Mt. Vernon Register-News

Local

November 29, 2012

Mission Possible Coalition to launch new campaign

By RORYE O’CONNOR rorye.oconnor@register-news.com

MT. VERNON — — A new print, television and radio campaign from the Mission Possible Coalition seeks to show parents that drinking alcohol doesn’t belong in their child’s life.

Robin Dodd, Mission Possible Coalition director, said the coalition’s message for this quarter is “One of these things does not belong in your child’s life.”

“We have a poster with a healthy activity, families eating dinner, a child getting a check up, and one frame with a child with an alcoholic beverage in her hand,” Dodd explained. “That one has an X through it. We’re trying to demonstrate that allowing underage youth to consume alcohol is illegal, unhealthy and unsafe.”

Dodd said the parent-focused campaign is designed to educate and remind parents about helping their kids make healthy choices, including not providing alcohol to underage youth. She said the posters are meant to spread the positive effects of having open communication about not using alcohol and other drugs, monitoring kids’ activities and the keys to success.

Celeste Robinson is the Mission Possible Coalition’s coordinator for the underage drinking grant, from which all the funds are taken for the media projects.

“She spearheads and organizes all the social norms campaigns for parent and youth media marketing materials,” Dodd said.

A media and marketing committee spends four to eight weeks to help design and review the messages meant for parents and youth, she said.

The graphics department at Peacock Printing helps generate the posters and graphics for the Mission Possible Coalition’s campaigns, she said.

“We have a parent or adult focus group, and we send the messages out to them to review,” she said. “They rate them on the graphics, the message and believablity. Based on their input, we tweak initial design and send them out again. If we see a positive response, they are created and distributed.”

All of the media messages are based on reinforcing social norms, such as the statistics that most parents don’t serve or provide alcohol to minors, and most teens and young adults don’t drink, Dodd said.

King City residents should see the posters and start hearing TV and radio messages soon, she said.

Text Only
Local

Local Photo
DSC_0004.JPG

TESA GLASS/REGISTER-NEWS
Mt. Vernon Police blocked a portion of North Ninth Street Wednesday morning about 11 a.m. after reports the brick facade of the apartment building at the corner of Ninth and Maple streets was falling to the ground. The bricks took out cable lines, awnings and were landing on the street.