Bringing Play to Life

The Use of Experiential Marketing in the VERB Campaign

Carrie D. Heitzler, MPH, Lori D. Asbury, BA, Stella L. Kusner, BA
Abstract: Given the abundance of advertising and media that children and adolescents are exposed
to today, it is increasingly important to incorporate nontraditional channels and venues in
strategies designed to reach them. One such channel that the CDCs VERB campaign
employed was experiential marketing, which is dened here as a live event or experience that
gives the target audience the opportunity to see a product and experience it for themselves. Experiential
marketing and the tactics that the VERB campaign used to reach children aged 913 years
(tweens) with health messages about physical activity are described, including a discussion
about how other public health campaigns might use experiential marketing and other
commercial marketing techniques to reach the public with public health messages.
(Am J Prev Med 2008;34(6S):S188S193) 2008 American Journal of Preventive Medicine
Introduction
C
hildren are exposed to an unprecedented
amount of marketing activities through an ever-
widening range of channels. In 2004, $15 billion
was spent on media-based advertising and other mar-
keting to children and young people.
1
Because young
consumers are inundated with advertising for every-
thing from breakfast cereals to the latest technologic
gadgets, breaking through the clutter to reach them
with any messages, especially health messages, is dif-
cult.
2
To overcome this difculty, the VERB cam-
paign used an innovative form of marketing called
experiential marketing. This article contains a brief expla-
nation of the concept of experiential marketing and
describes how the VERB campaign used experiential
marketing as one tactic to reach children aged 913
years (tweens) with messages about physical activity.
Various forms of experiential marketing that VERB
used to bring health messages to its target audience are
discussed and ways to evaluate experiential marketing
are suggested, concluding with a discussion about how
other public health professionals might embark on
health promotion and social marketing campaigns us-
ing experiential marketing techniques.
Experiential Marketing
During the past decade, major businesses and commer-
cial brands have shifted a large portion of their adver-
tising dollars away from traditional forms of advertising
(such as television and print) toward new, innovative
forms of marketing and advertising to reach and con-
nect with consumers, especially young consumers.
3
One innovative approach of marketing is experiential
marketing, which is dened here as a live event or
experience that gives the target audience the opportunity to see
a product and experience it for themselves.
3
The basis of
experiential marketing is that it occurs face-to-face
through a personal experience using the service or
product or through a demonstration. Cognitive psy-
chologists note that face-to-face interaction, because it
engages multiple senses, dramatically increases peo-
ples ability to absorb, remember, and apply learning.
4
The goal of experiential marketing is to tie a product or
campaign to an experience that is relevant to the target
audience, the premise being that letting people dis-
cover the characteristics of a product or service on their
own is more effective than having them see or hear
about it through a passive medium such as television or
radio. Experiential marketing includes tactics such as
giving out free product samples, offering free trial
periods, and organizing events and tours that allow
consumers to use the products or services being mar-
keted or to interact with representatives of the company
selling the product or service. The premise of experi-
ential marketing follows several theoretical principles
presented in the elds of communication, marketing,
and health behavior change, including the diffusion of
innovations
5
and social cognitive theories.
6
Research shows that adolescents who experience and
try new products or services have more positive beliefs
and attitudes about those products than do adolescents
exposed to the product only through traditional adver-
tising.
7
According to a survey by Jack Morton World-
wide,
8
experiential marketing has a greater effect on
adolescents than do advertisements on television or the
From the School of Public Health, University of Minnesota (Heit-
zler), Minneapolis, Minnesota; and Frankel, an Arc Worldwide Com-
pany (Asbury, Kusner), Chicago, Illinois
Address correspondence and reprint requests to: Carrie D. Heit-
zler, MPH, School of Public Health, University of Minnesota, 1300 S.
Second Street, Suite 300, Minneapolis MN 55410. E-mail:
heitz022@umn.edu.
S188 Am J Prev Med 2008;34(6S) 0749-3797/08/$see front matter
2008 American Journal of Preventive Medicine Published by Elsevier Inc. doi:10.1016/j.amepre.2008.03.009
Internet. According to this survey, the most important
factors in making a live marketing event interesting to
adolescents are the opportunity to test or try out a
product or service, an on-site representative to tell
them about the product or service, and free samples
and information on the product or service.
8
The VERB Campaigns Strategy
The goal of the VERB campaign was to increase physi-
cal activity among tweens.
9
To reach tweens with the
message, a surround strategy was chosen. That is, VERB
and its messages were made visible through multiple
channels by bringing campaign messages to the chil-
dren at home, in school, and throughout the commu-
nity. VERB had the challenge of establishing and
building its own brand
10
and applying the principles of
commercial marketing to a public health issue. To help
us with this task, leading advertising agencies were
hired.
9
For optimal results, the campaigns planners chose to
combine two strategies: (1) marketing tactics designed
to reach large audiences with little personal involve-
ment by the target audience (e.g., broadcast advertising
on radio and television) and (2) tactics designed to
reach smaller audiences but with high personal involve-
ment by the target audience (e.g., participating in
community fairs and sponsored events). Experiential
marketing tactics were just one component of the
multi-component VERB campaign (Table 1). During
each phase of the campaign, a variety of strategies were
used to convey a common theme or concept. For
instance, in Phase 3 of the campaign (June 2004July
2005), the theme was that physical activities could be
done anywhere and anyhow, and children were encour-
aged with slogans such as play by your own rules. Accord-
ingly, all of campaign components implemented dur-
ing this phaseincluding the experiential marketing
methodsfollowed this same theme.
Although the goal of the VERB campaign was to
increase regular participation in physical activity by
tweens,
9
the essence of the messages and tactics high-
lighted the notion of play and were exemplied by the
types of activities and situations that were depicted
throughout the campaign. Rather than giving tweens
educational messages about the recommended levels of
moderate-to-vigorous physical activity, VERB focused
on getting them to play in their own backyards, in
neighborhood parks, or with their after-school pro-
grams. This notion of play was brought to life through
experiential marketing tactics.
Environments were created where tweens could in-
teract with VERB and play in new and engaging ways.
The purpose was to have a direct effect on tweens in
their own communities by allowing them hands-on,
lasting, enjoyable experiences related to physical activ-
ity. The major goals of the experiential marketing
tactics were to (1) augment VERBs national media
campaign by reinforcing the VERB messages, (2) pro-
vide trial opportunities for tweens to be physically
active, (3) provide on-site incentives or rewards for
participating in physical activities, and (4) raise aware-
ness of local opportunities for children to be physically
active.
The secondary goal of experiential marketing was to
create intrigue among tweens by creating buzz about
VERB. That is, word-of-mouth communication was gen-
erated within the target audience, with the hope that
this would lead to changes in the social norms related
to children being physically active. In many cases, these
strategies also allowed the information about VERB to
reach tweens and their parents simultaneously and to
involve local partners (e.g., state health departments,
sporting goods stores, skating rinks) in the VERB
campaign.
Launching a new brandespecially one that calls for
health-related behavior changeis a distinct marketing
challenge. To make tweens aware of VERB and to
create afnity for VERB, the campaign purposefully
aligned itself with the brands and media outlets most
appealing to tweens. As found in formative research, it
was important to link VERB with experiences that
Table 1. Components of the VERB Campaign
Component Description
Paid and unpaid advertising Purchased and donated advertising on television, on radio, and in print
Websites Websites designed for specic VERB audiences:
Tween: www.VERBnow.com
Parents: www.VERBparents.com
Partners and stakeholders: www.cdc.gov/VERB
Experiential marketing Tactics such as event sponsorship, mobile marketing, guerilla marketing, and promotions
in schools and communities
Contests and sweepstakes Individual and group competitions to encourage participation in physical activity
Community partnerships Collaborations with organizations across the country to increase opportunities for tweens
to be physically active and to reach parents and other inuencers of tweens
Corporate partnerships Collaboration with corporations to extend the reach and appeal of the campaign to tweens
Public relations Communication with news media, stakeholders, and partner organizations to highlight the
importance of physical activity for young people and to spotlight campaign activities
June 2008 Am J Prev Med 2008;34(6S) S189
tweens respected and considered cool.
11
With that in
mind, a partnership was developed with popular media
outlets (e.g., Nickelodeon); athletes (e.g., Venus Wil-
liams); and musicians (e.g., Bow Wow). Some of
VERBs major partners were the National Recreation
and Park Association, National Hockey League, Wom-
ens National Basketball Association, National Football
League, Womens Tennis Association, Six Flags, Wil-
son, ESPN Play Your Way, and Coop Active Sports.
Examples of VERBs Experiential Marketing Tactics
Event Sponsorship
Throughout the campaign, VERB served as the main
sponsor or co-sponsor of a variety of tween-centered
events across the country. The primary purpose of
sponsoring events was (1) to leverage the afnity that
tweens have with particular brands, sports, and celebri-
ties to gain immediate credibility; and (2) to provide
opportunities for the tweens to interact with VERB and
to try various types of activities. Several events also gave
tweens and their families the chance to learn more
about and register for local programs or venues where
the children could be physically active.
At many events that VERB sponsored, an area called
the Activity Zone was set up, where children and
adolescents could participate in a variety of activities
such as rock climbing, basketball, soccer, dancing, and
interactive video games that required children to move
(e.g., Dance Dance Revolution, GameBike). The Activ-
ity Zone allowed tweens to try activities and be re-
warded for participating with VERB-branded prizes
(e.g., wristbands, t-shirts, Frisbees

). Several events also

featured live performances by celebrities and instruc-
tional clinics with well-known athletes.
Examples of events sponsored or co-sponsored by
VERB are the 20022003 Nickelodeon Wild & Crazy
Kids (WACK) tour, the 2004 Sports Illustrated for Kids
No Limits Road Trip tour, and the AND 1 Mixtape
Tour in 2004. In addition, VERB cosponsored local
cultural events such as the Harvest Moon Festival in Los
Angeles; Youth Day Powwow in Black Hills, South
Dakota; and the Calle Ocho Street Festival in Miami.
The audience and reach of each event varied. For
example, through the Nickelodeon WACK tour, over
14,000 tweens were reached during nine events.
Guerilla and Mobile Marketing
Mobile and guerilla marketing involves going directly
to target consumers to interact with them face-to-face in
a spontaneous and short-term encounter. In VERBs
case, mobile marketing meant going to popular hang-
outs such as malls and parks and attending community
events such as minor league baseball games, parades,
and fairs. Guerrilla marketing consists of unconven-
tional ways of performing promotional activities with
minimal resources.
12
At times, such approaches are
designed so that many in the target audience are
unaware that something is being marketed to them. It
allows marketers to react quickly to local conditions
and recast marketing strategies as needed. One such
tactic uses local ambassadors to engage target con-
sumers in an experience that combines an opportunity
for consumers to use a product or service with an
opportunity for the marketer to talk with the consumer
directly about that product or service.
The VERB campaign adapted these techniques to a
public health use. Street teams were deployed to dis-
seminate the VERB campaigns messages directly from
VERB ambassadors to tweens, especially inuential
tweens (i.e., tweens who are likely to inuence other
tweens). Street teams typically are composed of cool,
high-energy, young men and women of various racial
groups. Such ambassadors were identied and hired
through companies that specialize in youth and expe-
riential marketing such as Mr. Youth (www.mryouth.
com) and Marketing Werks (www.marketing-werks.com).
Recruitment occurred through open casting calls, recruit-
ment websites, and job fairs for event marketing. Criteria
for hiring included ethnic diversity, an outgoing person-
ality, unique sport and performance skills (e.g., break
dancing, bucket drumming, juggling), an established
network of friends and peers, and an overall ability to
connect with youth. The ambassadors became the face
of the campaign, interacting with tweens at events and
tours, leading the mobile marketing efforts, and increas-
ing the buzz about VERB through traditional and online
channels.
An example of mobile marketing, VERBs national
mobile tourthe VERB Anytourwas launched in
June 2004. Six custom trucks, with colorful designs on
them, toured the nation, reaching children at amuse-
ment parks, summer camps, community organizations,
and events such as the Gravity Games. Figure 1 is a
graphic of the Anytour mobile truck. The trucks
remained in each market for about 1 week at a time.
Between June and October 2004 the tour visited close
to 500 events and reached more than 840,000 tweens.
After a short break, the tour started its second leg in
February 2005 and traveled until the end of May 2005.
The second leg visited about 455 locations and inter-
acted with more than 300,000 tweens. The tour used
the theme Anytime Anywhere featured in VERBs na-
tional advertising. Its purpose was to let children know
they could engage in a variety of activities anytime and
anywhere. The message was that physical activity does
not always require structure and expensive equipment
and that children can even invent their own games. For
example, during the mobile tour, children tried using a
garbage can as a hoop to play basketball and broom-
sticks to play hockey. The tour was high-energy and
encouraged all children, regardless of their skills and
abilities, to take part. During the tour, staff handed out
S190 American Journal of Preventive Medicine, Volume 34, Number 6S www.ajpm-online.net
VERB-branded prizes such as Frisbees

, foot bags, and

popular rubber wrist bracelets. Most incentives were
physical activity gear that encouraged active play both
at and beyond the event.
Another example of VERBs mobile and guerrilla
marketing tacticsVERB Yellowballwas launched in
November 2005. During this nal phase of the cam-
paign, all campaign componentsincluding the paid
advertisements, school- and community-based pro-
grams, and the mobile tourused the theme Yellow-
ball. The idea was to use yellow rubber balls to spread
play from tween-to-tween across the nation. VERB
distributed more than 500,000 yellow balls to tweens
through a variety of channels and asked those tweens to
join in and help create a movement of play. The cam-
paign informed tweens that by playing with the yellow
ball, telling their story on the VERBs website, and
passing that ball on to another tween, they could
directly affect all childrens participation in play. This
peer-to-peer program allows tweens to advocate for play
directly, resulting in a relevant and authentic experi-
ence that happens with their own friends and
acquaintances.
The Yellowball program began with a 4-month, word-
of-mouth campaign. A total or 812 youth, aged 13 to 16,
were recruited through online questionnaires placed
on social networking websites such as www.myspace-
.com to become active members of Team VERB Yellow-
ball. Questionnaires assessed the youths self-reported
friend and peer networks, their use of online chatting
and blogging sites, and their outgoingness. Each mem-
ber received one VERB Yellowball kit (t-shirt, 5 yellow
balls, and instructions) and became an ambassador of
VERB Yellowball to their friends, at their school,
and/or in their community. During this rst effort,
members were asked to get active with their peers and
to document each mission online with photos, videos,
and blogs on www.VERBnow.com. In addition, two
separate Yellowball mobile and guerilla tours used
trained brand ambassadors to travel across the country
and create a word-of-mouth network. During these
tours, close to 200,000 yellow balls were distributed and
the teams reached over 750,000 tweens. Figure 2 shows
an example a Yellowball truck at a community event.
Promotions in Schools and Communities
In addition to event sponsorship and mobile and
guerrilla marketing, VERB developed and disseminated
several promotions in schools and communities nation-
wide. Most of these involved distributing a turn-key kit,
which contained all the materials necessary for children
aged 913 years to have a fun and entertaining expe-
rience being physically active. Kits were distributed at
no cost to schools and community organizations
through a variety of channels, including the VERB
website (www.cdc.gov/VERB) and vendors with estab-
lished networks for reaching teachers with tween stu-
dents. The purpose of these school and community
promotions was to show students everyday opportuni-
ties to be active where they are. Physical education and
homeroom teachers were provided with the tools to
interest their students creatively with new ways to play.
All of the promotions were designed for a short period,
generally from 2 to 6 weeks. Changing promotions
frequently was especially important for the school-
based promotions in order to keep the activities and
messages fresh and appealing to tweens.
An example of a school promotion was VERBs
3-week Crossover program, which was implemented in
2005 for students in grades 48 and designed to
increase the number of hours children spent in physi-
cal activity before and after school. The idea of Cross-
over was to combine basketball with another sport,
activity, or piece of equipment associated with another
sport to create fun, new games. For instance, the game
End Zone Hoops could be made up combining
Figure 1. VERB Anytour mobile tour truck.
Figure 2. Example of a VERB Yellowball truck and event.
June 2008 Am J Prev Med 2008;34(6S) S191
basketball and football. The program kit included a
teacher guide, educator letter, parent letters, two post-
ers, a dry-erase laminated poster to record competition
results, award certicates, and an interactive game
wheel that suggested games to combine and play at
home. The kit also contained prizes such as terrycloth
wristbands and inatable vinyl basketballs; each student
received a rubber band bracelet. The Crossover pro-
gram was distributed to over 2000 schools.
Reactions of the Target Audience
For the VERB campaign, several methods were used to
get immediate feedback on the process of the interven-
tion (i.e., how well the events and other tactics were
being carried out as planned and how well the target
audience was responding). The primary method was
through on-site observation. For this, a member of the
VERB team traveled to one of the planned mobile truck
stops or to a sponsored event and observed what
happened. Each specic event or tour was observed at
least once throughout the course of the campaign. In
most cases, the staff member was unknown to the team
of people organizing the promotion on site. In some
instances the observation process was formal and sys-
tematic, meaning that the observer had a specic
protocol to follow, and in other cases the observations
were less formal and observers simply watched what was
happening for 2 to 4 hours and wrote a summary. The
observation protocols were developed specically for
each tactic and were tailored to capture important
aspects pertaining to that specic event and/or venue.
In addition to on-site observations, intercept inter-
views were also conducted during events. During the
intercept interviews, staff engaged tweens in a brief
conversation, gauging their satisfaction with the event,
including their likes and dislikes. Generally, tweens
responded positively about their interactions with all
VERB activities and events. Experiences that allowed
tweens to try a variety of physical activities and interact
with their peers seemed to be the most popular. Tweens
generally seemed excited to continue playing with the
active VERB giveaways (e.g., foot bags, Frisbees

) upon
leaving the events.
Conclusion
No single mediumtelevision, print, Internet, or any-
thing elseis sufcient to communicate with children
and adolescents, especially considering the multi-
tasking lifestyle so many of them lead.
13
It is imperative
to get the right mix of marketing tactics when trying to
communicate with them, especially with health mes-
sages that might otherwise get lost in the barrage of
commercial advertisements. Experiential marketing is
not a substitute for broadcast and print advertising;
rather, it is a powerful partner. By focusing on the
events and activities that young people care about, and
by reaching them at a time when they are receptive to
new ideas, public health professionals can create rela-
tionships that cultivate emotional attachment to a
brand or a health message. We believe that public
health campaigns that show success will be those that
understand how to integrate experiential marketing as
a complementary tactic to more traditional forms of
advertising and direct marketing. As new tactics in
commercial marketing emerge and show success,
health professionals and social marketers can learn
from them and adopt similar strategies for health
promotion campaigns, particularly campaigns targeted
to children and adolescents. By using a variety of
marketing channels, both traditional and nontradi-
tional, public health professionals can create opportu-
nities for young people to experience (rather than pas-
sively hear about) the benets of the behavior that
public health is promoting.
Experiential marketing tactics, as designed, typically
reach fewer people and often carry a higher cost per
person ratio compared to traditional mass-media ef-
forts. However, we believe that the intensity and depth
by which these tactics can convey a campaigns mes-
sages and encourage trial behaviors is extremely valu-
able in the behavior change process. In addition, the
suspected buzz that these tactics can create can help
extend reach beyond direct exposure at events. In an
environment of limited resources it is important for
each program to critically evaluate the potential effects
of using strategies designed to reach large audiences
that have little personal involvement by the target
audience (e.g., mass communication) with those de-
signed to reach smaller audiences but with high per-
sonal involvement by the target audience. We speculate
that experiential marketing can be effectively used in a
wide range of public health programsfrom large-
scale, national campaigns to those with modest re-
sources in smaller, dened communities.
The VERB campaign set out not simply to inform,
but to create experiences that extended the positive
messages of play. We believe that a combination of all
of the marketing tacticstraditional and nontradition-
alallowed the VERB campaign to be a real success.
14
The addition of experiential marketing tactics achieved
what broadcast media could probably not achieve alone
and helped children to experience physical activity in a
fun and rewarding way.
Work for this paper was completed while Ms. Heitzler and Ms.
Asbury were employees of the CDC, Atlanta, Georgia.
The ndings and conclusions in this paper are those of the
authors and do not necessarily represent the views of the
CDC.
S192 American Journal of Preventive Medicine, Volume 34, Number 6S www.ajpm-online.net
No nancial disclosures were reported by the authors of
this paper.
References
1. Schor JB. Born to buy: the commercialized child and the new consumer
culture. New York: Scribner, 2004.
2. Randolph W, Viswanath K. Lessons learned from public health mass media
campaigns: marketing health in a crowded media world. Annu Rev Public
Health 2004;25:41937.
3. Schmitt BH. Experiential marketing: how to get customers to sense, feel,
think, act, relate to your company and brands. New York: Free Press, 1999.
4. Eysenck M. Fundamentals of cognition. New York: Psychology Press, 2006.
5. Rogers EM. Diffusion of innovations. New York: Free Press, 1995.
6. Bandura A. Social cognitive theory: an agentic perspective. Annu Rev
Psychol 2001;52:126.
7. Moore ES, Lutz RJ. Children, advertising, and product experiences: a
multimethod inquiry. J Consum Res 2000;27:3147.
8. Bigham L. Experiential marketing: a consumer survey. New York: Jack
Morton Worldwide, 2005. Available at: www.jackmorton.com/us/philoso-
phy/whitePaper.asp.
9. Wong F, Huhman M, Heitzler C, et al. VERB: a social marketing
campaign to increase physical activity among youth. Prev Chron Dis. [serial
online] 2004 Jul. Available at: www.cdc.gov/pcd/issues/2004/jul/
04_0043.htm.
10. Asbury LD, Wong FL, Price S, Nolin MJ. The VERB campaign: applying
a branding strategy in public health. Am J Prev Med 2008;34(6S):S183
S187.
11. Formative Research Reports. Executive summaries for brand development.
Available at: www.cdc.gov/YouthCampaign/research/resources.
12. Levinson J, Godin S. The guerrilla marketing handbook. New York:
Houghton Mifin, 1994.
13. Roberts DF, Foehr UG, Rideout V. Generation M: media in the lives of
818 year olds. Menlo Park CA: Kaiser Family Foundation, 2005.
14. Huhman ME, Potter LD, Duke JC, Judkins DR, Heitzler CD, Wong FL.
Evaluation of a national physical activity intervention for children: the
VERB campaign 20022004. Am J Prev Med 2007;32:3843.
Did you know?
You can track the impact of your article with citation alerts that let you know when your
article (or any article youd like to track) has been cited by another Elsevier-published
journal.
Visit www.ajpm-online.net today to see what else is new online!
June 2008 Am J Prev Med 2008;34(6S) S193