Healthcare organizations nationwide are struggling to reduce smoking, especially among kids and teens. But few can claim the success that the New Jersey Department of Health
& Senior Services achieved with a program dubbed REBEL. According to the 2002 New Jersey Youth Tobacco Survey, which included 16,000 teens, New Jersey saw a 42 percent
reduction in smoking among middle school students and an 11 percent reduction among high school students who previously used tobacco daily. National studies saw only a 12 percent
drop among middle schoolers and a 9 percent drop among teens.
PR pros who worked on the campaign attribute its phenomenal success to a willingness to get in the trenches with kids and take their advice to heart.
Kicking Ash
Using an idea adopted by many states in their efforts to end tobacco use, the Department of Health & Senior Services and its agency, Fleishman-Hillard, brought 340 teens
from every county to a two-day "Kick-Ash" weekend in November 2000. "One of the difficult things when you approach any campaign of this nature is getting to what resonates with
teens," says Kate Childress, SVP and partner with the F-H healthcare practice in New York. Throughout the course of the campaign, the team turned to focus groups and other teen
advisors for insight on various elements of the program.
During the Kick Ash weekend, teens came up with a powerful concept which became the theme for the entire initiative: Reaching Everyone By Exposing Lies (REBEL). The premise
appealed not only to teens' tendency toward rebellion, but to their distrust of corporate America - i.e. Big Tobacco.
Fleishman-Hillard and the Department of Health & Senior Services set their goals for the campaign accordingly:
- Reduce the spread of tobacco use among N.J. teens by 20 percent
- Grow teen membership in the REBEL movement to 5,000 teens
- Generate 100 million media impressions
- Create a service component that enabled teens to participate in their communities
- Increase awareness of tobacco companies' manipulative practices
- Use the Web to deliver messages and unify teens across the state
The PR team began the campaign with a February 2001 "Not for Sale" youth rally. More than 750 teens met at the rally, and teen leaders unveiled the "Declaration of Independence
from Tobacco." (The scroll would later travel the state, collecting more than 4,200 signatures.) The rally was Webcast on the REBEL Web site, http://www.njrebel.com, where teens could also share photos and experiences with smoking.
A REBEL group was organized in each New Jersey county, and each group received template materials created by F-H, including press releases, calendars and event-planning guides.
REBEL also reached out to teens through multicultural festivals and an anti-tobacco rally at a Six Flags theme park. The rally included skits, rap music, dancing and other
teen-endorsed activities.
In May, two regional summits were held to educate REBEL members on tobacco industry tactics. Fleishman-Hillard debuted a video of REBEL accomplishments at the summits, and the
video was then distributed to all the chapters.
In August, the team implemented a community service project in which close to 700 REBEL members cleaned up more than 38,000 cigarette butts and other litter on the New Jersey
Shore along with state and local officials.
Finally, PSA spots featuring REBEL members were aired on Channel One, the TV station reaching in-school teen audiences.
Results
REBEL membership had grown to more than 5,700 members by early 2002, and the dramatic drops in smoking among New Jersey kids and teens demonstrate that the program reached more
than just its members. The Web site hosted 92,090 visitors, 90 percent of whom found the site through PR or word of mouth. Media impressions totaled 155 million, including
features in all New Jersey dailies, national placements in Time for Kids, YM, Seventeen, Teen People, "The Early Show," "Good Morning America" and "Fox & Friends."
"The neat thing about this program," says Michael Rinaldo, SVP, senior partner and group director for the F-H healthcare practice, "is that it's easy to get hung up in the
educational aspect of this kind of initiative. Education is an important part of it, but if you look at social marketing in a broad sense, you can deliver a program with
measurable results."
(Contacts: Childress, Rinaldo, 212/453-2000)
Campaign Stats
Timeframe: 2001 to present (ongoing)
Budget: Overall PR budget for adult and teen prevention and cessation programs in New Jersey is $2 million, the REBEL program was done for about $800,000-$900,000.
Teens & Technology
As with any program targeting teens these days, the interactive component of this campaign was critical. "The Web site has responded extremely well," Childress reports. The
site includes a general section and a members-only section, and Childress believes it has been an important element in overcoming geographic boundaries to the campaign. "Northern
New Jersey is really married to New York City, Central New Jersey identifies with Philadelphia, and Southern New Jersey identifies more with states south of New Jersey." The Web
site, Childress says, has been a cost-effective way of bringing teens from all parts of the state together on the issue of tobacco without requiring travel to one part of the
state.
Kids enjoy being able to post photos and stories, and the team plans to allow teens to upload personal video in the near future.