Time To Talk Cause Marketing Campaign
Timed to coincide with back-to-school activities, in August 2007 the Partnership launched its first annual cause-related promotion, Time to Talk™, designed to raise awareness that parents can uniquely and profoundly influence their children to lead healthy, drug-free lives. Within ten weeks of the launch, timetotalk.org had over 1 million site visitors.
Why Time To Talk? The annual Partnership Attitude Tracking Study (PATS) shows consistently that kids who learn a lot about the risks of drugs from their parents are up to 50% less likely to use than those who do not. Yet only about 3 in 10 kids report learning a lot about the risks of drugs from their parents.
Of greater concern is that the number of frequent discussions between parents and teens about the risks of drug abuse has decreased significantly. The 2006 PATS indicated a 12 percent decline in frequency of discussions between parents and their teens (55 percent in 2005 vs.49 percent in 2006).
And, when it comes to talking with their kids about the risks of drugs and alcohol, the 2006 PATS confirmed that parents want and need more help starting the conversation with their teens. Nearly one-third of parents expressed a need for more information about drugs; 30 percent say they needed tips on how to start a discussion about drugs and 37 percent reported they want information on how to tell if a child is using drugs
Urgent health issue. Over 100 million Americans are touched by alcohol and drug abuse and nearly all cases of addiction begin during teen or pre-teen years. Addiction knows no demographic boundaries and touches all sectors of society. Today in the USA, there are 33 million parents/ caregivers with kids at risk. Every day 10,000 kids turn 13 and the average age of first drug use is 13 ½. An alarming forty-five percent of all kids are offered drugs at least once during their teenage years.
The Time To Talk cause campaign encourages parent participation by providing them with accessible, helpful tips, tools and resources not only to start but to also continue the conversation over the long haul. Parents are invited to sign up for free monthly e-newsletters and get exclusive access to great tools such as “Ten ways to get the conversation going”. Additionally, parents can get access to the Time To Talk Yahoo Groups, an online forum that enables parents to share experiences and connect with others facing similar situations. Insightful, timely and relevant content and resources are updated and added frequently. Corporate sponsors’ support and promotions are also featured on the site.
The Partnership launched the campaign with national public service announcements and a publicity campaign along with promotions on Yahoo! Answers with celebrity champions Mary Hart from Entertainment Tonight (August ’07) and Jo Frost, ABC’s Supernanny (October ’07). The response from the media was tremendous with over $5 million of donated air time, magazine pages and banner ads from companies such as CBS, Comcast, Meredith Publishing, Readers’ Digest and Oprah.com in August and September. According to Yahoo!, Mary Hart’s and Jo Frost’s questions resonated with the Yahoo! Answers community, generating a very high number of quality responses from the community, more so than most other notable questions.
The Partnership has strategic alliances to support Time ToTalk with youth- and parent-serving organizations including Boys & Girls Clubs of America, YMCA of the USA, the National PTA, National Association of School Nurses, Dad & Daughters and the American Pharmacists Association. These alliances help promote the Partnership’s resources to their more than 32 million members, volunteers and staff in local communities across the nation.
Time To Talk is an ideal way for family-centric brands to foster good will in their communities and create a deeper connection to millions of families with children ages 8-19. Our 2007 corporate sponsors are Comcast, King Pharmaceuticals, Yahoo and Wyeth Consumer Healthcare. By joining the cause and supporting a health issue that impacts more than 100 million Americans, corporations have the opportunity to promote and demonstrate a real commitment to kids, families and communities across the country.
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Note: Time To Talk site is no longer available.
