Anti-tobacco campaigns increase SD QuitLine enrollment

The South Dakota Department of Health, specifically the Tobacco Prevention and Control Program, aims to prevent South Dakotans from starting tobacco use and help current users quit. This translates to an overall goal of increasing participation in South Dakota QuitLine services. Accomplishing this task for an entire state is no small feat and required targeting to four primary audiences:

• The general public, who either use tobacco or know someone who uses tobacco
• Seniors, who have been smoking much of their lives and are looking to quit for health and social reasons
• Youth and young adults, who are interested in vaping or are current vapers
• Native Americans, who are users and may not know the difference between traditional and commercial tobacco

With these audiences in mind, four campaigns were born — The Last Smoke, More Good Years, Vaping Sucks and Honor Every Breath. Additionally, Epicosity was tasked with bringing their previous anti-tobacco websites and campaign topics together into one, comprehensive website.

Later, we created campaigns about pregnant and postpartum women who vape and a general dental message — Decide for Two and Watch Your Mouth.

Our insights team put in the work with these projects, working with the client to better understand who is visiting their site with a tag for 24/7 insights (informed by opt-in surveys and AI). Now, we can learn who they are from if they are a user or ever have been and their life stage to their roles, education levels and what is important to them personally. In addition, we created a persona playbook and custom quantitative and qualitative research.

Each of the four main campaigns included creative concept cycling, landing page creation and development, ad creation, video production and media distribution.

In addition, the Epicosity team formulated a new all-encompassing website at QuitTobaccoSD.com that combined the content from four existing sites with custom web content. On this site is a collection of print ads, radio ads, video spots and more for coalitions and grantees to utilize. Regular articles on relevant topics and monthly social media content creation followed.