Fighting teen obesity
Students in one Wharton School class have put their marketing expertise to work— and have already made a difference—in the fight against teenage obesity.
As part of Penn's "Ideas in Action" initiative, Wharton marketing professor Americus Reed had students in his "Consumer Behavior" class design and carry out marketing campaigns for Youth Challenge, an after-school fitness program created by Wharton alum Samuel Botts and hosted at his Center City fitness center, VIGORworks. Each team in the class researched its target audience and then developed a flyer and telephone message promoting the fitness program.
According to Botts, the students' efforts have paid off: Twice as many teens have signed up for the program since the Wharton campaigns were put into use, and fewer teens have dropped out of the 12-week exercise program. As part of the course, students also presented recommendations to Pennsylvania Secretary of Health Calvin Johnson on how to push the issue of teen obesity on the state level.
"It's one thing to talk about concepts in the abstract, like how to create a message that resonates with a group of consumers," Reed explains. "That's theory. But this was taking all these concepts from the class, all the tools we learned, and applying it to this specific project. And the students really loved it."
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