Objective:

this article analyses two campaigns designed to prevent adolescent pregnancy. The authors aim to clarify the implementation of elements coming from other disciplines such as marketing, and the possible effects in the campaigns’ results, in light of “the social marketing wheel” model.

Methodology:

reports of qualitative and quantitative studies on the campaigns “Sexo a lo Bien” and “Parents Speak Up!” were studied. Those campaigns were originally implemented in different contexts: one in Colombia and one in the United States. The analysis was carried out by tracking implicit marketing elements in both campaigns, from existing records about them.

Results:

a lack of coherence between the problems’ definition, the chosen strategy and its execution was evident and affected the expected outcomes in one of the campaigns. The “Parents Speak Up!” campaign achieved important results, because it had a strong theoretical basis, articulated with a well-defined execution for different target focused audiences. The “Sexo a lo Bien” campaign had less effective results. It was too ambitious; it lacked coherence between the aimed problem, an unclear definition of target audience and the content of the messages.

Conclusions:

Social marketing can offer valuable elements for and educational campaign on adolescent pregnancy to achieve effective results, such as planning, execution and evaluation of the type of product, the target audience and the content of the message.

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