PreventEd
PreventEd works to reduce or prevent the harms of alcohol and other drug use through education, intervention and advocacy. Recently, Missouri passed Amendment 3, effectively legalizing cannabis distribution across the state, and PreventEd saw the need for a campaign to address this change.
THE PROJECT
“In The Weeds” is a campaign that aims to educate people about the implications of cannabis legalization and provide tools to parents and partners, empowering them to have tough conversations with the children, teens, and young adults in their lives.
Messaging strategy
One of the biggest challenges of this campaign was to bring clarity to a wide audience base: nearly every Missourian. To guide the development of our campaign creative, and ultimately define the role of PreventEd in the cannabis narrative, we identified three messaging platforms: Bringing expertise, Informing decisions and Starting conversations.
- Bringing expertise
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We’re leaders in prevention education with the purpose of spreading solutions, not stigma.
- Informing decisions
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We’re giving people the information they need to make informed decisions about cannabis use.
- Digging into the conversations
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We’re helping teens, parents and partners start the conversation around cannabis.
A topic that deserves deep conversation
We wanted a campaign theme that would connect with teenagers and young adults while also being respectful of their experiences and perspectives. Additionally, we wanted to appeal to parents and other adults who are looking for resources to help them have challenging conversations with this audience. Our team proposed “In the Weeds” as a catchy and confident message to highlight the importance of discussing cannabis.
Purple?
In the cannabis consumer marketplace, green is a dominant color. To make our campaign stand out and represent a different perspective on cannabis, we incorporated purple from the existing PreventEd brand palette. We used PreventEd green sparingly, on calls-to-action.
Weed vs. marijuana vs. cannabis
Cannabis is the formal, scientific term used by PreventEd when discussing the drug to add credibility to discussions with teenagers or adult stakeholders. However, “cannabis” is not a commonly searched term in search engines. Therefore, for our SEM and SEO efforts, we needed to find a balance between supporting best practices for youth conversations and aligning with how people were actually searching for information and answers.
User-generated content
The primary goal of this campaign is to spark discussions that tackle genuine questions from real people. Rather than speculating on what those questions might be, we conducted research on common search keywords and keyphrases. Additionally, we directly asked our followers about their questions and made it a priority to address those questions through the campaign.
The PreventEd podcast gets in the weeds
To expand the campaign’s impact and encourage discussions about cannabis, PreventEd created “In The Weeds” episodes for the PreventEd podcast PrevenTable. These special episodes address user-generated questions about cannabis and have become the most popular episodes in the series.
PreventEd needed a campaign to reduce or prevent harm caused by the legalization of cannabis in Missouri. Magnetize created a campaign that positions them as the prevention thought-leader in a credible and timely way.
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