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APHA Scientific Session and Event Listing

Recorded presentation

Robert Denniston, MA, ONDCP, 750 - 17th St NW, washington, DC 20503, 202-395-4653, robert_w._denniston@ondcp.eop.gov

Branding a social marketing campaign can be a valuable means of conveying a powerful, unified, and compelling message, especially to a target audience that has grown up surrounded by commercial brands. During its first few years, the National Youth Anti-Drug Media Campaign used “the anti-drug” brand to reach its target audiences, 12-17 year-old teens, with a clear, consistent, and compelling message. Brand visibility has been exceptionally high because the Campaign was funded to buy advertising, typically reaching 85 percent of the teen target audience at least 3.5 times per week. And while teen drug use has declined 19 percent during the past four years, youth are a dynamic audience with evolving attitudes and aspirations, and marketers must keep current with their audiences. Therefore the Campaign managers decided to explore whether a new brand would resonate better with today's youth. The brand research plan involved five distinct phases, including exploratory qualitative research through road trips and friendship groups across the nation, testing and winnowing message concepts, and quantitative copytesting of resulting TV ads and interactive content by panels of youth. This paper identifies the potential risks and benefits taken in brand-shifting, presents key findings and data from these phases of branding research, and provides tracking data on awareness and attitudes from the first 9 months of the campaign's exposure to teens.

Learning Objectives:

• Describe why the decision was made to reconsider the "antidrug" brand
• Identify the research methods used to test the new brand concept and messages with teens
• Assess the strengths of the new brand and youth awareness of the messaging

Keywords: Health Communications, Social Marketing

Related Web page: www.mediacampaign.org

Presenting author's disclosure statement:

Any relevant financial relationships? No

Recorded presentation