Overview

The effects of addiction are as wide-ranging as they are destructive to the inflicted individual. When we began working with a local rehab clinic in Austin, Texas, we used this as motivation, purpose, and reasoning to guide our efforts. Given the far-reaching and downright deadly implications associated with addiction, we set out to create a marketing campaign that would help amplify the rehab facility’s services and, potentially, save a life.

 

Rehab Case Study

 

Challenge

When you’re addicted to drugs and/or alcohol, it’s hard to have the wherewithal to seek out help for yourself. This being the case, we knew that this campaign couldn’t be directed at the addicts themselves. Instead, we needed to target someone in the addict’s personal sphere who could push them towards rehabilitation. It was this audience that would ultimately deliver patients to our caregiving client.

Solution

After looking at the trends and patterns of this particular area and the client’s own observations about their patients, we knew what audience would most likely be the one to encourage rehabilitation: mothers. One comment from an interview with the mother of an addict struck us: she said she lost the son she knew and loved. From there, the Missing campaign was born. We used the imagery of the missing milk box child to express this concept, and offer a path for the child’s safe return.

Results

The campaign consisted of photos of young children accompanied by short biographies listing out their current adult ages, childhood interests, and their intoxicant of choice. The striking contrast of something so innocent with something so negative was enough to grab the attention of wide audiences even beyond our target demographic.

Benefit

We were able to use this theme in a variety of mediums, enabling maximum exposure of a very powerful message. The poignant messaging of this marketing campaign successfully underscored what the rehab clinic ultimately wanted to accomplish: returning suffering addicts to their healthy selves and back to their loving families.