The New Celebrities: Low Cost Strategies to Engage and Maximize Digital Influencers

Background:

The tobacco industry targets youth and young adults using influencers like artists, musicians, and promoters, but tobacco control programs rarely use these same tactics. Aiming to change this, the “Syke” campaign was designed to reduce tobacco use among Alternative teens by engaging digital influencers to change cultural norms in online and offline environments. Formative research determined that working within the Alternative subculture (skaters, hipsters, emo, goth, etc.) would result in the greatest impact for tobacco prevention because this population has significantly above average rates of tobacco use.

Program background: As media consumption habits shift to digital environments, message exposure on social media becomes increasingly important. Additionally, digital influencers can motivate young adults. Public health campaigns can leverage digital influencers to associate the target audience's values with tobacco-free lifestyles. This session will highlight a campaign that targets Alternative teens and uses art and music influencers to promote a tobacco-free lifestyle. The hyper-targeting capabilities on social advertisements increases program’s ability to reach high-risk populations. By applying a segmentation model to the ad targeting strategy, along with a targeted influencer strategy, advertising dollars are more efficiently spent reaching the populations most at-risk for tobacco use; particularly important for programs with limited funding

Evaluation Methods and Results: Paid social media helped amplify Syke’s campaign, which argued that Alternative teens should live tobacco-free. Syke developed and served ads targeted at youth that identify with the Alternative subculture by partnering with digital influencers that this audience was interested in. Syke’s paid ad campaign on Facebook helped deliver targeted video views and increased brand awareness. This session will share the campaign strategy, lessons learned for social media, and how valuable two-way engagements with prevention messaging such as quiz completions were created.

Conclusions: By the end of the campaign, 61% of all teens surveyed were aware of Syke, 60% had been to a Syke event and nearly 60% had been to the Syke website or Facebook page.

Implications for research and/or practice: In three years, there was a 35.9% reduction in overall past 30-day smoking rates among teens with any Alternative influence. This decline was most prominent for teens with primarily Alternative influences, whose smoking rates declined 49.7%.