Turning Up the Heat on Food Safety
Social Marketing Done Right
www.isitdoneyet.gov
David Ehrlich, President, The Track Group, Inc.
In 1993, three children died as a result of eating hamburger patties contaminated with the E. coli bacteria. The cause of the deadly outbreak in the Puget Sound area was no mystery. Meat at public restaurants had been undercooked.
Although the outbreak was unusual in the United States, the problem of meat being served slightly raw was not. A 1990’s study by the U.S. Department of Agriculture found that one out of four hamburgers failed to turn brown before reaching a safe internal temperature.
People assume that they can tell whether meat or poultry has been cooked based on its color. But scientists say that color is an unreliable guide.
One solution to the problem is a food thermometer, a device inserted into the food to gauge its temperature. The trouble is, only half of the public owned a food thermometer. And of those who did, the vast majority used them on Thanksgiving Day for turkeys, according to a 1994 USDA survey. Indeed, only three percent of Americans used a food thermometer to check small items like hamburgers.
Turning Up the Heat
Trying to increase dramatically the use of food thermometers, the USDA in 2000 began a social marketing campaign. Its research found that, in addition to children, other groups such as seniors, pregnant women, and people with chronic illnesses were at risk of dying from E. coli.
Four years later, federal officials wanting to jumpstart the program tried a new tact. With a budget of only a few hundred thousand dollars, they began a federal campaign called “Is It Done Yet?”
Based on a pilot program in Michigan, it targeted a new group. These were parents of children younger than 10 in “boomburbs,” upscale, suburban towns in which its residents acquire and use new information, influence mass culture, and disseminate new ideas. They prefer high quality, gourmet foods, which are often served at lower than safe internal temperatures. And they tend to change their behavior for their kids but not themselves
One thing that USDA officials learned from the pilot program was that even residents of boomburbs were unfamiliar with food thermometers. “We really had to show them how to use it,” Holly McPeak, project coordinator for the Food Safety Education Staff, said. “You couldn’t just give it to them.” Earlier studies had discovered that people considered food thermometers to be a “hassle,” expensive, and unnecessary.
The hallmark of the campaign is Thermy, a food thermometer made into a cartoon character. Thermy wears a chef’s hat and has human facial features and says “It’s Safe to Bite When the Temperature is Right!”
In addition, “Is It Done Yet?” features many of the familiar devices of social marketing campaigns. It boasts a website: www.isitdoneyet.gov; color brochures; magnets with a punch-out temperature chart; print and radio ads; daily special events, and more than 400 partnerships.
Where the Beef Is
The campaign showed results. The Michigan pilot program, conducted over a couple of weeks, yielded five million impressions. Also, the overall share of boomburbs using food thermometers increased roughly 9 percent. “We are on our way of reaching our goal of ten percent of the population using the thermometers by 2010,” McPeak said.
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