Ms Fiona Gilligan:

As Dr. Foley-Nolan has said, we did some research at an early stage of the campaign, so while we have at this stage only rolled out this campaign for a little over a year, at the beginning we did a piece of benchmark research with Millward Brown to see what people's behaviours and attitudes were towards the particular messages that we are giving out. Initially, we wondered whether we might be telling parents that their children are overweight and telling them what overweight looks like. However, when we researched the topic with parents, they said they knew that but they needed to know what to do. They wanted practical messages.

The campaign has very practical messages, such as one needs to reduce one's portion size. A five year old child needs half of what an adult needs. People need to drink more water rather than fizzy drinks and cordials which often contain unnecessary amounts of sugar. Physical activity must be increased and a child needs 60 minutes of physical activity a day, which is a very practical message and which has rolled out well. Treats need to be reduced. We found from those messages regarding portion sizes, for example, that one in five had thought about making changes and one in three had made changes and had stopped the child from eating everything on the plate, which is a start, because we are coming from that mentality.

Consumption of water at mealtimes has increased considerably, by 10% in the Republic and 15% in Northern Ireland. These are all claimed behaviours but they are a start. The proportion of people who say treats are being given once a day has dropped by 8%, from 40% to 32%, and one in three have tried to increase their physical activity. We have also found an increase in the comfort factor, with an increase of 7% in the percentage of people now able to discuss the fact that their child may be overweight.

The level of acknowledgement that health risks may present at a later age has also increased by 6%. That is a considerable change because we know that people have a disconnect regarding health risk. Illnesses like diabetes, heart disease and cancers, which are the three pieces we have added to the communication as risk factors for later in life, are now being considered. It is a slow burn, but that is where we are at the moment and there are positive signs.

Regarding the C2DE grouping, our buying for this campaign is heavily weighted towards what people in this group are watching and where they are. For example, our CEO said that he had not seen the sleep ad yet, and I told him he would not have unless he had been watching "Keeping Up With the Kardashians". The television ads are on particular stations at particular times, when we know that our audience is watching. Social media also plays an important role in their lives, particularly YouTube and Facebook, so we have advertising across those platforms. Our Twitter channel and, in particular, our Facebook channel are reaching numbers of about 600,000 on an average three-week period in the campaign. We are also in places like MummyPages.ie, eumom.ie, and NI4Kids.com, which are where these people are having conversations with one another about their children.