while we’re trying to promote health campaigns how do we grab people’s attention?

If you were to ask someone to rank in order the top 5 things they care about, most of the time health would be in the top 5 if not 3. However, why is it that people don’t respond to health campaigns or continue to put themself at risk? Many ads, commercials, etc. use sex, looks and money to promote their products because as they say, “sex sells”. As public health advocates, what do we have? Trans fats, mammograms and smoking! Is it no wonder the people we are trying to reach don’t pay attention? So… should we be using sex, looks and money to promote health? Whether or not we do, it is imperative to figure out how to grab our population’s attention and start to care about these health risks!