Branding

I thought Manpreet's presentation today in class about the "VERB" campaign was pretty interesting. I had never heard about this campaign before (I guess not having cable TV may be one reason why). But I was really surprised to watch the video about the VERB yellow balls and the mission to promote physical activity among children. I was intrigued by how they came up with the idea of distributing balls to kids to encourage them to play outdoors, then log-on to the website to blog about their experience (at least those who have Internet access) and lastly pass the ball onto another friend via mail or in person. To me it seemed like a pretty novel even though only about 20% of kids passed the ball on. However, Dr. Elder brought up some good points about the branding of this campaign. I agree that the decision to use the word "VERB" as the brand/slogan didn't seem like an ideal choice to me to use in targeting children. Most adults don't even know the definition of the word and I highly doubt that kids know what it means. But on the other hand, I can understand the rationale for wanting to use a word that signifies action. Maybe selecting a word that children use to describe physical activity would have been a better approach in addition to using a symbol or logo that is easily identifiable.

I'm excited about working on our group messages. Hopefully we can incorporate our group name of "delish&nutrish" into the creative designs that we've brainstormed.