• by Aaron Baar , November 8, 2011

No eggs in frying pans or simple “Just Say No!” declarations. A new marketing campaign intended to warn teens about the dangers of methamphetamine use speaks directly to them, providing direct and useful information, through the usage of 21^st century techniques such as gaming and social sharing.

The campaign, created by digital marketing agency Organic for the not-for-profit Meth Project, uses a web site, www.methproject.org, to serve as the hub of comprehensive information about meth, answering questions such as whether using it will make one violent, or how it affects one’s brain and/or one’s family. Each question is answered with a range of content, including interactive facts, videos, animations, image galleries, polls, quizzes, personal stories and first-hand accounts from experts to give teens the most information possible about the drug and the dangers of its use.

“This is about teens talking to other teens and that’s the approach that we’re [using to try] to drive meth usage down,” Marita Scarfi, CEO of Organic, tells Marketing Daily. “One of the briefs [we had] was to take the content from what the Meth Project had and evolve it.”

The site takes a cue from teens’ natural inclination to interactivity to showcase many of the aspects of meth use. One element, for instance, teens can manipulate a normal beating heart to a meth-induced heart attack or show how it changes a user’s appearance in a “mug shot match-up.” The site also includes a place in which teens can post their own messages about meth through artwork, video, stories and photos. The Meth Project is also expanding its presence in social outlets such as Facebook, YouTube and Twitter to encourage more interaction.

“The approach we took was around how we were going to get teens to really listen and share information as a way to reduce meth usage in key markets,” Scarfi says. “Their interactions are very fluid. Providing information in a lot of different formats allows teens to share, and this is all about sharing.”

The campaign also includes radio, print, mobile and out-of-home advertising, as well as television commercials directed by Academy Award-nominated filmmaker Darren Aronofsky (“Black Swan”). The commercials depict meth users in dire situations (such as being in compromising situations in motel rooms or being driven mad by voices in her head) that could have been prevented if they had just “asked” for more information about meth. The advertising campaign will run in states such as Arizona, Colorado, Georgia, Hawaii, Idaho, Illinois, Montana, and Wyoming, where meth has become a huge problem.

Despite the hoopla around teens and interactive marketing, television is still a useful format to get a message to the target audience, Scarfi says. “They consume [television] in a different way, but it still is an effective format,” she says. “Consumption of TV hasn’t necessarily gone down; we’re just multitasking much more. It still is an effective medium and it still has reach.”