Public Health England’s patronising One You campaign is a switch-off

Sport England’s recently launched This Girl Can campaign to encourage women to exercise is a triumph.

It’s targeted, clever, impactful and, most of all, it actually stands a chance of working.

The key to its success, with poster, cinema ads and online images of normal sized women (rather than stick-like supermodels) sweating it out in the gym or on the court, was that it latched on to the fact that many were put off exercising because they felt that they were no good at sport – the ads manage not only to make it look normal but also give inspiration that you don’t have to be Jessica Ennis-Hill to get yourself fit.

Sadly, Public Health England’s new - and equally well intentioned – campaign One You appears to be everything Sport England’s campaign is not: it’s patronising, over-complicated and, sadly, likely to be forgotten in six months.

The estimated £3.5m it is spending on this new campaign, aimed at the middle-aged hordes in society who eat and drink too much and move too little, comes on top of even more money going on its recently launched Sugar Smart app. You certainly can’t accuse PHE of being stingy with the cash of late.

Like the app, the new campaign, which features as its major hook a quiz to enable people to find out how unfit they are, attracted plenty of coverage in the media for yesterday’s launch, but sadly much was rooted firmly tongue in cheek. For those who actually bothered to take the quiz, billed as an MOT for the middle-aged, the alarm bells would have started ringing from the very first question, when were are asked to rate our general state of wellbeing from being “really knackered” to “full of beans”, from “lean and mean” to “fat and flabby”. Notice the total opposite approach here to Sport England and at once kiss goodbye to millions of your potential target audience. A huge section of society will simply switch off from such surveys. And as for the three main messages, that people should eat more healthily, drink less and stop smoking, can there really be anyone left in England who does not already know that?

The most encouraging thing about the PHE campaign is that it recognises, like Sport England, the vital importance of exercise in the public health mix, which all too often has been dismissed by sections of the health lobby. But even here the campaign lets itself down, seeming almost ashamed of actually using the “e” word, referring instead to it as “moving”, and assuring the couch potatoes who were not too worn out by the quiz by that point that having even 10 minutes of walking a day could keep the Reaper at bay.

When it comes to specific advice on foods, the quiz is strangely out of touch with the latest thinking. Full-fat cheese was point blank bad, low-fat options good, ignoring much of the recent research, which argues the opposite.

And as for the tie-ups with retailers, they are even more cringeworthy.

Amazon.co.uk launching a ‘One You health hub’ offering customers deals on fitness equipment might be good news for the online giant, but shifting a few extra home gyms is not going to solve the obesity crisis. Asda knocking out cheap blood pressure monitors and providing free health checks (a service already offered by Tesco) won’t do much better. Of course, this is just the first week of One You and the doubters may be proved wrong, with PHE promising the campaign will be seen “in every community and on every high street”.

The website put together by PHE already boasts a bunch of links to various health resources, which contain worthy stuff but are little different from what the NHS Choices site has offered for years. Here again Sport England’s equivalent, which at a keystroke can take users to the best part of 50 different sports they can sign up for, is far simpler but more effective. In comparison PHE’s quiz comes across as clunky red tape- a bit like those fire safety questionnaires any sane employee would like to run a mile from, if that is, we ever moved from our desks.