Driving while high on marijuana is actually more prevalent among young drivers than drunk driving. And more than half the drivers rushed to trauma centres following car accidents have drugs (typically marijuana) in their system.

The challenge for Drug Free Kids Canada and FCB/SIX was convincing teens that the danger is real, while breaking through and already oversaturated drunk driving PSA market.

Research showed that the most effective way to change behaviour is actually very simple: by getting parents to talk to their kids about drugs.

While almost all teens agree having a car accident while driving high would be horrible, most don’t believe it could ever happen to them. The plan was to make the unthinkable feel real and trigger a conversation between parents and teens about the dangers of high driving.

“The Call That Comes After” is an immersive, cross-channel experience with a real-time channel jump at its heart that connected parents and teens to have a conversation about the very real dangers of driving high.

Research showed that if you want to have a conversation with a teen, the place to start is on their phone. The connection strategy began in social media, where the team invited parents to create and share a personalized, interactive video with their teen.

Teens would then click through to watch the video, which told the story of a group of teens who decide to drive high.

Finally, during the story’s climax, the teen watching the film starts to receive real text messages on their phone that coincide with the text message the characters in the film are receiving, at the exact same time.

This surprising real-time channel-jump creates an uncanny moment of heightened emotion and connection to the story. It also provides a powerful emotional trigger for a conversation between parent and teen.

To create this synchronous, channel-jump moment from video to SMS, the agency combined five technology platforms: IBM Marketing Cloud, an on-demand video rendering engine, YouTube, a L.A.M.P. web service stack and triggered SMS.

In addition to the core connection strategy, campaign awareness was created through TV, OOH, print and digital and social advertising.
In the campaign’s first 60 days, and prior to mass support rolling out, site traffic to Drug Free Kids Canada increased by 1,946% and 13,200 people engaged with the jump-channel content.

The campaign has already generated significant earned media attention as parents and teens spread the word. Drug Free Kids Canada reported that “The Call That Comes After” campaign has also generated more impact in less time than any other campaign in its history.