Health Campaign Case_Chan ju LEE

What I feel like introducing to you concerning health campaign is a recently conducted one dealing with prevention against hepatitis B by the Korean Association for the Study of the Liver.

Although I found its video link on YouTube, I recommend that you just skip it if you have an aversion to seeing something unpleasant; I actually have deemed this case wrong in light of communication strategies.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WPq42jZNYMQ

This campaign primarily drew upon so-called "fear appeal." Of course, it is frequently favored as an effective means to maximize intended effects, namely, eliciting and promoting more adequate attention to certain health issues among the public. However, the critical problem in the above case is that it appeared to go too far from the advisable extent: it depicted a patient in the terminal stage with too much details such as rather exaggerated jaundice and swollen belly. After its airing, opposed to the expected responses, many protested that it could evoke an unnecessary fright about hepatitis B as well as a biased view toward the patients. The association planning the campaign, as a consequence, turned to changing the close-up shot of the horribly depicted patient to a full shot with a less provoking tag line.

This case well illustrates that utilizing fear appeal should be more careful particularly in the realm of health campaign in that people are disposed to be more sensitive to issues related to life and health. Accordingly, here, the importance of taking account of a campaign's impact, response, and context must be discretely kept in mind.