Lift The Label

Lift The Label, created by Amélie in partnership with Behavioral Health Administration, has been fighting stigma around opioid use disorder (OUD) and substance use disorder (SUD) since 2018, with the end goal to get individuals into effective treatment.

The campaign reaches:

• Loved ones of individuals struggling with an SUD with a goal to reduce stigma, and to improve education around addiction and resources for treatment
• Individuals with an SUD with a goal to get them into effective treatment
• Professionals in the medical, behavioral health and law enforcement field, with a goal to reduce stigma and increase their understanding of how to treat patients and individuals they encounter with an SUD

SUD can affect anyone, regardless of race, age, gender, location, sexual orientation or income. Throughout the campaign’s tenure we have been tasked multiple times with the challenge to evolve the campaign to meet the needs of our audiences, to ensure we can represent all people of Colorado in an equitable way.

After a year in-market, we understood that we were not equitable in our campaign’s reach, and we embarked on a multi-year research effort with our high risk populations of Black/African American, Hispanic/Latine, and LGBTQIA+ communities. To evaluate how to best evolve the campaign, we held focus groups and conducted in-depth interviews with loved ones of those with an SUD as well as individuals in recovery.

As part of a rebranding effort, the evolved campaign continued to use storytelling to shed light on the barriers individuals face in seeking treatment, while showing people that those reasons don’t need to stand in the way of recovery. By utilizing a whole-population approach in the campaign and featuring a diverse group of Coloradans and a diverse set of barriers that were overcome, we showed that recovery is possible for anyone and everyone.

A few years after the initial campaign evolution, we worked closely with community organizations statewide to meet their needs on a local-level, particularly how to best reach rural audiences. This provided us with the opportunity to move out of the studio and into the communities and homes of those sharing their stories—emphasizing an already intimate message even further.

From the beginning of the campaign, Lift The Label has been wide-reaching across many types of paid media tactics, with strategic targeting by audience and media consumption habits. Our paid media is complemented by our earned media and community outreach efforts during Mental Health Awareness Month and Recovery Month, with additional focuses on Recovery Cards Project including artist recruitment, new cards, etc. Our robust community outreach includes a digital toolkit, free collateral/print materials for order, and a monthly newsletter where people and organizations can get updated resources and information. We intentionally engage with community-based organizations about their needs for resources and to ensure we are incorporating their feedback into our campaign.

Lift The Label has been extremely well-received:

• Lift The Label was cited in an article published by the American Journal of Public Health as an example of how the structural components of stigma can best be addressed in a public health communications campaign.
• In a national study comparing opioid-focused campaigns, Lift The Label video ads performed extremely well in categories of perceived effectiveness, believability, and persuasiveness.
• Through the Recovery Cards Project initiative, Lift The Label has distributed over 180,000 greeting cards to individuals seeking recovery, those in recovery, and those supporting someone.

Lift The Label has amassed over 1.1 billion lifetime impressions across paid and social media channels, its websites, and earned media.