Let’s Move! Sesame Street

by Carol Wu

On February 9th,  of 2010, our First Lady Michelle Obama announced the launch of her new campaign, Let’s Move!. The campaign hopes to guide the younger generation into healthier eating and exercising.

In order to get the attention of the children, the campaign added a couple new, yet familiar characters: Elmo, Rosita, and many other characters from Sesame Street. Obama hopes the new addition will attract more children to participate in the campaign. 

Elaboration likelihood theory is a dual process that helps explains how people’s attitudes are formed and changed. This model observes how an argument’s position on the “elaboration continuum”. It looks at how the persuasiveness is shaped by high elaboration, to low elaboration. For example, if a group or company wants to raise awareness to their new project or campaign, they will have to use different methods that appeal to different age group. This way, the company can ensure they are raising awareness to the right group of people using the right methods.

There are two paths to the theory:

• Central route: When people are motivated and able to pay attention the  campaign’s message. This usually leads to permanent change in the people’s attitude because they are adopting what the campaign has to say.

• Peripheral route: When people are not paying attention to the message of the campaign, but by the surface characteristics. This means people are paying more attention to whether they spokesperson of the campaign is likeable instead of the actual message. This only causes temporary adoption of the campaign.

In this example, I would argue the Let Move! campaign is mostly using the peripheral route to get the children’s attention. Using characters from Sesame Street will indeed attract more children because they are familiar to the characters. However, although the new ambassadors are indeed attracting more children, the children do not necessarily understand the message behind the campaign. It is crucial that the campaign quickly delivers the eating healthy and exercising often message to the children.