In 2016, over 40,000 Americans died from overdosing on opioids. Over 40% of those overdose deaths involved a prescription opioid, such as Oxycontin or Percocet. While politicians and health agencies are rightly calling this trend an epidemic, few understand how to communicate to those most at risk of overdose. Rather than use scare tactics that focus on death, many of these young adults simply need to understand the basic information needed to make a better choice.
Over the Dose is a campaign to reduce recreational use of prescription opioids by young adults in Vermont. The campaign's goal is to increase overall understanding of what opioids are, how they affect your body, and how they interact with other substances to discourage young adults from using.
Formative research revealed that high-risk young adults (ages 18–25) often perceive opioids as carrying little to no risk for occasional, recreational use because: they don't know what opioids are, they lack knowledge about how opioids can harm them; they believe overdoses only happen to extreme addicts; or they are in a social culture where they see substances used without serious consequences. By explaining what opioids are and how they work, the campaign aims to make consequences more realistic and relatable, allowing young adults to think through their options, rather than try to blindly scare them. This approach is designed to respect the audience's abilities to make better choices by arming them with clear, believable, and relevant information.
Over the Dose is designed to increase knowledge and perceived relevance of opioid risks by providing educational messages through commercials, an interactive web experience, and paid social and digital media. By explaining first what opioids are and how they work, the campaign makes consequences seem more realistic and relatable.
Commercials
Opioid use and abuse is complex and requires more than just sound bites of information. Over the Dose commercials tell a complete story about the risks of use by explaining the science in a calm and straight forward manner. While overdoses are a serious epidemic, young adults at risk of using don't see their behaviors as extreme and ignore messages that they feel are over blown. Rather than speak to them authoritatively, Over The Dose commercials deliver information the way a friend would deliver serious information.
Interactive Web Experience
People learn information in different ways. To facilitate learning, the Over The Dose website was designed with small, interactive modules that each deliver an important piece of information about opioids including the names of drugs that are opioids, why they are dangerous, their addictiveness, and the risks of mixing them with other substances. Modern animations encourage young adults to continue exploring each one.
Paid Social and Digital Media
While the opioid epidemic is often in the news, our at-risk audience is not seeking out health information about it. Our strategic paid social and digital media target high-risk young adults using interest-based targeting with eye-catching imagery and copy to spark engagement with the content in a relevant way. Posts drive traffic to the website for additional information.
Research showed recreational opioid users: 1) Often take pills, but do not know exactly what they are taking, or know that they may be taking opioids under a street name; 2) Commonly used opioids in conjunction with other substances, especially alcohol, yet do not understand the dangers of combining depressants; 3) Believe that heroin is too dangerous and avoid it, but perceive opioids as low-risk, revealing a misunderstanding of opioid risk levels.
Over The Dose leveraged these insights to create an innovative opioid overdose prevention strategy that respects the audience and empowers them to make decisions based on advanced health knowledge. Every time a new drug epidemic occurs, public health and law enforcement officials repeat the misguided strategy of "Just Say No" and "This Is Your Brain On Drugs" by trying to tell people what to do or scare them from use without helping them understand why. Over The Dose's innovative approach changes the tone of drug prevention campaigns and focuses more on what this drug is doing to your body and why that is dangerous, rather than focusing on overdose statistics or fear mongering.
Digital commercials focused on delivering new, relevant information to this audience in a straightforward manner that avoids sensationalizing consequences to more effectively dissuade recreational opioid use. Through a combination of animation and narration, the video PSA communicated the similarities of opioids and heroin to increase perceived opioid risks.
Over The Dose successfully communicated educational messages through various media channels. Each channel worked together to inform the target audience of the similarities between heroin and Rx opioids, correct the misperceptions of safety or use that is risk-free and explain effects of opioids on the brain and risks of overdose.
In the short time since launch, 45% of homepage visitors have completed the entire digital experience, which includes six educational modules. Visitors spent an average of four minutes on the site, which is roughly three times the industry average. Over 1,600 website visitors interacted with the educational content in some way, whether clicking through carousels, interacting with animations, or voting for opioid facts that surprised them the most.
On social media, engagement rates are five times higher than industry benchmarks, and the digital ads boost a click-through rate of two times the industry average. Social and digital content clearly and concisely provided educational opioid information to the target audience despite being a complex topic. To measure our goal of communicating educational messages, we used awareness, exploratory engagement, and active engagement as our key performance indicators. Across social and digital content, we received over 8.9 million impressions (awareness), over 420,000 exploratory engagements (this includes video completions, link clicks, reactions, photo views, and sessions), and over 1,600 active engagements (shares, comments/replies, page likes/followers, goal completions). The campaign continues today with new messages explaining additional risks, such as the deadly combination of opioids and alcohol.
