Unit 5 Post

For the public service announcement project, my partner, Anh, and I decided to focus on heart disease since it is the leading cause of death in the United States. Before we started working on our project, we decided to brainstorm our ideas of what we needed to consider in order to create a marketing plan that would be inclusive of our PSA. In the article titled Social Marketing for Public Health, the authors explore the use of social marketing principles that aim to change behavior and improve public health (p. 110). We tried our best to follow the four marketing principles: product, price, place, and promotion. In my opinion, integrating all 4P’s was quite challenging because we did not want our PSA to appear like an advertisement or a commercial. Moving along, for our PSA, the product we were attempting to endorse was cholesterol screening. Also, in order to establish a place, we included a website that people could visit in order to find more information regarding heart disease and where they can receive their cholesterol screening. Our message is that obtaining a cholesterol screening every four years is imperative for adults who are 20 years and older because it can help lower their risk of heart disease. We anticipate that promoting a cholesterol screening as a way to alleviate the problem of heart disease will have an affect on the public and hopefully change the way individuals perceive their own health. Also, the only aspect of marketing principles that we did not emphasize in our PSA was price. Prices for cholesterol screenings can vary depending on what health insurance a patient has. Also, my partner and I thought about endorsing “free” cholesterol screenings, but we were not sure if doing so would put too much focus on our organization. Ultimately, my partner and I decided not to mention a specific price for cholesterol screenings because we thought it would become too commercial like, and we strictly wanted our PSA to focus on the issue. Furthermore, we believe that famous celebrities and experienced physicians have a major influence on persuading the public. Therefore, I decided to play the role of a famous actress and model, while Anh decided to play the role of an M.D. and the president of our fabricated organization called the Healthy Heart Foundation. Together, we attempted to convince our audience to take control of their health and to get their cholesterol screenings done immediately.