A Market For Wellness
Bill Reger, Health Advocate
Never in his dreams would Bill Reger have envisioned himself, at age 61, as a marketing expert. After all, he's trained as an exercise physiologist and spends his days as a professor at West Virginia University. True, Reger is not selling widgets--though his advertising "buys" have been nearly as large as those for burgers and Buicks in his Wheeling, W.Va., region. His product is much less tangible yet highly prized: a more healthful lifestyle.
Reger acquired his savvy about the media and human behavior not from textbooks but from a wide variety of vocations, including years as a Roman Catholic monk, a sailing teacher in Hawaii, and a state rep for Wheeling. While in the Legislature, he also ran the cardiac wellness unit at a local hospital. His work brought him to the attention of Bayer, the aspirin company, which was starting a wellness program nearby.
Reger signed on with Bayer, yet what really impressed him was Hill & Knowlton, the PR firm hired by the company to promote the program. "It just blew me away what these people could accomplish by working with the media." But he also learned from their mistakes: The Bayer program was too ambitious and unfocused, aiming to change everything from diet to smoking to exercise all at once. "I've learned that in public health, to try to do everything is to do nothing."
Focus. Coincidentally, he met up about that time with Margo Wootan of the Center for Science in the Public Interest, who was looking for a place and a partner to develop a model public-health media campaign. The goal: to persuade people to switch from artery-clogging high-fat milk to low-fat milk. Together they developed TV ads showing a woman's hand moving from whole milk in the dairy case to skim milk as she says: "Here's a simple exercise that you can do right in the supermarket that's good for the whole family." The response was enormous: In surveys, fully 90 percent knew of the campaign, and 38 percent actually switched to skim milk.
Reger has since used the same type of approach to target other unhealthful behaviors. His 2001 "Wheeling Walks" campaign was aimed at getting sedentary, middle-aged people walking for 30 minutes a day. His earlier research indicated that couch potatoes believed they didn't have the time or the energy to exercise. His goal was to shake that belief.
The Wheeling Walks ads featured a middle-aged couple who started walking just 10 minutes a day, then 20 minutes, then 30. As a result, they say with twinkles in their eyes, they have the time and energy "for well . . . everything." Says the ad agency's Pacy Markman: "We didn't imply that walking was Viagra, but we got the idea into that little innuendo--energy and time for `everything.' " One in 3 Wheeling residents later surveyed said he or she had started walking 30 minutes a day.
The campaign was also a health bargain. It cost less than $7 per person to switch an estimated 58,000 Wheeling-area citizens to a routine of daily walking. That's compared with about $400 per person with traditional public-health interventions.
Hundreds of communities have since used the milk campaign, and several are replicating Wheeling Walks. Reger suffered a setback recently when he was unable to find funds for a fruit and vegetable campaign aimed at reducing obesity, but he remains determined: "If we don't start selling public health with the same level of effectiveness and sophistication as McDonald's, we're going nowhere."
KEEP AN EYE ON: ALFONSO CUARON Taking his place in the multibillion-dollar kingdom of stones, secrets, and goblets, the Mexican director's Hogwarts debut--Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban--hits the big screen in June. Cuaron, who directed the controversial film Y Tu Mama Tambien, may deliver a much darker Potter flick.
This story appears in the December 29, 2003 print edition of U.S. News & World Report.