Health care marketing minicase.

Family planning professionals designed a marketing campaign ($47000 budget) for use on mass transit to increase awareness of state family planning services in New Jersey and the number of new clients seeking services. The public service advertisements (PSAs) included subway and bus placards pamphlets and posters each with a toll free hotline for people to call for more information. The subway only operated in the northeastern counties while bus service extended throughout the state. The campaign lasted from May 1-October 10 1986. Women made 78% of all calls to the hotline. Even though the campaign designed marketing themes to target adolescents especially black adolescents adolescents made only 23% of all calls. 62% of all callers were between 20-39 years old. 85% of all calls were from people living in the northeastern part of the state which is closest to New York City or the immediate surrounding counties. >50% of the remaining callers lived or worked in Camden an urbanized area in the southern section of the state. Callers referred to subway PSAs (32%) almost as often as they did to bus PSAs (36%). The number of family planning clients who said that they visited a family planning clinic because of exposure to any advertising increased from 137 (1985) to 2664 (1986). The results demonstrated that more research is needed to determine topics and incentives for adolescents. Since 22% of all callers included men family planning providers could promote vasectomies infertility assessments and diagnosis and treatment of sexually transmitted diseases (STDs) by using PSAs on mass transit. The researchers have also actively considered using motion picture PSAs with similar marketing focuses and materials.