It’s a bold—and quite honestly, inane—move to create any type of advertising work completely in a vacuum, ignoring the world around you in favor of your singular worldview. When working on a topic that’s deeply personal to many individuals, it’s imperative to go outside of your bubble to seek the input of individuals with lived experience. In fact, the phrase “Nothing about us without us” is something we hear frequently in our work.
And on the flip side, sometimes you’re lucky enough to work on a campaign that brings together those same folks who you consult with at the beginning of the effort, and forms or strengthens a community around a common goal.
At Amélie we work on a lot of topics that can be very intense—substance use disorder being one of them. We’re working to remove stigma from a disease that has historically been harshly judged and misunderstood by the general public, and the individuals that we’re trying to reach have truly persevered through some dark times to find recovery. Or, they might still be living in those dark times and need a helping hand to pull them out.
On the subject of substance use disorder, talking with the treatment and recovery community (those who work in the space, as well as those in recovery themselves and even their loved ones) is not only a good idea—it’s one of the most important steps. This helps us to understand the needs for our messaging to address, so we are creating resonant work, and also helps to create buy-in for the campaign on the back-end. If people are bought in, they are more likely to engage with the campaign and to help amplify the message in their communities.
Our campaign Lift The Label shares the stories of individuals in recovery and loved ones of those in recovery, sharing the barriers they overcame to find treatment for substance use disorder, recovery, and a life they never knew existed.
We are able to build a network within the community, while reaching the general public with stigma reduction messages and information on treatment options. Through our statewide campaign through paid media, earned media, and community engagement, we create networks of people who are in recovery and have shared their stories with the campaign, and we allow people to see themselves in the campaign and rally around their common triumphs in recovery.
It has been an incredibly beautiful thing to see the recovery community rally around Lift The Label and its initiative Recovery Cards Project. We’ve been to recovery rallies and have experienced the deep community and pride in community. I’ve handed out t-shirts, hats, stickers, and Recovery Cards to these individuals in recovery—all of whom have their unique stories that bring me to tears when I hear about how much they’ve been through to be in front of me today, and how they never thought they could have lives as beautiful as they are now.
I see attendees excited to wear their shirts and hats proudly, to display their stickers on their water bottles, and ready to send all of their friends Recovery Cards. Even more, strangers come up to me with immense amounts of gratitude for telling their stories, and for helping to show how addiction is a disease that can be recovered from.
A few quotes about what Recovery Cards in particular means to these individuals in the recovery community (watch our video for more!):
“To me it’s saying that I have someone to walk through this with me.”
“If I had received a card like one of these when I was struggling and trying to get sober, it could have been the difference between me getting sober and staying sick.”
All that to say—we listen to people in the community, we talk to people who have different perspectives than us, and we become immersed in the subject matter before we start work on a project. And because of that, we’ve been able to reach a community that has suffered through so much stigma and judgment with a spotlight of hope and recognition of all they’ve been through.
