Louise wrote:
>Studies about smoking prevention and control have proven repeatedly that
>this type of advertisement does not work. It does not. It angers people,
>it makes them feel patronized, they end up wanting to do the bad behavior
>just to make you angry. It does not work. Period.

Well, I wasn't suggesting that we should do this for breastfeeding!  But the
National Transportation Safety Board includes a little message in their
materials saying their focus group research shows that this ad is very
effecctive in getting the message across.  So......maybe it doesn't work for
smoking, but it seems to work for car seats.  The local hospital also uses
guilt about getting breast cancer, dying, and leaving your children
motherless to encourage women to come in and get breast exams.  "Do it for
them" is the motto along with a photo of a child hugging his mother.  They
say it works extremely well for getting women in for mammograms.  In fact,
it worked so well they used the same approach in an ad campaign to get men
to bring in their elderly fathers for prostate cancer checks "Do it for him.
Give your father a real gift this Father's Day, the gift of life.  Bring him
to St. Joseph's Hospital for a prostate cancer screening."  This campaign
was also very successful.

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Katherine A. Dettwyler, Ph.D.                         email: [log in to unmask]
Anthropology Department                               phone: (409) 845-5256
Texas A&M University                                    fax: (409) 845-4070
College Station, TX  77843-4352