Pull-Push Project - Implementing the food safety consumer campaigns

Pull-Push Project - Implementing the food safety consumer campaigns

Under the consumer pull-component in WP6 of the project, a nine-month consumer food safety behavior change campaign was developed in each country and run June 2022 to February 2023 in Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso, and also in Dire Dawa and Harar, Ethiopia. Knowledge from WP2 and local stakeholder consultation was used to outline the broad requirements of the campaigns. A call was then put out in each country for advertising agencies to put in bids to develop and deliver the campaign. Short-listed applicants made a pitch to a panel of project experts and national food safety partners, with the winning bid then given the contract to produce and deliver the campaign, obtaining regular feedback from project and officials. The campaigns addressed the following:

  • In Ethiopia, the campaign aimed to encourage and support women with children below 10 years from low-income households to make safer choices when buying tomatoes at urban informal markets and when preparing tomatoes at home. This mass-media consumer campaign included TV and radio ads, billboards and posters, Facebook posts, and door-to-door visits by trained Health Extension workers.
  • A chicken focused campaign was run in Burkina Faso in which the emphasis was on buying chicken at hygienic “koassa’s” (roadside chicken restaurants) in Ouagadougou for home and out-of-home consumption. This mass-media consumer campaign included TV and radio ads, billboards, and a social media component done in collaboration with a social influencer.

Both campaigns were launched with a high profile event with officials and stakeholders covered by the press.
 

Ethiopia campaign material and reach

TV spots: About 700 plays of the TV adverts/spots split across five local stations, with each play having about 1million viewers. The main spot had a catchy jingle referring to tomatoes stating “Eat the good ones, not the damaged ones”, featuring a famous comedian and tv chef. The positive, light-hearted, catchy jingle featured across the multi-media campaign.

Digital campaign: Facebook messages were seen by 1-1.8million people, with 7 to 36,000 interactions. 

Health worker door to door visits: In Harar health visitors visited about 7,600 households, spent a few minutes discussing the message, played the video or jingle, handed out a flyer and put up a campaign poster by the house for others to see and to stimulate discussion. Visits reached 25,000 adults and 9,500 children. As the health visitors are well known and trusted by the households they visit, this was very effective and created secondary discussion with neighbours which is good for message transmission.

Burkina Faso campaign material and reach

Billboards: 30 billboards across Ouagadougu.

TV spots: 235 tv spots played across three channels.

Model consumers are featured in the TV spots. The spot ends with a health expert confirming the consumers' attitudes and giving expert advice.

Influencer videos (Broadcasted on 3TV)

Moussa is a well-known humorist in Burkina Faso. For this Pull-Push campaign he made 4 video capsules. His videos tell funny stories in which the important messages of the campaign are distilled. At the end of each video, a key message of the campaign is played.

Radio spots: 180 spots played on each of four radio stations.