PA Dept. of Health

This is older work, but I’m including it here to show how my teams think in terms of changing behavior, combining technology and creativity, and creating something that inspires the right people to continue the conversation.

The challenge: reduce casualties from teen DUIs throughout Pennsylvania.

The insight: teens have zero fear of dying, but find the notion of hurting someone, and then having to live with that, a fate worse than death.

Our solution: we put young people in front of the camera and let them apologize directly to someone they hurt while driving under the influence.

The campaign launched for the 2009 prom season. All content led to fullapologies.com, where full-length apologies could be viewed.

The site was designed to get teens to think about consequences in new ways. Videos showed what life can be like for teens who party and then drive. And we invented digital tools to help kids make smarter decisions when they weren’t in the clearest frame of mind. For example, your sober self could send a text into the future about making the right decision getting home, timed for your potentially not sober self to receive it when it mattered.

We also engaged teens where they congregated—in school parking lots and bathrooms—in ways even they couldn’t ignore.

Visitors spent an average of more than five minutes on the site—many from outside PA. The work earned a One Show Gold Pencil, and even better, the decade-long trend of rising casualties was reversed.

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Project Case Study

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Winning a One Show Gold Pencil, FullApologies.com featured full-bleed video of a teen apologizing directly to a friend or a parent of someone they hurt by drinking and driving. A brief story appeared to the side providing context about what happened that night, and afterwards.

Site visitors were encouraged to add their own apologies for not making the right decision after partying. Thousands of people did--most outside of Pennsylvania.

No one wants to be the designated diver. So we created a Responsibility Randomizer, capturing all the names and cell numbers in a group of friends. At random, one person was chosen to make sure everyone else got home safe. Everyone was texted so it was clear who'd be staying sober that night.

We gave teens the ability to send themselves a text, sober self to drunk self. Before the party started, they could remind their post-partying self to be smart. The text would be timed so they'd get it shortly before curfew, when their drunk self would have to start thinking about how to get home.