My role: campaign ideation, campaign strategy (digital, social, paid, experiential), creative direction, web design, web development, paid media management
The report on the effectiveness of the Commune Social Branding intervention on reducing smoking rates among the target population was published in the American Journal of Public Health. You can read it here.
Feed Need Not Greed was an integrated Social Branding antitobacco intervention that focused on engaging young adults interested in local art, music, and fashion around the realities of world hunger caused by the tobacco industry, with the objective of reducing their smoking rates.
The campaign was a competition between small businesses and local vendors in San Diego, San Francisco, and Burlington. Participating vendors publicly voiced their opposition to tobacco industry practices that contribute to world hunger and young adults in each city voted for their favorite in exchange for a discount code to the respective vendors' online store. Winning vendors received a cash prize and a featurette video.
Commune also donated $1 per vote up to $1,000 to Never Ending Food, a non profit organization in Malawi, Africa that educates and trains local farmers in permaculture and sustainable agriculture. With Commune's donation, Never Ending Food designed a custom program for 10 local farmers who rely on monocrop tobacco cultivation. Through this program, these farmers were trained in sustainable farming techniques like solar water pumping, composting toilets, crop diversification, beekeeping, agroforestry, aquaponics, diversified income-generating activities and more. At the end of the program, many of the farmers chose to move away from tobacco cultivation and toward more organic and sustainable crop production that directly benefits their local communities.
The campaign engaged over 17k young adults in San Diego, San Francisco, and Burlington on social media. Commune's social channels also saw a 128% increase in engagements (likes, comments, shares, etc.) week over week.
Participating vendors amplified the campaign by actively promoting the contest on social media. This generated a considerable amount of votes, as well as helped spread the tobacco messaging to peers in their networks.
The campaign was supported by events at popular neighborhood bars featuring local bands and artists. The experiential component was an important part of the overall strategy since it was an opportunity to further engage the target audience in the physical world.
