Binge-Free 603 Campaign Wins Gold Award

In December 2016, JSI in partnership with the New Hampshire (NH) Bureau of Drug and Alcohol Services (BDAS) developed and implemented a social marketing campaign for NH young adults to prevent binge drinking through creative key messaging. Alcohol consumption rates among young adults (ages 18 to 25 years) in NH are higher than the national average and are the highest in New England.

JSI conducted extensive formative research, including focus groups with young adults, to develop the campaign concept and materials. The resulting campaign, “Binge-Free 603: What’s Your Reason?”, uses positive messages that address knowledge, attitudes, and practices around excessive drinking among young adults in NH most likely to engage in risky consumption of alcohol. Campaign materials, including videos, show activities that NH youth enjoy—such as hiking, ATV use, mountain biking, fishing, kayaking, skiing, or snowboarding—instead of showing people partying.

In 2018, the campaign won a Gold Award in the Berreth Awards for Excellence in Public Health Marketing from the National Public Health Information Coalition. The initial campaign run consisted of paid advertising on Facebook, Instagram, Google Search, Google display, YouTube, and a sponsored Snapchat filter. The estimated total reach of the campaign, across all digital and social media channels, was over 3.9 million impressions served to NH young adults. Ads generated over 7K visits to www.BingeFree603.org. YouTube advertising outperformed the industry average with a 34.8% view rate (29.6% industry average) and campaign videos were viewed to completion 136,308 times. Subsequent evaluation of the campaign in 2019 is leading to a re-launch of the campaign now.

JSI’s Christin D’Ovidio, will be presenting the campaign at the 2019 Health Experience Design Conference, which focuses on how design, innovation, research, strategy, and technology can help accelerate the transformation of our health system. Her presentation on Wednesday, April 3 at 1:15 pm, What’s Your Reason? Does Peer Crowd Affinity Actually Motivate Behavior Adoption?, will discuss phase one of the binge drinking reduction campaign and how the evaluation has been incorporated into phase two.