How Truth Initiative Captivates Young Audiences

With an average of nine hours spent in front of a screen each day, often on three to five devices at the same time, it’s practically fact to say teenagers are constantly connected to technology. And their lack of concentration on any one thing makes it all the more difficult to reach them.

With an average of nine hours spent in front of a screen each day, often on three to five devices at the same time, it’s practically fact to say teenagers are constantly connected to technology. And their lack of concentration on any one thing makes it all the more difficult to reach them.

Another sticking point with “kids these days”: They don’t want to be spoken at, but they do appreciate being truly captivated by a message. They also want to be part of something bigger. That insight guided the thinking behind Truth Initiative’s “truth” smoking prevention campaign.

It also underscores the notion of an “experience business,” which was a key theme at Adobe Summit a few months ago. An experience business designs and delivers smart, personalized, and memorable experiences for its target audience. At Truth Initiative, we use this strategy to save lives. Our “truth” campaign leverages data, content, and creative to empower young people to join the movement to end smoking.

We’ve found that millennials and centennials care about facts and will call you out in a heartbeat if you’re wrong. From the chemicals in cigarettes to Big Tobacco’s practices, we know that everything we convey, whether in “truth” or another initiative, has to be substantiated for the sake of our credibility.

But beyond the facts, you have to truly understand your target audience if you want to reach them effectively. That’s why we rely heavily on research to tell us more about our audience, including income, demographics, and daily habits. Through this data-driven approach, we are able to extract insights that help us reach youth with contextually relevant content on the platforms and in the applications they are already using.

As mentioned before, teens aren’t just using one device at a time, so having messaging and advertising that works on all screens is important for us. Our strategy is to provide a seamless experience across devices, with content that builds off of the last message or interaction. We use this sequential marketing strategy to connect with youngsters through multiple touch points, with content that is authentic and meaningful. And it doesn’t feel like forced exposure.

Martech, of course, is key here because it allows us to keep up with the ways in which our target audience continues to evolve in their use of technology. We’re able to make forecasts based on data and projections. This data also is guiding our storytelling and content. We’re able to not only understand connected devices and device IDs, but also uncover the preferences and behaviors of the consumer behind it. Without knowing our audience, we would never succeed in properly designing the content—and our message would get lost among all those different screens that youngsters are using today.

Our research confirms that “truth” changes teens’ attitudes and behaviors toward smoking: Teens aware of “truth” are twice as likely to say they do not intend to smoke in the future. “Truth” and Adobe (Truth Initiative is an Adobe Experience Cloud customer) are leveraging the experience business strategy to change smoking behaviors, and by doing so, we’re saving lives.

The author of this article talked about the notion of experience during the Think Tank at Adobe Summit in March. Watch the video below: