Verb - That's What's (Not) Happening

They dropped the ball on this one. Nancy Schwartz of Getting Attention reports that the CDC's successful Verb campaign will become a past participle after a successful five-year run. This multifaceted social marketing campaign encouraged 9 to 13 year olds to get active and made exercise fun, creative and attractive. According to the Wall Street Journal, Congress failed to renew funding for the CDC to continue the program, which will run out of money this month. To date, the government has put $339 million into advertising and marketing for the Verb campaign, which urges kids to find their own action word and do it.

In addition to the ad campaign, the cornerstone of the program were the yellow balls that t

hey handed out -- about 500,000 of them. Each ball has a number, and kids were encouraged to blog about what they did with their ball on the VerbNow.com website and then pass the ball along to a friend. About 12,600 kids have "blogged" their ball.

The campaign evaluations have been quite successful (from the WSJ):

Awareness of the Verb campaign was extensive, with 70-80% of school kids knowing about the program. Apparently awareness among adults was much lower, resulting in the decision by Congress to take away funding. And this at a time when obesity, which starts in childhood, has reached epidemic proportions. I guess we'll just go back to having the health teachers droning "Exercise is good for you. You should do it."

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