The logic model reads from left to right, beginning with Inputs, or fundamental resources, to the campaign. These inputs include Consultants (experts in marketing, youth physical activity, and evaluation), organizational resources such as project Staff, and the Research & Evaluation infrastructure at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). Contractors represent a major input and include general-market creative and public relations agencies, creative agencies specializing in ethnic markets, and an evaluation contractor. Community Infrastructure is an input that expresses the importance of context for the child’s engagement in physical activity. Partnerships provide an essential resource for guiding, supporting, and extending the reach of the VERB campaign.

Activities are the products that result from the project’s inputs. As a media campaign, VERB focuses on both paid and donated Advertising in the form of television and radio commercials, print advertisements, and out-of-home ads (e.g., billboards, mall kiosks). Important Promotions include special events, in-school promotions, contests, and sweepstakes. VERB hosts three Web sites, one each for tweens, parents, and partners. Additionally, VERB provides and monitors information through Public Relations activities. National & Community Outreach has been actualized by engaging partners such as the YMCA and Boys & Girls Clubs and by mobilizing community-based constituents whose goals are aligned with those of VERB.

The box Tweens engage in physical activity is framed by a double line to indicate that it is the primary distal outcome of the VERB campaign. This box represents a broad conceptualization of engagement in physical activity that ranges from inactive tweens doing at least something to minimally to moderately active tweens doing more; it also includes tweens trying a new activity. VERB ads seek to motivate the minimally active tween and to keep tweens in general interested in physical activity. Promoting new activities may be an important route for some tweens to experience the benefits of physical activity. As depicted in the logic model, intention may precede engagement; parent support and availability and access to physical activity settings are important in facilitating tweens’ engagement in physical activity.

Tweens being physically active is a necessary but not sufficient outcome of the VERB campaign. Thus, the double-lined box leads to the endpoint of the VERB campaign, the critical and sustained effect of VERB on tweens: Tweens maintain physical activity. VERB planners believe that for tweens to maintain physical activity, communities must sustain efforts to provide safe and appealing settings for tweens to be physically active, depicted by the arrow connecting the box Availability and access to organized and non-organized settings for physical activities to the box Tweens maintain physical activity.

Branding theory (4) posits that the target audience will develop a relationship with the brand that 1) begins with association with brand attributes, 2) builds affinity to those attributes over time, and 3) results ultimately in long-term loyalty to the brand. Hypothesized steps in building the VERB brand relationship include the following:

Association with an image that is cool, fun, and socially appealing.

Support for these processes is provided by researchers with the truth™ anti-smoking campaign, who have posited that through internalization of the “truth brand,” youth adopt self-images as a “truth teen” that lead to positive dispositions not to smoke (5). Similarly, VERB assumes that children will adopt behaviors portrayed in the ads that support a self-image of being physically active through a process known as “identification” — how much children want to be like the people they see on television. Identification is associated with important antecedents to behavior change, such as expectations of benefits, and is especially salient with younger children (6).

Theories of message design help explain the steps for building awareness of a brand like VERB. For example, if branding evokes a high level of interest and identification with the advertisement, then information processing theory, such as the Elaboration Likelihood Model (7), suggests that the child would be willing to exert more cognitive effort to pay attention to the ad, understand it, and actively process its message. Messages provoke active processing when the presentation of content is unusual, unfamiliar, or novel (8) — all key features of the VERB advertisements — and when there is a discrepancy between expectation and reality, such as with the “Paint the Town” VERB promotions in which a water tower is wrapped to look like a soccer ball.

VERB campaign planners decided early on that VERB would be a positive campaign with advertising exclusively characterized by laughter, play, fun, and enjoyment of physical activity. Message designers believe that creating positive feelings in the child will lead to immediate, but also enduring, influence over later cognitive processing (9). Positive appeals are good at attracting attention; they invoke “approach” behaviors, meaning they make it more likely that the audience will be receptive to the forthcoming message. Monahan has asserted that positive appeals are more likely to be recalled, to change attitudes, and to lead to compliance with the desired behavior (9). Moreover, media campaigns that promote commencement of a desirable, positive behavior show larger effect sizes than cessation campaigns that attempt to extinguish a risky or undesirable behavior (10).

Articulating how VERB would lead to change in physical activity behaviors was especially challenging because most health-related behavior change theories are still being tested for their applicability to children. Two theories, the theory of planned behavior (11) and social cognitive theory (12), have been used to plan or test interventions in children and were applied to VERB. The logic model incorporates elements of the two theories into boxes under Short- and Mid-Term Outcomes.

The theory of planned behavior proposes that one can predict people’s intention to perform a behavior from the attitudes they hold toward that behavior, from a measure of their subjective norms, and from the control they have to perform the behavior (13). The theory proposes that intentions correlate with observed actions (14). A study of Canadian youth reports support for the association of norms, attitudes, and behavioral control with intentions to be physically active (11).

While the theory of planned behavior is a personal-level theory, social cognitive theory emphasizes the interplay of intrapersonal factors, environment, and behavior (15,16). Intrapersonal factors have cognitive, affective, and biological aspects. Environmental factors encompass the immediate social environment, such as teachers, peers, and parents, in addition to physical environments, such as the presence and appeal of a backyard, driveway, or neighborhood. Principles of social cognitive theory that are especially applicable to child physical activity behaviors include 1) perceptions of the environment, knowledge, and skill to perform an activity; 2) others’ observations of and reinforcement for activity trial; 3) beliefs about the likely outcomes of a behavior; and 4) the values that the child places on the outcome. In addition, self-efficacy (the confidence of the child to perform the behavior) is a critical part of the theory and has been shown to be an important prerequisite for the physical activity of children (17).

Another theory that guided campaign strategists to manage expectations for the size of behavioral effects is McGuire’s hierarchical steps of information processing (18). McGuire’s model posits that the impact of persuasive communication is mediated by three broad stages of message processing: attention, comprehension, and acceptance. Attention depends on exposure and awareness; comprehension is predicated on understanding the message; and acceptance includes intention and, finally, behavior change. In McGuire’s model, because of the inherent variability in how people process media messages, a percentage of the audience is lost at each stage. Thus, high levels of exposure and awareness are needed to create measurable population effects.