ABSTRACT
Capturing audience attention is one of the biggest challenges facing health educators. Often, the key target audience is most difficult to reach. In this article, I examine message strategy as a technique for capturing audience attention. I begin by defining message strategy and clustering it into two broad approaches–information/argument and emotion/entertainment. I then discuss a qualitative study exploring readers' reactions to different message strategies used in brochures and postcards about health issues. I propose that readers appear to recognize information/argument message strategies as providing straightforward “facts” about a topic, while emotion/entertainment message strategies use some form of intrigue, emotion, or entertainment to attract attention. I argue that health educators can use message strategies to appeal to different audiences: educators hoping to reach audiences who are actively looking for information may be successful with an information/argument message strategy, while educators hoping to reach audiences who don't know or don't care about a topic may benefit from an emotion/entertainment message strategy.