"Rewind the Future" Ad Analysis

“Rewind the Future”

For Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta’s “Strong4Life” campaign

Today, more than one-third of children and adolescents are overweight or obese.  That’s significant, to say the least.  I initially became interested in childhood obesity prevention during a Spring Break trip to Miami.  While attending a large Latin-American street festival, Calle Ocho, the “kid zone” blew me away.  All I saw were lines and lines of children waiting for sample cups of Fanta and Oreos while a man on stage demonstrated how to make some sort of soda and fruit punch concoction.  So when I saw “Rewind the Future,” it left an impression.  Its message of tough love does holds some weight, but the video is jarring and gritty and may not resonate with its target audience: parents of overweight children, or parents who are overweight themselves. 

                                              Summary

While this ad received mixed opinions regarding its effectiveness, I argue that the use of fear appeals and intense visual rhetoric unwittingly stigmatizes its intended audience and therefore lacks in its effectiveness to spark a productive dialogue about the future of childhood obesity.

Major Strategies and Why They’re Ineffective

·       Fear Appeals: 

While some might think that witnessing the worst-case scenario for their child’s future would induce protective behavior change, it does not seem to be the case.  Research about fear appeal messaging found that “fear arousal may result in defensive reactions such as risk denial, biased information processing…thus rendering threatening health information an ineffective behavior change method” (Ruiter, 2014).  In addition to ignoring the message through denial, this type of messaging stigmatizes and blames parents for allowing their child to become overweight, rather than eliciting positive changes.

·       Intense Audio-Visual Rhetoric:

This ad also relies on its emotional audio-visual rhetoric to intensify its message.  The first-person camera angle creates a sense of identification with the character and the sounds of heavy breathing and eating noises help to create a disgust response with the intention of causing people to avoid the unwanted behavior.  Seeing such large amounts of food consumed in such a labored manner almost gives you a stomachache just watching.   While identification can be effective in public health campaigns, the disgust appeal indirectly associates obese people themselves with these feelings of disgust, which can lead to increased persecution and stigma for these individuals.   

Implications

As a whole, I believe this ad has serious implications about how we understand and handle the growing issue of obesity.  Primarily, this message uses terministic screens to deflect and select particular elements of the epidemic.  For example, the ad makes it clear that parents (and maybe videogames) are solely responsible for their children’s eating habits and are to blame when their weight gets out of control, but it never mentions the systematic flaws in public policy that allows Chic-fil-A and Coca-Cola to infiltrate public schools.  Or the piles of complete misinformation regarding health and nutrition and marketing trickery that parents must wade through in order to make the best decisions they know how, etc.

Essentially, the rhetorical deployment of fear appeals and visual rhetoric highlighting the shocking or disgusting elements of obesity in Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta’s “Rewind the Future” indirectly frightens, overwhelms and stigmatizes its intended audience, thus leaving its message ineffective and potentially harmful to their cause. 

Discussion Questions:

·      First of all, do you agree or disagree with my analysis? How did you feel about the ad? Was it effective for you or not? 

·      What are the consequences of situating obesity as a lifestyle choice rather than a disease? How could genetics or environmental factors be incorporated to make the message more effective?

·      How could the ad have increased its use of ethos, pathos, and logos?