Text4baby in Marketing Health Services Magazine

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G O O D B E G I N N I N G S : text4baby, a free, weekly sms text message service that is timed to a mother’s due date, was developed to be a resource for expectant and new mothers, making them aware of proper prenatal care and essential tips for a baby’s first year.

MHS spring 2011 ic USE ME.indd 12 6/14/11 1:08 PM

S p r i n g 2 0 1 1 | Marketingpower.coM

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THE STATiSTiCS ArE SHoCKing: Each year more than 500,000 American babies are born prematurely, and approximately 28,000 die before their first birthday. While medical experts can’t fully explain the cause, they do know that awareness of

proper prenatal care—which includes good nutrition, regular prenatal doctor visits and avoiding cigarettes and alcohol—can help a mother deliver a healthy baby.

pregnancy Education

goes MobileTimely text messages reach out to expectant mothers

B y J u d y M E E H A n A n d S t A C i E p A x t O n


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Recognizing both the scope of this public health problem and the potential of mobile technology, the National Healthy Mothers, Healthy Babies Coalition, founding partners Voxiva, CTiA-The Wireless Associa-tion and Grey Healthcare Group and founding sponsor Johnson & Johnson joined forces to create text4baby. This free service is the fi rst of its kind to use weekly text messages to alert women on ways to protect their babies’ health during pregnancy and postpartum. It was created to provide pregnant and new mothers with easy access to critical health information.

Women who sign up for the service by texting BABY (or BEBE in Spanish) to 511411 receive free SMS text mes-sages each week timed to their due date. The service offers women an easy, convenient and contemporary medium they trust to get information about their health and that of their children. Text4baby makes it easier for young women to receive guidelines for proper prenatal care by delivering information directly to their mobile devices, where it’s more likely to be read, as 90 percent of Americans have a mobile phone. Hill & Knowlton, an international com-munications consultancy, was recruited to help launch and promote this valuable resource.

The primary audience is young, pregnant women and new mothers from various backgrounds, who sometimes lack proper health care services. According to the Centers for Disease Control & Prevention, the infant mortality rate among African-American women is 2.4 times that of non-Hispanic white women. young, lower-income African-American women are a particularly important audience, as they have the highest infant mortality rates and receive the least prenatal care.

the plan. As with many deserving public health campaigns with limited budgets, the plan relied on earned media and outreach by partner organizations. The goals were to increase awareness of text4baby, recruit subscribers, gain the trust of users and third parties as a credible source of health information, create a broad coalition of partners to promote the service to pregnant women and new moms, and enlist the federal government and lawmakers to assist in spreading the word about text4baby.

The plan employed several tactics:

•Create buzz about text4baby at launch through earned media coverage;

•generate free coverage with a local radio public service announcement campaign featuring a pro bono celebrity spokesman or spokeswoman;

•Secure a media partnership; and•Encourage national, state and

local outreach partners to promote the service to their constituents and clients and to deliver the message directly and through their own earned media efforts.

The plan also focused on an integrated social media campaign to increase awareness. “Mommy blog-gers” were engaged to secure stories on popular sites like BabyCenter.com, MomslikeMe.com, Babygooroo.com and MochaMoms.org, as well as social networks like Facebook.

the Buzz. To create buzz, The Associated Press was offered exclu-sive coverage, followed by a next-day announcement by U.S. Federal Chief Technology offi cer Aneesh Chopra at a key health conference.

The founding partners issued a joint news release in both English and Spanish, and the White House offi ce of Science and Technology policy (oSTp)

did the same. Chopra wrote a post on the White House blog as well, providing an opportunity to highlight the support of the obama administration. Twenty partner organizations issued their own news releases and tweeted about their involvement. The launch was also covered by national television networks and their local affi liates throughout the country. immediately

“i smoked cigarettes until i found out i was pregnant,

and i quit for my child. a text like this could help someone who wants to smoke again think about having that cigarette.”

-mom and text4baby user, maryland

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valuable tool that will help ensure that information reaches the women who can benefit from it,” Capps says.

With increased support from Johnson & Johnson and a multiyear commitment announced recently, text4baby aims to reach one million moms by December 2012. mhs

✒Judy Meehan is the chief executive officer of the national Healthy Mothers, Healthy Babies Coalition. stacie paxton, a vice president in Hill & Knowlton’s Washington, d.C. office, led the public relations effort around the launch of text4baby. they may be reached at [email protected] and [email protected], respectively. please visit www.text4baby.org for more information.

following the launch, text4baby released a radio PSA in target markets nationwide. A number of factors were used in select-ing a celebrity to record the pro bono pSA. These included age, ethnicity, tone, accessibility and relevance to the target audi-ence. All this research led to Sherri Shepherd of “The View,” whose son had prematurity-related health issues and who might appeal to an African-American audience. The pSA ran in target markets shortly after the national launch.

MTV, the top media partner choice, signed on as an early media sponsor. MTV highlighted text4baby in the finale special, “Teen Mom with Dr. Drew,” resulting in nearly 1,500 new text4baby subscribers immediately following the airing. MTV also featured a bonus clip of “16 and Pregnant,” in which one mother shared important health messages she received through text4baby.

the Launch. Text4baby’s launch received significant earned media coverage with more than 650 place-ments and 75 million impressions, driving more than 180,000 sub-scribers (and counting) with 96 percent saying that they would recommend text4baby to a friend. The radio pSA with Shepherd received 15,750 broadcasts, reaching 32 million listeners. The text4baby Facebook page currently has more than 2,700 "likes" and continues to grow.

From a handful of initial founding partners, text4baby has grown to a 500-plus coalition of active public and private sector partners comprised of government agencies, professional associations, hospitals, corporations, academic institutions and nonprofit organizations. These include the oSTp, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), the Department of Defense Military Health System and more than 22 state agencies, including New York City, which advertises the program through its distribution of birth certificates.

Text4baby was honored by HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius with the prestigious HHSinnovates award, given to innovations that have improved HHS service. it also received the prestigious Silver Anvil Best of Show Award from Public Relations Soci-ety of America. in addition, text4baby hosted a congressional briefing and secured a recommendation letter from California Congresswoman lois Capps, who encouraged members of Congress to promote the service.

“Text4baby provides essential health information to pregnant women and new moms during a critical time of life. I was so pleased to be able to help spread the word about this

B A B Y T A L K : with more than 180,000

subscribers, text4baby has grown to a 500-plus coalition

of active public and private sector partners including government agencies, hospitals, corporations and academic institutions. ads featuring the baby seen here and ones similar to the ad on page 14 were used heavily throughout the launch.
