Opioid abuse has become a critical issue facing the entire country, and it is especially rampant in Ohio. The goal of our campaign aims to primarily combat the opioid epidemic in Ohio. The work was designed to fight the epidemic on as many fronts as possible and reinforce the message through several different mediums. Integrated media was a driving strategic focus for this campaign. Local communities have historically had a largely flippant attitude towards prescription drug use. Our campaign aimed to change that attitude and raise awareness of the health system as a resource in the fight against opioids.
The central creative idea is to demonstrate how opioid addiction radically alters peoples lives. The creative takes what appears to be mundane ads for luxury items and subverts the expectation by using that format to demonstrate the harmful effects of the opioid epidemic. There are three main audiences we identified: Current users, potential users, and families/friends of current or potential users. We prioritized families/friends as they have the most direct influence on users and are the most susceptible to anti-opioid messaging. Our media strategy focused on them while still reaching the other audiences.
As a PSA-style campaign, the focus was not primarily on measuring sales data but rather on increasing awareness. Site visits to campaign website are over 17,600 and growing. Opioid assist pledges grew 51% during the campaign. There were over 13,210,000 impressions during the campaign and online reactions increase by over 740%. By request, we also presented the campaign and our research to the White House.
