Small Steps = Small Results?

Saturday November 3, 2007

In 2004, the United States government began an ad campaign called "Small Steps" to help fight obesity. You can find and watch the ads on the Ad Council's Small Steps site. The Ad Council is adding three new ads to the obesity prevention line-up.

Interestingly the ads don't show any overweight or obese people and they really are very pretty forgettable, if not a little creepy. Basically each ad features a healthy-looking person finding a fat body part that has been left on the ground. The person finding the body part deduces that someone must have lost the fat as a result of some healthy activity such as exercising or eating less.

These ads don't have the emotional impact that previous AD Council health campaigns have had. Remember the fried egg as your brain on drugs campaign?

Perhaps the Ad Council should focus on the health damaged caused by obesity rather than the odd looking lost blobs of fat on the ground. Critics claim that the Small Steps ads are too weak and suggest that obesity prevention ads would have a stronger impact if they portrayed the disease and damage to the body that occurs from being fat like heart disease, diabetes, high blood pressure and some cancers are directly linked to being obese.

Considering that more and more people are becoming sick and dying from chronic diseases due to obesity every year, those critics may be right. I think they are - what do you think? Leave a comment below.

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