We created an educational resource for parents: FlavorsHookKids.org for the California Tobacco Control Program
Since 1989, the California Tobacco Control Program (CTCP) has led the fight to keep tobacco out of the hands of youth. But now, with usage of e-cigs and flavored nicotine on the rise with teens, they’re up against another challenge: how do you educate parents on the risks of vaping and the signs they should be looking for?
Together, we developed a web presence for their ongoing Flavors Hook Kids campaign. The purpose of which is to warn parents and concerned adults about the increasing availability of flavored tobacco products targeted to teens. It also aims to highlight how easy it is for kids to purchase flavored tobacco products online.
We felt that in order to truly change the high rate of adoption of tobacco products and youth, we needed to create a platform and content that provides parents with the tools they need in order to tackle the issue. We did this through hours of research and interviews, learning along the way what information would be most valuable in order to affect change.
We've gone through numerous cycles of continuous improvement through user testing, concept, design, and build the site, we leveraged both qualitative and quantitative feedback to drive feature and prioritization and inform our content strategy and site architecture. Our primary objective was to inspire action, and we provided a range of effective ways to do that: letter writing, conversation guides, and module-by-module social sharing opportunities.
The site we created acts as a go-to resource for parents and works in tandem with CTCP’s other media efforts. Once on the site, visitors are served a compelling video and strong statistics. From there, they experience an image carousel to help them in identifying devices and products, a list of red flags to look for, and suggestions for starting conversations.
Its intuitive, UX-friendly design allows visitors to access all information on the site in a single view, with expandable sections providing deep dives on hot topics. With such a wide breadth of fact-based information to share, we needed a format that was easy to understand and highly engaging. We crafted eye-catching, bite-sized modular experiences throughout that were easy to digest at a glance, despite the gravity of the issues at hand.
In the end we created a robust site with content that empowered parents and concerned adults with the information they need and tools to reach out to both kids and their local leaders. The site, and the impact it has had, provides an excellent foundation for other states who are looking to adopt or transform their own cessation programs.
To date, the site has had 1.75M Sessions, 27.2K users have viewed the educational e-cigarette guide and 5,100 users have sent an email to their mayor voicing their concern about e-cigarettes.
Bans on e-cigarettes are becoming increasingly common across the country. In California, cities like San Francisco and Sacramento have banned the sale and distribution of e-cigarettes. Michigan has followed suit and become the first state to implement the ban. Places like New York haven’t banned them completely, but have raised the minimum age for purchasing e-cigarettes to 21.
