The Challenge:
The Lutheran Foundation received a statewide grant focused on reducing substance use among teenagers within a 10-county region. They wanted to build a campaign around this important message that would really engage the audience.
Discover
As we thought through the project, we quickly realized that this had to be a dual-audience campaign. While that would, in a sense, double our work, we felt the most effective way to communicate the message was in two voices—one for the teens themselves, and one for their parents. Once that was established, we came up with separate themes that spoke to each audience’s calls to action.
Develop
The war on drugs has waged for decades, so we wanted to make sure our campaign looked fresh. Instead of dreary and dark editorial-style imagery, we used a bright color palette that was taken from the identity of The Lutheran Foundation’s community mental health initiative, Look Up. That created a link to TLF’s mental health advocacy and a visual that was eye catching and unexpected to the viewers.
Deliver
We created tactics across several different mediums, including broadcast TV and radio, digital radio, outdoor, social media and web. Each audience got its own creative and its own media buys, so they were truly targeted.
The Results:
While some of the calls to action were immeasurable (for example, we encouraged teens to think more positively about themselves and parents to talk to their kids), we also invited people to find more resources at the landing pages we created for the campaign. That increased The Lutheran Foundation’s website traffic by 300%. Bounce rates also went from 90% to 10%.
