Marketing the Health Lows of Legal Highs
Posted on Mar 02, 2015
Hester Stewart was a 21-year-old student on target to get a first class honours degree in molecular medicine who went out for an evening to celebrate with her cheerleading team after an awards ceremony in 2009.
During the evening an old boyfriend convinced her to try GBL, which at the time was an unclassified substance or legal high (also known as a New Psychoactive Substance). Combined with the alcohol she had consumed, the drug had the effect of shutting down her respiratory system. Hester fell asleep, went into a coma and died. Her friends and family were shocked by the news and by the fact that something so deadly could be bought legally.
Hester’s mother, Maryon Stewart, responded to the tragedy by trying to stop the same thing from happening to others. She founded the Angelus Foundation, the only organisation in the world that is dedicated to raising awareness of the dangers of legal highs. In the past five years she has campaigned with great energy, educating young people about the dangers of these substances.
The Angelus Foundation works hard to reach young people and their parents with simple and direct messages about the high risk of taking these unpredictable substances. Their goal is to educate young people, through online information and films to at least find out more before deciding whether or not to take legal highs.
In August of last year, Maryon signed the Angelus Foundation up to Pimp My Cause looking for support with creating a social media campaign. The organisation has made several films about the consequences of taking these risky substances and had recently created a new comedy film called Lab Rats aimed at educating young people about the type of people who sell legal highs.
Through Pimp My Cause Maryon and her team connected with Sophie Hill, a social media and digital marketing professional.
Angelus CEO Jan King said, “We knew we needed to connect with young people and that there was a huge potential audience on social media platforms, but we didn’t know how best to engage them.”
Sophie helped the Angelus team develop their plans for launching the Lab Rats film into a coherent social media campaign that would help them to build up their social media followers in order to make the most of the film.
Sophie advised the team to break the Lab Rats film down into bite-sized teaser clips that they could use to generate social buzz before launching the full three-minute film. She helped them to understand how best to connect to their target audience and together they developed their key message for the campaign.
Jan said, “Sophie has taught us a great deal about digital marketing. It was incredibly helpful to get her advice on what was realistic in terms of our goals for the number of people that we wanted to reach with the campaign and how best to meet those objectives. Our interns were able to implement the advice she gave us and she helped them to exploit the marketing materials that we already had. Working with Sophie we felt that we were in incredibly safe hands.”
Sophie said, “After finding out more about the work that Angelus does for young people and the incredible story behind the foundation, I was determined to help spread such a vital message. I would like to thank both Maryon and Jan for giving me the opportunity to share my knowledge and help to improve their social media presence. The Angelus team has been an absolute pleasure to work with. The Lab Rats campaign was a great success and I hope to continue working with the Angelus Foundation.”
The campaign ran from October to December and culminated in the launch of the full Lab Rats film. The campaign generated over 18,000 views and helped to get the message out that the people behind so-called legal highs are not in any way regulated and the products have not been tested, so they are in effect using the people who buy their products as lab rats.
Jeff Leach, an actor and comedian who lost his best friend Louise to party drugs, wrote the script for Lab Rats as well as appearing in it. "Young People are curious and adventurous but it's imperative to educate them about the vast risks involved in using legal highs. Why should more young lives be lost through a lack of education?"
Irwin Sparks, the lead singer of the Hoosiers and co-performer in Lab Rats said "making people aware of the dangers inherent in legal highs is vital work that I'm happy to be part of."
Legal highs often contain inconsistent ingredients or mixtures. When the Government bans one drug, the producers of legal highs simply alter its chemical structure slightly and start supplying a new substance. Because they change so often it is an uphill battle to tackle them through the usual legislation, so the Angelus Foundation has focussed on educating parents and young people about the dangers of legal highs.
Angelus surveys show 95% of people that have viewed Angelus’ films said that the film changed how they felt about legal highs.
Find out more through their websites:
http://www.angelusfoundation.com/