Authentically Reaching Rural Teens with Digital Messaging

Background:  Macro-level connections between members of a particular subculture transcend geographic barriers and are known to influence clothing style and activity preferences. They have also been shown to influence behavior, including risky, unhealthy behaviors. Messaging authentically to these subcultures, both online and offline, is an effective way to communicate a health message.

Program background:  By leveraging subculture values and interests, a local state-funded tobacco prevention public education campaign was developed to change behavior among hard-to-reach rural youth in Vermont and Virginia. For this campaign, the “Country” subculture was selected as the target audience as they are a prominent youth subculture in rural areas and demonstrate above average rates of dip and chew prevalence in both states (American Lung Association, 2012).

Evaluation Methods and Results: 

The campaign ran from March to May, 2016. Previous formative research had determined Country teen values and interests, which were used to design campaign content and targeting. These interests and values included outdoor activities, trucks, freedom, and saving money. The campaign, No Fix For Dip, communicated that dip and chew can lead to tooth loss and gum disease.  Messages were crafted to be culturally relevant by focusing on saving money through the concept of “hacks” that celebrated ingenuity among Country teens. The campaign included a TV and digital commercial, an in-feed user generated digital content contest, “favorite hacks” polls, “duct tape tips” round up, and event integration. Previous formative research had established Facebook as the most widely used social media site by this audience, therefore the digital portion of the campaign was based on Facebook. The same research had shown increasing adoption of Snapchat, another social media site.  As a result, live campaign events were integrated within the digital strategy and incorporated both Facebook and Snapchat.  Snapchat in particular, as it is designed for live storytelling, was found to increase audience engagement with live events.

Conclusions:  Substantially integrating the cultural values and interests of target audiences into both online and offline campaign strategies can be an effective strategy to target country and rural teenagers in order to deliver an anti tobacco message.

Implications for research and/or practice:  Future health marketing campaigns can strategically integrate online and offline methods to communicate with a targeted subpopulation in a culturally relevant way.  Increasingly, the barrier between offline and online activity is being blurred.  Merging both cultural values and interests and audience social media habits can keep campaigns relevant and perhaps increase engagement among target audiences.