LiveLighter Sugary Drinks Campaign Report Analysis

Introduction

Sugary drinks campaign 2013 is launched by Livelighter, which is a public health care campaign from Western Australia aiming to help people eat and live healthier (LiveLighter 2022). This campaign was held in July 2013 and ran for 6 weeks (Morley et al., 2019). The aim of this campaign is to help Western Australians reduce the consumption of sugary drinks, and address the awareness of the relationship between drinking sugary drinks and obesity and related disease. Their target audience is mainly Western Australians who aged between 25-49. This campaign includes a 30 seconds advertisement, which immerses the spectator in the human body while emphasising how sugary drinks contribute to weight gain and a higher chance of developing chronic illnesses (LiveLighter 2022).

This paper is to analyse the campaign from 8 benchmarks, including customer orientation, behaviour, theory, insight, exchange, competition, segmentation, and methods mix, and gives evaluation and recommendation to the campaign.

Customer orientation

Based on the data from Australia Health Survey 2011-2012 it was known that sugar intake among Australians was about 20% of the total energy intake (Australian Bureau of Statistics, 2011). It was double the WHO recommendation which is only less than 10 percent of the total energy intake (World Health Organisation, 2015). It means that Australians need to cut half of their sugar intake to meet the recommendation. The survey also revealed that the highest contributor to added sugar intake was soft drinks and flavoured mineral water. Inside the body, excessive sugar will be converted into fat which potentially increases the risk of obesity. in fact, more than half of Australian in 2011-12 are either overweight or obese. So, it is certain that this campaign was needed for Australians.

Several factors were found to trigger sugar consumption. First, the social setting where people socialised, such as movie theatres and shopping centres, can act as a strong trigger for them to buy sugary drinks. Second, the environmental setting is that sugary drinks were readily available and heavily marketed. Third, the intrinsic quality such as taste, or caffeine in coffee is known to be their attraction. Generally, people know the health consequences, yet the delayed consequences decrease their motivation to change (Hattersley et al., 2009).

Previous research showed that mass media campaigns with sufficient reach can be an effective approach to changing health behaviour in the population (Wakefield et al., 2010). Therefore, the LiveLighter sugary drink campaign would be conducted in the form of a mass media campaign. 

All these findings gave valuable information for the campaign. It helped Livelighter to understand the current level of sugar intake, several determinants that triggered the consumption, as well as the potential strategy they need to perform. 

Behaviour 

Problem behaviour

The problem behaviour that Sugary drinks campaign wants to change is high sugar consumption. Many West Australians have a propensity of consuming sugary beverages, preferring to consume at least one soda can every day (LiveLighter, 2013). According to the Australia Bureau of Statistics (2014), in 2011-2012, 42% of Australians aged two and older drank sweetened beverages, 34% drank sugar-sweetened beverages, and 10% drank intensely sweetened beverages on the day before the interview. The average quantity of sugar ingested by those who drank sugar-sweetened drinks was 13 teaspoons (54 g) (ABS, 2014). 47% of overweight or obese Australians drank sweetened beverages, and people who were overweight or obese consumed twice as many heavily sweetened beverages as underweight individuals or individuals of normal weight (ABS, 2014).

Desired behaviour

Although diet drinks are preferable to soft drinks, water is still the healthiest choice (LiveLighter, 2013).

According to the LiveLighter website’s blog, many desired behaviours can help targeted audiences change their sugary drinks habits. Firstly, people can change their daily routine to stop or reduce the frequency of consuming sugary beverages by avoiding going down the aisle with sugary drinks when doing weekly shopping (Myers, 2022). Secondly, people who frequently reach for sugary beverages when they are down can do some self-care activities like reading a book, listening to a podcast, and making a call to a friend at these times (Myers, 2022). If giving up sugary drinks completely seems like an impossibility, people can start with something that looks more achievable, like cutting drink intake by half or skipping a drink (Myers, 2022). Finally, people can make plans to limit sugary drinks with their friends, family, or coworkers (Myers, 2022).

Theory

This campaign possibly used the Health Belief Model. It is the theoretical model which is used to “guide health promotions and disease prevention programs.” (RHIhub, n.d.) It suggests a belief that the desire to avoid illness and that specific action can prevent a disease will enable people to change their behaviour (Janz & Becker, 1984). Therefore, it enables the explanation and prediction of individual changes of health behaviours. (RHIhub, n.d.) 

The campaign seeks to help individuals develop feelings when it comes to contracting an illness or disease and helps to develop the perception of an individual in the effectiveness of actions available to mitigate it. It helps to develop an individual's confidence in order to perform the recommended behaviour. (Boston University, n.d.)

Insight

The campaign tried to make people realise the danger of their unhealthy lifestyle. They show it through this realistic graphic imagery from the inside of the human body. The idea suggests how sugary drinks may result in excessive visceral fat, how awful it looks, and how it is closely attached to vital organs such as the heart, lungs, and digestive organs. 

Realistic imagery became the key point in this campaign. Research suggests that fear-arousing images are powerful enough to deliver the critical information of public health campaigns. It will make people feel threatened and take action to change their behaviour (Cameron & Chan, 2008). It allows the consumer to get realistic imagery of what happens in their body as well. Compared to linguistic information, images are more quickly processed, imprinted, and recalled in the human brain. The Sugary Drinks campaign used this knowledge to conduct the campaign as it was done by showing a realistic image of the consequences of sugary drinks. 

The good thing is that a realistic image is shown at the end of the advertisement. As some people might feel uncomfortable after seeing it, they might leave the ads immediately if they saw it at the beginning of the ads. However, as it is placed at the end, people get an idea of why that condition happened. Therefore, even if they leave the ads immediately after seeing this realistic image, they’ve already got the message. 

Exchange

Cost

There are social costs of stopping drinking sugary drinks. Drinking calorie soft drinks is viewed as an essential component when people are hanging out with friends. Some people think it is socially unacceptable for them to drink water when everyone around them drinks sugary drinks (Hattersley et al., 2009).

There is a financial cost of stopping drinking sugary drinks. When talking about the relative cost of bottled water at retail locations, some people say they don't think water is excellent “value for money” (Hattersley et al., 2009).

There are mental costs of stopping drinking sugary drinks. Some people drink sugary drinks because they feel sugary drinks taste good, make them energetic, or provide them happiness (Sylvetsky et al., 2020). When people consume sugar, they will get a euphoric feeling, because sugar promotes the release of dopamine, which controls the brain's reward and pleasure regions, and people are quickly addicted to dopamine (DeFigio, 2013). As a result, quitting sugar makes them experience withdrawal. People may have some mental symptoms, like feeling depressed, anxious, nervous, and restless during the period of withdrawal (Kim et al., 2018).

Benefit

There are many benefits of stopping drinking sugary drinks. People can boost their dental health (Sheiham & James, 2015), have a healthy weight (Malik et al., 2006), and lower the risk of getting the cardiometabolic disease (Bray, 2012), high blood pressure (Nguyen et al., 2009), diabetes (DiNicolantonio et al., 2015), non-alcoholic fatty liver disease (McCullough, 2002), dementia (Stephan et al., 2010), minimise inflammation (Della Corte et al., 2018), and cancer (Cantley, 2013). It also improves skin health (Danby, 2010), enhances mood (Knüppel et al., 2017), improves sleep quality (Alahmary et al., 2019), and makes people more energetic (Venner et al., 2011).

Competition

There are both internal and external competition in this campaign. As discussed in the exchange cost, it shows that drinking soft drinks can bring them happiness (Sylvetsky et al., 2020), The target audience has a desire of drinking sugary drinks, thus, a LiveLighter needed to consider  internal completion of the audience's psychographics whether their desire of drinking sugary drinks may affect the effectiveness of the campaign.

As for external competition, Coca-Cola was the main competitor of the campaign. According to a press release of Livelighter (LiveLighter, 2013), LiveLighter challenged Coca-Cola and  mentioned that Coca-Cola should take real action to tackle the obesity issue in Australia. since it was the leading soft drink in Australia, consumed by 3,735,000 Australians in a week (Harris, 2015). Furthermore, Coca-Cola always promoted some campaigns such as Share a Coke, which emphasises that drinking soft drink is a kind of balanced diet and part of their life (Grimes, 2013). It may mislead the target audience that soft drink is part of their healthy life and become a challenge to livelighter to run the campaign as the campaign may oppose the idea of no sugary drink. Thus, the marketing of Coca-Cola was in competition with Sugary drink campaign. Another external competition is the availability of a high amount of sugary drinks, there were lots of soft drinks available in the market which limit their choice. (Hattersley, 2019).

Segmentation

The target of the campaign is adults aged 25-49 (Morley et al., 2018). However, no segmentation was performed by this campaign.  The campaign seems to perform the same approach for all people in the target group. Even though they divided the subject into frequent and weekly consumers of sugary drinks when evaluating the campaign, there is no evidence that the campaign approached them in different ways. 

Methods Mix

By the previous discussion, it can be summarised how Livelighter used 4Ps in this campaign.

The campaign materials were placed in both mass and digital media, it includes television, radio, Facebook and YouTube etc. Printed and outdoor advertising were placed in strategic places such as cinemas, concerning the previous discussion that it became one of the triggering factors for people to buy sugary drinks. Supporting information regarding sugary drinks and tips to reduce the consumption are also available on their website (Morley et al., 2019). The reason for choosing a wide range of places to deliver their message is because of a wide range of target audience, they focus on a target group which come from different backgrounds and places, thus, they use both online and mass media so as to reach a vast amount of target audience (LiveLighter, 2013). 

The main promotion in this campaign was to create a video which highlighted how sugary drinks are unnecessary for the body that will lead to the visceral fats formation, and cause a list of diseases. This strategy of designing this video is in line with the insight of LiveLighter, showing the actual image can make them realise the danger of sugary drinks. From the promotion of the campaign, it shows that reduction of consuming sugary drinks is a product in the campaign that LiveLighter treated it as a product of desired behaviour to the western Australian. Linking with the illness, lower risk of causing obesity and associated disease is the actual product the western Australian people can get from the campaign.

The price in this campaign is to give up the habit and enjoyment of drinking sugary drinks, the campaign mentioned the cost of changing this behaviour by mentioning that ‘sugary drink really doesn’t need’ and ‘breaking sugary drink habit’ in the video. (LiveLighter, 2013).

Evaluation

The evaluation had been done in August - September 2013 to assess if the campaign was impactful enough to decrease the consumption of sugary drinks. It measured the knowledge, belief, and behaviour of Western Australian adults. The evaluation was conducted through a random digit dial telephone survey by the Social Research Centre and Edith Cowan University (Morley et al., 2019). 

The evaluation shows that the campaign was successful. It significantly increased the knowledge about the health effects of too many sugary drinks (70% cf. 82%; P<0.001). It shows that the campaign was easy to understand. No significant increase in beliefs that weight loss would improve health. However, there was a significant decrease in sugary drink consumption among the frequent consumer group (> 4x/week) (22% cf. 16%; P<0.01), while no significant decrease among the weekly consumer group (1-3x/week). It shows that people who are more susceptible to the health effects will change their behaviour by reducing the consumption of sugary drinks. It aligns with the theory of health beliefs model that is used in this campaign, especially the dimension of perceived susceptibility. Surprisingly, beyond the campaign objectives, it also significantly decreased sweet food consumption (53% cf. 48%; P<0.05) (Morley et al., 2019).

This campaign successfully performed almost all the benchmarks, except the segmentation benchmark. It used information from previous research to conduct the campaign so that it was an evidence-based campaign. It clearly understood the problem and desired behaviour and applied the suitable theory. The theory was reflected through insight, which then determined the strategy or mixed method. It also identified the potential competitor that also affected the strategy. Therefore, the campaign strategies were based on evidence and the current situation. It is quite understandable not to apply the segmentation benchmark since LiveLighter usually creates different campaigns for different groups of people with the same problem behaviour. For example, LiveLighter created the “Sugary Drinks are Rotten” to address the sugary drinks consumption problem in children. 

Recommendation

Overall, this is a good campaign. However, several recommendations are suggested to make this campaign better. First, creating a real activity for the society to join, such as a challenge or workshop, and not only in the form of TV ads and billboard ads seems to be a good strategy as it will directly involve and engage more with them. Second, making a more detailed segmentation as different groups of people might have different characteristics that need different approaches. For example, real events might be needed to reach the target audience from rural areas as the technology is not as advanced as in the city. Third, advocating the government to create regulation about the amount of sugar allowed in soft drinks will possibly improve the success of this campaign. Moreover, regulation about sugary drink advertisements, such as the time allowed for this ad to run or the maximum duration of it, will also be helpful for the campaign. 

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