WIC Loving Support Campaign

WIC is a U.S. Department of Agriculture Food and Nutrition assistance program for women, infants, and children up to five years of age. They initiated the Loving Support breastfeeding promotion campaign with the assistance of Best Start Social Marketing and the USDA's Food and Nutrition Service.

From their website:

Campaign Goals

1. Increase breastfeeding initiation rates among WIC participants
2. Increase breastfeeding duration among WIC participants  
3. Increase referrals to WIC for breastfeeding support 
4. Increase general public acceptance and support of breastfeeding
5. Provide support and technical assistance to WIC State and local agencies in the promotion of breastfeeding

Key Messages

1. Helping women feel comfortable with breastfeeding 
2. Tips on how breastfeeding can work around a busy schedule 
3. The involvement of family and friends to make breastfeeding a success 

I am happy to hear that the percentage of women adopting the desired behavior increased and that this seems to bear out the effectiveness of the intervention and social marketing in general. However, as someone trained in designing materials rather than marketing strategies, I was disappointed that I couldn't locate anything indicating the reasoning behind the design of their printed materials. I found extensive reporting on research design and peer counseling. I found nothing reporting on how their copy writing was tested or their images selected, nor was there an explanation of why the pamphlets and posters targeted to Native Americans were so different in look and feel from the materials produced for other English- or Spanish- speaking populations (those were the three categories for each item, examples are here: English, Spanish, Native American).

It is not my place to be culturally sensitive for a culture to which I do not belong, but I am concerned about the materials designed for Native Americans and would really like to see the design decisions explicated. It seems like a fine line between being respectful of traditional cultures and perpetuating stereotypes, particularly when the designer comes from outside the culture in question. Visual research would be appreciated in this scenario.

Also, I don't think I appreciate the use of Comic Sans as a text face on the Loving Support web pages. Babies cannot write yet, so it doesn't really say "baby," and I thought that WIC wanted people to take breastfeeding seriously. Comic Sans doesn't lend much credibility.

Another example of inappropriate use of Comic Sans: Comic Sans was used on official school forms sent home from a Montessori school with a friend's child (then a student there) and this struck me as inappropriate.

The widespread abuse of Comic Sans might have been something for the social marketing team to study before using in on the WIC website, if in fact the team was involved in the site. Sometimes these efforts are so splintered that identity guidelines get dropped between print and electronic materials. Professionals ought to be aware of the reputation of a given typeface and what it brings to a campaign, and Comic Sans being used as "default mode" for anything involving juvenalia has tainted it, arguably beyond the point of redeeming it for use on anything worth caring about.

Little things like reversing the order of copy and headline matter as well, like on the Native American "Embarrassment" pamphlet, where the copy "Don't shy away from breastfeeding." was well above the (display type-set) word "Embarrassment?" Unless the studies revealed something novel about how Native Americans read English or navigate a page of information, this is not a user-friendly arrangement.

Because I could not find the information about design decisions and because of the visual cues listed above, my suspicion is that the marketing team designed the materials and there were not 'pure' designers working on the team. Graphic designers, as a rule, are extra-sensitive to type and image and aware of the historic or cultural use of images and typefaces. Marketers have a different skill set and focus, and speak a different language. Something may have been lost in translation, which would be regrettable in light of the extensive communication research conducted for this project.