Keep The Party Safe
Challenge:
Fentanyl has become an incredibly urgent issue in Colorado and across the nation, with fentanyl-related overdose deaths rising year-over-year. Many street drugs are laced with synthetic fentanyl, and our target audience—a casual, recreational drug user— doesn’t know that they’re taking something that has fentanyl in it and may not be prepared with safety precautions.
Our Approach:
We knew our audience was “too cool for school” and may be distrustful of authority, so we needed to approach this challenge boldly and without judgment. By using eye-catching and familiar neon signage typically found in nightlife and entertainment atmospheres, we created a harm reduction-focused campaign, Keep The Party Safe, native to the environment where individuals might find themself in a situation where they would be using. Our ads grab our audience’s attention just long enough to say: “We’re not here to judge. We’re here to keep you safe. Here’s how.”
Solution:
This approach created the perfect opportunity to partner with AEG Presents: Rocky Mountains, allowing for signage and messaging across their Colorado concert venues and festivals, including Mission Ballroom and Fiddler’s Green. As part of the partnership, AEG also put up 11 Keep The Party Safe-branded “Emergency Overdose Kits” throughout their venues, which house naloxone that any concert-goer could access in case of an emergency.
Throughout the first year of the campaign, the Keep The Party Safe attended dozens of events, concerts, and festivals to hand out naloxone, test strips, and campaign-branded giveaways in a colorfully-branded tent—standing out and drawing a crowd.
Results:
In the first year of the campaign, the campaign tallied more than 41.1M impressions, including 13.2M earned media impressions.
- We know from our formative research that our campaign messages are resonating with our target audience.
- The digital toolkit that was developed as a community resource has been viewed over 600 times, and over 30 organizations have ordered (free) campaign materials for promotions.
- In two months, the campaign handed out nearly 5,000 doses of naloxone and 1,860 test strips. This includes a dose that was handed out by the campaign at the Underground Music Showcase, which someone administered to save a life that very night.
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