Spark Growth & BCS Interactive - Youth Marketing Campaign of the Year

Company: Spark Growth & BCS Interactive, New York, NY
Company Description: Spark Growth is an award-winning certified women-owned digital marketing agency emphasizing a data-driven approach to social media marketing. Founded in 2012, we leverage our proprietary pattern recognition tool, Social Intelligence Optimization, to make thoughtful social media decisions for our clients’ brands.
Nomination Category: Marketing Campaign Categories - Specialty
Nomination Sub Category: Youth Marketing Campaign of the Year

Nomination Title: MHA: Stop Teen Suicide

Specify the date on which this campaign or program was launched: The campaign launched in April 2020.

The Mental Health Association (MHA) of Essex and Morris Counties wanted to address teen suicide with a campaign that centered around four underlying themes: Mental illnesses are real. Treatment is available. Recovery is possible. Suicide is a preventable death.

With a limited budget, the major challenge was how to develop content that spoke directly to the teen audience. Primary demographic research and interviews indicated that the teen audience is very particular when it comes to the types of messaging they want to interact with and who they want to hear from. Content creation—whether it was visuals or copy—had to align with a teen voice in order to portray authenticity and relatable messaging.

Leading up to the development of the campaign’s marketing assets, our research found that one of the major pitfalls other mental health campaigns had was using incorrect tones to address the youth audience. This ultimately led to a sense of inauthenticity and mistrust of the messaging that came from an adult voice or faceless organization.

In developing this campaign, our team not only researched language that would connect to a teen audience, but we also looked at design theory that would engage with struggling teens who may not read the ad copy.

By expanding its online presence on key social media platforms, MHA’s primary goal was to increase awareness of both its own suicide prevention resources and teen suicide prevention. Part of this process would be to connect at-risk teens with real, effective resources and help them make the first step in their journey to recovery. MHA wanted to reach as many people as possible and drive more conversations about mental health to remove any stigma regarding talking about suicide prevention.

In developing ad copy and creatives, our own goal and messaging included:

- Normalizing discussions around suicide prevention through positive encouragement
- Reiterating the idea that at-risk teens are not alone—there is a support network ready to help them, whether it’s their friends/family or MHA
- Teen suicide doesn’t just impact a particularly “type” of person (i.e. dispelling the common stereotype of loners or goths being the only teens to suffer from depression and suicide ideation)

During the planning process, it was clear that to achieve our goals, our campaign would need to reach beyond the at-risk teen audience. We developed two core audiences: at-risk teens and friends of at-risk teens (supportive peers). Creative assets and marketing materials developed for each group are differentiated based on messaging in order to provide each targeted group with the right information and resources.

Throughout the campaign, our strategic ad optimization process yielded effective results in helping our client reach their goals but we also saw an increase in website registrations and contacts, both of which were not the primary goal of the campaign.

We found that age and demographic-based targeting was top-performing, even without the inclusion of interests. This strategy was most useful for small geo-based (location restricted) targeting, which worked well for us since we were only targeting Essex and Morris county. Given the limited budget, we were able to make each marketing dollar go farther in order to get results that our clients were very happy with.

Our campaign yielded:
- 5,358,390 Impressions
- 31,853 Post Reactions
- 468,812 Video Plays ($0.05 Cost per Thruplay)
- 1,796 Post Saves (high-value metric for our client since this means people are saving our post in case MHA’s resources will come in handy for them/their friends)
- 14,786 Link clicks (high-value metric since this means people are learning more about the resources)

After launching our new campaign, the difference between our marketing program and MHA’s previous marketing efforts include:
- 35% decrease in Cost per Reaction down
- 1795% increase in Number of Post saved
- 92% decrease in cost per post save
- 33% decrease in cost per link click

Creative concepts used a combination of illustrated visuals, real-life photography, and videos to tell a story from a variety of perspectives, whether it was a peer learning how to truly support their friend or an at-risk teen being encouraged to reach out for help.

For the youth audience, it was clear that ad visuals needed to stand out but remain relatable. With a goal to create more authentic messaging for struggling teens, our team understood that social media is a key part of how they communicate. This became the concept for our “texting videos” series which proved to be a more realistic way to convey a teen struggling to ask for help or a friend helping their at-risk friend reaching out to help their at-risk teen.

Texting videos viewed on a mobile device proved to be particularly effective in displaying an authentic feel different from other social media ads. By showcasing what not to say when talking to an at-risk teen, these videos are an engaging way to promote conversation not by being dismissive, but by being attentive and listening.

Creative elements included in this entry include:

1. Audience segment: At-risk teens, Concept: Texting video
2. Audience segment: At-risk teens, Concept: Illustration - Comic x 2
3. Audience segment: Friends of at-risk teens/Supportive peers, Concept: Illustration - Carousel