Fentanyl Takes Friends Campaign Launch To Address Deaths and Overdoses from Fentanyl in Santa Clara County

2020-09-07

To address the deaths and overdoses in Santa Clara County (SCC) Better World Advertising (BWA) partnered with the Santa Clara County Behaviroal Helath Services Department (SCCBHSD) and the Santa Clara County Public Helath Department (SCCPHD) to create the Fentaly Takes Friends public health awareness campaign. In the past eight months Fentanyl deaths were up 200% in SCC from all of 2019. One big factor is people are unknowingly ingesting the deadly synthetic opioid when they go to purchase drugs such as cocaine, meth, ecstasy, or heroin. This campaign had two main objectives: to raise awareness about the risk of death and overdose from ingesting "party drugs" such as MDMA (molly/ecstasy), cocaine, or meth that also contain fentanyl; and to educate people about harm reduction strategies to prevent and counteract overdoses including having access to NARCAN,  considering the source and safety of how they acquire drugs, and never using alone. The prioority population for this campaign was teens and young adults (ages 14-30) living in Santa Clara County. Ads were developed to engage the age groups (teens, early twenties, and mid-to late twenties) and disseminated across relevant digital and social media channels that are frequented by the intended audience, and have also been cited as sources to purchase drugs. The media strategy was a mix of paid ads (digital banners, Instagram, Snapchat, and Twitter); and organic media  through SCCBHD's Instagram (CSCBehavioralHealth) and Twitter (CSCHelathSystem) accounts utilizing a mix of original and curated content (trending fentayl related health articles, relevant community news and events, and reposts from like-minded accounts). Fentanyl Takes Friends will run for three months, to learn more about the campaign visit FriendTaker.org