Background: Mass media communications are an important component of comprehensive interventions to address population levels of overweight and obesity. This study quantitatively tested audience reactions to existing adult-focused public health television ads addressing overweight and obesity to determine which ads had the highest levels of message acceptance, argument strength, personalised perceived effectiveness and negative emotional impact.
Methods: 1116 Australian adults aged 21-55 years from a national online panel participated in this web-based study. Quotas were applied to achieve even numbers of: males vs. females, participants aged 21-29 vs. 30-55 years; with a healthy weight (BMI = 18.5-24.9) vs. overweight/obesity (BMI = 25+). Participants were randomly assigned to view and rate four of eight ads that varied in message content (health consequences, supportive/encouraging or social norms/acceptability) and execution style (graphic, simulation/animation, positive or negative testimonial, or depicted scene).
Results: Toxic fat (graphic, health consequences ad) was the top performing ad on all outcome measures and was significantly more likely than the other ads to promote strong responses on message acceptance, argument strength and negative emotional impact. Measure up (negative testimonial, health consequences ad) performed comparably on personalised perceived effectiveness. Most ads produced stronger perceptions of personalised perceived effectiveness among participants with overweight/obesity compared to participants with healthy weight. Some ads were more likely to promote strong negative emotions among participants with overweight/obesity.
Conclusions: Findings provide preliminary evidence of the most promising content and executional styles of ads that could be pursued in obesity prevention campaigns. Ads emphasising negative health consequences of excess weight elicit stronger cognitive and emotional responses from adults with overweight/obesity. However, careful pre-testing of these types of ads is needed before including them in actual campaigns to ensure they do not have unintended negative impacts such as increased stigmatisation or body dissatisfaction among at-risk population sub-groups.