Teen Mom is an increasingly popular show on MTV where viewers tune in each week to watch young mothers struggle between their own lives as well as their child’s. While Teen Mom has been one of the most popular and most talked about shows on MTV.
However, pop culture today and reality television may drown the positive message MTV has made to discourage teen pregnancy. The idea of becoming famous will make some people act differently (e.g. becoming pregnant to try to audition for the show)
MTV has been viewed negatively while being viewed as careless by the public opinion with its choice programming of shows like Teen Mom and 16 and Pregnant.
Though MTV hasn’t ever condoned teen pregnancy and has taken steps to show the dangers of teenage pregnancy, they have been accused of hiring girls because they are pregnant and marketing pregnancy for money and ratings more so than social awareness. In this respect, parents, religious groups, and the news media have focused on a negative side of MTV that has put them in a potentially reputation damaging scenario. So instead of taking the show off the air due to negative press, MTV has decided to further its fight against teenage pregnancy with MTV Protect and Prevent.
Protect and Prevent will be a campaign that will kick off on May 7th until May 9th (a 3 day promotional campaign). With airing promotional programming for the Protect and Prevent This will try to accomplish many things toward its ultimate goal of raising awareness of teen pregnancy and rebuilding MTV’s reputation of a socially aware corporation.
Starting with creating a website, and social media site that will highlight the campaign’s overview. This includes reintroducing the National Day to Prevent Teen Pregnancy, which is May 8th. This program has been around since 2002 but has kept losing recognition as a national day of awareness.
Through MTV, the campaign will be announced weeks in advance in order to generate a buzz about what to look out for as far as programming. First, press releases will be made and distributed to the news media outlets to try to pick up on the event. We will try to get talk show interviews (Late Night, Today, etc.) with the stars of Teen Mom to endorse the week and get the public more aware. During the interview process, the key points will be made that this will be family appropriate, informative and also mentioning how much MTV is doing with teen pregnancy prevention.
The use of social media will play a great role in this campaign with interacting. This will be a great way to communicate (via one-to-many or mass communication model) with the target audience as well as get feedback via survey from the participants.
When the campaign is ready, the campaign will focus on these 3 main objectives:
Objective 1: Raise awareness of preventing teen pregnancy with the Prevent and Protect campaign.
Tactic: Have the stars from “Sixteen and Pregnant” and “Teen Mom” to star in a Public
Good Stuff Happens in 1:1 Meetings: Why you need them and how to do them well
Team Prevention: Karl Barron, Alexandra Wright, Alex Sepia, Josh Boyle
1.
2. Background Information
MTV has been viewed negatively while being viewed
as socially by the public opinion with its choice
programming of shows like Teen Mom and 16 and
Pregnant.
MTV could be at the forefront of a potential
reputation damaging situation without acting further
on preventing teenage pregnancy.
3. Teen Pregnancy Research
Will always be relevant… -Although only 13% of U.S.
teens have ever had sex by age 15, sexual activity is
common by the late teen years. By their 19th birthday,
seven in 10 teens of both sexes have had intercourse.
(Guttmacher Institute)
Thirty-four percent of young women become pregnant
at least once before they reach the age of 20 -- about
820,000 a year. Eight in ten of these teen pregnancies
are unintended and 79 percent are to unmarried teens.
4. Research continued…
Deeper Pockets - Taxpayers are paying at least seven
billion dollars a year to cover the price of heath care,
foster care, criminal justice, public assistance, and lost
tax revenues directly associated with teen
childbearing (1)
American teen girls aged 15-19 become pregnant at a
rate far higher than their counterparts in any other
industrialized country.
5. GOAL
Raising awareness of teen
pregnancy and rebuilding
MTV’s reputation of a socially
aware corporation.
7. Objectives of “Protect and Prevent”
Objective 1: Raise awareness of preventing teen
pregnancy.
Objective 2: Further our understanding of what
teenagers think about teen pregnancy
Objective 3: Change the perception of MTV’s
reputation of sending mixed messages to young girls
about the dangers of teen pregnancy.
9. Programming
Objective 1: Raise awareness of preventing teen
pregnancy with the Prevent and Protect campaign.
• Tactic 1: Have the stars from “Sixteen and Pregnant” and
“Teen Mom” to create a Public Service Announcement
• Tactic 2: Months before the May 5th kick off date, the
stars of teen moms will participate in a documentary that
will show multiple sides of the world of teen pregnancy.
10. Programming
Objective 1continued…
• Tactic 3: Have celebrities speak on behalf of
preventing teenage pregnancy on MTV.
• Tactic 4: Re-air episodes of Teen Mom for potential
new viewers during the campaign.
11. Programming
Objective 2: Understanding more of what teenagers/young
adults think about teen pregnancy.
Tactic 1: Create a “Protect and Prevent” website/social
media webpage/twitter account
Tactic 2: Creating an online poll though social media.
Tactic 3: Conduct a focus group of teenage girls across
America
12. Programming
Objective 3: Change the perception of MTV’s reputation
of not being a socially responsible company.
Tactic 1: Partner with the “national campaign” for
recognition of a long-standing organization (also
affiliated is stayteen.org and bedsider.org)
Tactic 2: Make note that this is not to promote the
shows of MTV but solely to create awareness of
teenage pregnancy
Tactic 3: Creating PSA will have a positive effect on
the social stand of the campaign.
14. How will evaluation be determined?
Though the website traffic/activity.
The ratings of the shows.
The number of responses to the online surveys.
The number of increase the partnering websites have
generated after the publicity of the campaign.
