Down and Dirty: Reaching Low-Income Rural Teen Smokers With a Social Branding® Initiative

Background:  Reaching teen smokers is a unique marketing challenge in rural areas where mass media is neither possible nor cost-effective. Teens form peer crowds; connections between peer groups with similar interests, lifestyles, and influencers. In Vermont it is estimated that the low-income “rural culture” teen peer crowd accounts for 25% of the teen population, but over 40% of teen smokers. Despite their high smoking and chew rates, rural culture teens have not been directly targeted by a tailored tobacco prevention message. Qualitative formative research in November 2012 revealed that “rural culture” teens identify with a lifestyle embodied by living outdoors, riding snow machines, and engaging in mudding events in their trucks. Past counter-tobacco marketing campaigns have been ignored within this group. Teens are highly skeptical of the source of ad messages and are more likely to believe a message if it comes from a peer. To reach these hard-to-reach teens with effective cessation messages the Vermont Department of Health engaged Rescue Social Change Group (RSCG) to develop a social branding strategy unique to low Socio-Economic Status (SES) rural teens.  Social branding influences teen culture from within the group rather than sending messages to the group from outside.

Program background:  Rural teens in research recommended the brand “Down and Dirty” because it allows them to reject tobacco without being seen as a “goody two shoes.” It dispels the misconception of living tobacco-free as being preppy and not reflective of their scene. Down and Dirty works to become an embraced, celebrated social leader within the rural teen community, creating a platform to deliver hard-hitting anti-tobacco messaging that will reach rural teens in an authentic way. Down and Dirty has the unique opportunity to target a peer crowd that is not used to being authentically marketed towards. Elements include social media, brand ambassador trainings, sponsored events, video events, radio, and two supporting TV spots.

Evaluation Methods and Results: 

• GRP’s per week
• Social Media Page Growth
• Audience engagement with social media campaigns and on-site brand ambassadors
• Digital traffic and analytics (YouTube views, website visits, Cost Per Click, Cost Per View and Click Through Rate Percentage)
• Event attendance, contact cards collected, and messaging interaction

 Down and Dirty is based upon a best practice model of social branding implemented by RSCG in San Diego. Pre-publication results show a decrease in smoking overall and a greater decrease in smoking among peer crowd social leaders. (NOTE: data to be published imminently, which can be shared at conference; also controlled multi-center trial funded by NCI is ongoing).

Conclusions:  Despite their high smoking and chew rates, rural culture teens of low SES have not been directly targeted by a tailored tobacco prevention message. Using RSCG’s social branding best practice, we expect to see similar results with a strategy unique to rural teens.  Down and Dirty creates a platform to deliver hard-hitting anti-tobacco messaging that will reach rural teens in an authentic way to change behavior.

Implications for research and/or practice: Social branding initiatives may prove to be a lower cost and more targeted method of reaching these high-risk and hard-to-reach rural youth populations nationwide