This post is part of a blog series focusing on successful health marketing campaigns using multiple communications disciplines and media channels.  If you have a campaign we should highlight, let us know.

I’ve highlighted the successful anti-smoking “Truth” campaign in a previous blog post, however I recently learned of another youth anti-smoking campaign worth sharing. The Own Your C campaign employed a “surround sound approach” (i.e., using multiple media and communications channels) to decrease tobacco use and encourage healthy behavior among Colorado teens.

In 2006, the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment and Cactus, a Denver-based advertising agency, created a “refreshing” and “non-preachy” integrated digital media education campaign. The goals of the campaign were:

• To build teen life skills in choice-making
• Normalize positive choice-making behavior
• Promote making smart and healthy choices by preventing tobacco use
• Improve nutrition
• Encourage physical activity

They completed extensive formative research to reach these goals.

The campaign clearly embraced the surround sound approach as it communicated its messages using television, an online community (website), social networking sites, and even a clothing line. During the campaign, the website had 47,000 hits and the TV spots reached 4.5 million Colorado teens. Campaign staff also held more than 430 local, live events, which reached more than 75,000 students.

Colorado now has the second-lowest teen smoking rate in the nation.

When I began my Master of Public Health degree last year, I never thought I would potentially have the opportunity to  work with television, radio, websites, Facebook/MySpace, let alone become a fashion designer of a clothing line! These are key elements of any surround-sound campaign that never occurred to me before. Let’s work to ensure our colleagues don’t forget them too. Because when health marketing and communication professionals get together, we can accomplish anything.

Read More from Walking the Path:

1. Public Health Communicators: You’ve Captured the Flag, Now What Do You Do With It?
2. Help Us Snuff Out Supercool’s Smoking Superhero
3. When it Comes to Promoting Health, Saying “You’re Bad” Is Often Not Good