Assessing Characteristics, Needs, and Preferences of a Secondary Audience for the Development of a Bilingual Parent Component to the Food Friends Social Marketing Campaign

Abstract

Introduction of a variety of foods to children at an early age is essential because they acquire food preferences while establishing dietary habits during the first six years of life. Food Friends— Making New Foods Fun for Kids™ is a multifaceted awareness and education program designed to encourage preschool-aged children to try new foods, and thus increase food choice and dietary variety. To further enhance this behavior, nutrition education resources are needed aimed at encouraging parents, the secondary audience, to offer new foods to their children at home. The primary objectives of this study were to determine parents' preferences and needs for information and materials to help them offer new foods and to develop a parent component to the Food Friends social marketing campaign. A needs assessment was conducted via telephone interviews with parents ( n = 26). Bilingual taglines and graphics were pretested with parents, Head Start staff, and experts ( n = 306). The end products were a bilingual tagline, a secondary message, a graphic, and educational resources targeted to low-income parents. Formative research, expert advice, and the use of the Social Learning Theory contributed to the development of each of these products. Target audience feedback was essential in the development of this theory-driven, secondary audience component of a nutrition-related social marketing campaign.