This Free Life is the first-ever national tobacco-prevention effort dedicated to reaching LGBT young adults ages 18 to 24. This Free Life is designed to challenge the perception that tobacco use is a necessary part of LGBT culture and to show LGBT young adults they can be the person they want to be and still live tobacco-free. The goal is to affect positive change in knowledge, attitudes, and beliefs that lead to behavior change among LGBT young adults who are occasional smokers.
This Free Life aims to increase perceived risk of tobacco use and increase the importance of living tobacco-free while also aligning tobacco-free benefits with values associated with LGBT young adults. Changing perceived norms requires both increasing perceived pride for tobacco-free lifestyles and increasing perceived rejection of tobacco among LGBT young adults.
The Lessons In Flawless sweepstakes web experience was an important part of the creative strategy; its objective was to drive LGBT young adults to the This Free Life website to take part in an interactive digital experience that encourages engagement, social sharing, and careful thought about the campaign message.
"You are flawless just the way you are, and what you don't want to do is give anyone something they can clock you on—like the damage caused by smoking tobacco."
With these words, Alyssa Edwards intros her first Lesson in Flawless video aimed at reaching LGBT young adults with an upbeat message about living a proud tobacco-free life.
About 2 million young adults in the U.S. today identify as LGBT. This population is more than twice as likely to use tobacco as their non-LGBT counterparts. This Free Life aims to create positive behavior change by aligning the benefits of living tobacco-free with LGBT values, delivering messages on the risks of tobacco use, and increasing pride for living tobacco-free.
Prior to launch, FDA conducted 34 diverse focus groups among 140 LGBT 18-24 non-daily smokers. Insights from the focus groups—along with extensive literature reviews—were used to shape campaign strategy and messaging, which contributed to TFL's overall authenticity and distinctiveness. One such insight was that LGBT young adults are receptive to relatable non-stereotypical characters and characters who are highly relevant to the LGBT community. TFL leveraged this insight and created the unique Lessons in Flawless (LIF) experience featuring high-profile drag queens in stylized settings. LIF capitalized on the audience's love of drag queens (including DragCon) to engage them with a tobacco-free, campy, fun sweepstakes quiz.
The LIF experience lived on This Free Life's owned website, and drew traffic from a targeted media buy, including paid digital advertising with LGBT-focused publications and paid social media ads on Instagram, Facebook, and Tumblr. From the landing page, users selected one of three prominent queens and completed a series of quirky videos where the queen teaches users about confidence, identity, and the importance of living tobacco-free. The audience then completes a quiz that incorporates the new tobacco-free message. Once complete, users are entered into a sweepstakes for tickets to DragCon and encouraged to share the LIF experience on their social channels.
The Lessons In Flawless (LIF) web experience was a subset of the larger Be Known For Your Flawless campaign. Be Known For Your Flawless ran across many channels, including Instagram, Youtube, Facebook, Tumblr, paid digital, web-based digital experiences, print, OOH, and branded events.
The Lessons In Flawless web experience was viewed 112k times with 21.3k video views, 16.2k lesson completions, 2.4K sweepstakes entries, and 2.5M engagements across all channels (e.g., video views, lesson completions, post likes/comments/shares, etc.). This resulted in an impressive 14% conversion rate (unique page views / completions of at least 1 lesson) for the website experience.
The high quiz completion rate provided evidence that LIF was highly engaging. Each user completing the quiz demonstrated careful thought about the tobacco message. The success of this website experience demonstrates the target audience was interested in engaging with the brand, consuming content, and amplifying the message.
LIF yielded over 13K social shares, which is a bump for TFL overall. During the months when LIF was in market, TFL's total social shares increased by 75%. Branded content featuring credible LGBT influencers was highly shareable. By encouraging users to share their LIF results in their own social channels, we expanded the reach of the brand and amplified the tobacco message using our users' own voices, which demonstrate engagement with the message:
● "Brilliant! Best one so far!"
● "literally alyssa this is the only thing that could ever get me to stop smoking."
● "I took all 4 of Alyssa's classes, and it was so fun! I even learned a few things xo"
LIF was one unique, engaging part of a larger TFL campaign of drag queen related content, which delivered 240M total impressions across a variety of media channels.
