The Objective
Freestyle Creative began working with the Chickasaw Nation’s Division of Research and Population Health Strategic Prevention Framework-Tribal Incentive Grant (SPF-TIG) committee in October 2015 to create from scratch a comprehensive community-level educational and multimedia campaign to prevent and raise awareness for underage drinking and prescription drug abuse and misuse. Starting with research and brand development, the “Define Your Direction” campaign was created. Define Your Direction is a youth movement created to inspire teens and young adults, ages 12-25 in Dickson, Oklahoma, and Allen, Oklahoma communities, to make positive decisions when it comes to prescription drug abuse and underage drinking. The initial campaign was successful in raising awareness to this problem and increase brand awareness within the Chickasaw Nation. With those results the campaign was shifted to focus on a new epidemic – opioid addiction and abuse.

The Process
While our original campaign targeted teens and young adults ages 12-25 within the borders of the Chickasaw Nation, the new opioid awareness campaign was opened up to target ages 7-54.  To understand the perspective of our wide range of audiences we completed a series of research-focused events including surveys and focus groups to determine the effectiveness of the previous stages of the campaign, perceptions of drug, alcohol and opioid use within their counties, and best approaches for messaging. This research carried our strategy development with specific goals – each strategy designed to engage the target audiences and Chickasaw Nation communities by promoting education, consequences and prevention. 

The Results
Our multi-year campaign is still in progress with a constant state of campaign pivots and assets ranging from testimonial-based video, documentary, to traditional and digital platforms. At this phase in our strategy, our campaign is shifting into the prevention phase with a focus on the power of community and how culture is prevention.