Rescue SCG will soon be starting work on a new culture-based social marketing project with the Utah State Department of Health to prevent youth tobacco use. Based on teen smoking research conducted by Rescue SCG in 2009, youth that identified with the emo/goth subculture were found to be two to four times at greater risk of tobacco use. In order to address this cultural disparity, the state requested proposals for a culture-based social marketing program and awarded the contract to Rescue Social Change Group.

Rescue SCG will be using its proprietary Social Branding® model to break the association between the emo/goth culture and smoking. A Social Brand will use music events, brand ambassadors, street marketing and web to build credibility within the culture and motivate change. The ultimate goal is to concentrate efforts on those youth most at-risk in order to reduce Utah’s low, but stubbornly unchanged teen tobacco use rate of 7.9%.

Stay tuned for more updates as Rescue SCG works with the Utah State Department of Health to select the social brand and launch the intervention.

The San Diego Union Tribune featured an article about Rescue’s resident reality stars Cheyne Whitney & Kevin “KC” Campbell.  Check it out below, or click here for the original.

Cheyne Whitney (standing) and Kevin Campbell, co-workers of Rescue Social Change Group in Mission Hills, inspired each other to get cast on separate TV shows. Nelvin C. Cepeda / U-T

To this date, the tobacco control community has stayed away from this influential group. Targeting adults, teens, and college students instead, tobacco prevention and counter advertising messages skipped over this culture of young adults who focus their attention on local musicians and artists, congregating in local watering holes, and going to rock shows to celebrate their culture.

Beginning with a grant from the Public Health Trust, followed by a grant from the Flight Attendance Medical Research Institute, and continuing today thanks to a grant from the California Tobacco-Related Disease Research Program, the University of California, San Francisco has partnered with Rescue Social Change Group to develop an innovative strategy to reach these trendsetting young adults.

Using Rescue SCG’s proprietary Social Branding® model, the “Commune” program was developed. Commune is a celebration of local art, music, fashion, and business through social events and a rejection of manipulative corporate influences such as the tobacco industry. Through monthly events, direct mail, web, brand ambassadors, and cessation groups, the Commune brand reaches one of the most hard to reach audiences with its anti-tobacco messages.

While Commune is still growing in San Diego, its impact is already being documented. Through a random venue-based sampling method, 1,200 young adults are surveyed each year at local bars and clubs. Tobacco rates amongst the general sample decreased from 55.9% to 53.7% after 10 months of intervention. While a modest decline, it was concentrated within a subset of the population, namely young adults who most identify with the Hipster subculture and were identified to have high social concern using a set of psychographic questions. This subgroup began with a smoking rate of 77.4% that declined to 69.7% after 10 months. As trendsetters and cultural leaders, these young adults are those most likely to adopt behaviors first and spread them to others.

This early success has led Commune to receive the Gold Davey Award for Marketing Campaign Effectiveness for 2009. Congrats to the Commune team including Ashley G. and Jenny K. for their hard work. We look forward to seeing an even bigger impact from the second follow-up, currently being collected.

To learn more about Commune, watch the case study here.

We recently got the opportunity to interview one half of the winning team from the huge reality TV show the Amazing Race. Cheyne Whitney sat down with us and answered some questions regarding the fantastic organization he works for RescueSCG, as well as his time on the Amazing Race with his partner and girlfriend Megan.

RTVM: Please tell us about the San Diego– Rescue Social Change Group. How did it get started? What are the goals of the group and the future plans?

Cheyne Whitney: RescueSCG was founded in 2001 by Jeff Jordan as an organization with a mission to positively influence youth and young adults. Rescue launched their positive change movement by hosting top-notch smoke-free nightlife events that created a healthy lifestyle movement among the young adult party scene of Las Vegas. Through research, strategy and marketing services, RescueSCG’s overall mission is to improve the lives of youth and young adults through tobacco, alcohol, obesity, violence and HIV prevention programs, as well as after school promotion and youth advocacy for policy change.

Goals and future plans of the group focus on expanding and refining our unique social marketing, after school service and youth advocacy models in hopes of causing large scale positive change nationally and internationally.

RTVM: How did you get involved in the group? What is your job? What do you forsee for yourself in the future with the group?

Cheyne Whitney: I began working with RescueSCG in the Fall of 2008 as an intern and was hired on full time at the end of my internship period as an Assistant Brand Manager. I was honored to be promoted in August of 2009 to After School Brand Manager and to be given the role of On-Site manager for the Kearny High Complex IMIN after school program. As an After School Brand Manager I focus on developing and implementing engaging enrichment programs for local San Diego high school teens. Looking forward, I hope to refine and expand Rescue’s IMIN reach, as well as conduct after school research across the country.

RTVM: What are you most proud of regarding your involvement with the group?

Cheyne Whitney: I am most proud of being involved with such an amazing positive like-minded group, all of whom are dedicated to improving and influencing the lives of peers and future generations.

RTVM: How would your co-workers describe you and your ethics when it comes to your job and life?

Cheyne Whitney: I would hope that my co-workers would describe me as a natural change ambassador who is easily approachable and consistently helpful in regards to all of Rescue’s campaigns. In life I would think that my colleagues admire me as a dreamer who works to achieve my goals regardless of their grandeur or reality.

Now if you do not mind a few questions about your time on the Amazing Race:

RTVM: First of all, congratulations on your win with Megan on Amazing Race. We were rooting for you guys. Are you still together? Wedding bells in the future at some point?

Cheyne Whitney: Yes we are still together… the rest is confidential! Haha and thank you for the support!

RTVM: How do you think the two of you managed to keep a cool head most of the time when most teams seemed to snap at each other? Did you guys staying calm play a hand in you winning the race?

Cheyne Whitney: Megan and I were focused and dedicated to thinking positively and maintaining composure throughout the whole race before it even began. Watching previous seasons and planning for our adventure, we realized that teams who became frustrated or overworked usually lost ground or their lead and we made it a point to stay focused on the future rather than the pitfalls or troubles of the past. Staying composed and maintaining a positive outlook the whole race played a huge role in our win and the other 6 legs of the race that we won.

RTVM: What was the most exciting thing you did on the race? What was the scariest? What will you remember the most and take with you from the race?

Cheyne Whitney: The most exciting thing I did was drive the F3 race car in Dubai, it was by far the gnarliest thing I have ever done. The scariest was undoubtedly when I scaled face first down the Mandalay Bay hotel in Vegas. I was hundreds of feat above the Las Vegas Strip crawling down the building balancing of winning a million dollars and staying alive.

RTVM: Would you be willing to compete on the Amazing Race again in the future or on another reality show, like Survivor?

Cheyne Whitney: Yes we would love to do the race again, if they have an all-star season it really wouldn’t be “all-stars” without the winningest team in Amazing Race history right? Meghan and I would also entertain the idea of Survivor but aren’t applying or anything. In the Reality world we are focusing most of our free time to positive avenues, organizations and charities while working with producers on a Positive Global awareness campaign and reality show.

Thank you Cheyne for answering our questions and being so open! We are thrilled that you and Megan are still doing so well and wish you many years of happiness.

For more information about Cheyne’s charity work visit the San Diego– Rescue Social Change Group.

For other great The Amazing Race news, please feel free to check out SirLinksALot: Amazing Race. Discuss on our reality TV message boards.

This month, Rescue SCG began work in Oklahoma for a new young adult tobacco prevention initiative funded by the Oklahoma Tobacco Settlement Endowment Trust (TSET). The project utilizes Rescue SCG’s proprietary Functional Analysis for Cultural Interventions research strategy, known as FACI™, to investigate local young adult subcultures and their relationships to smoking. Learn more about FACI™ here.

The Rescue SCG research team for Oklahoma includes Jeff Jordan, Andrew Ermlick, Valerie Windstrom-Stevé, and Veronica Montoya. They will be investigating local subcultures in Tulsa and Oklahoma City to provide strategic recommendations to TSET.

The investigation will recruit young adults directly from local bars and clubs to participate in specially designed focus groups. Using Rescue SCG-designed research techniques such as Identity-Projection and Subculture Associations, the research team will look for patterns in tobacco use. These findings will then be quantitatively verified using Rescue SCG’s Ibase™ Survey, which will be administered to 1,200 young adults at bars and clubs in each city using a random venue-based sampling method.

If these research findings lead to a young adult Social Branding® intervention to prevent young adult tobacco use, Tulsa and Oklahoma City will become the 7^th and 8^th cities to adopt the rapidly growing strategy, currently active in Portland, ME, Albuquerque, NM, Las Cruces, NM, Las Vegas, NM, San Diego, CA, and Reno, NV. To learn more about Social Branding® for young adult tobacco prevention, click here.

Rescue SCG expects to have research findings available in early April 2010. Stay tuned to this blog for more info.

Rescue Founder & President Jeffrey Jordan was featured in a biographical article in Hispanic Business Magazine written by Rob Kuznia.  The article can be read below. Or, click here for the original article on HispanicBusiness.com

It’s Hip to Kill Tobacco: 25-Year-Old Entrepreneur Throws Parties, Makes Money and Slays the Beast

Jan. 5, 2010

Rob Kuznia — HispanicBusiness.com

Nerds have their place in this world, but serving as models of tobacco prevention isn’t one of them.  Or so says 25-year-old Jeff Jordan, who believes this burden is a better fit for the shoulders of the cool kids.  And he should know.

Just seven years out of high school, the Peru native and longtime San Diego resident has built a multi-million-dollar business out of making risky behavior — smoking in particular — positively un-cool.

Jordan’s for-profit business, called Rescue Social Change Group, contracts with state public health departments, school districts, non-profit organizations and foundations around the country to thwart the tobacco industry’s attempts to get its meat-hooks into fresh young customers.

To do this, Jordan believes health advocates need to beat the tobacco industry at its own game: Selling their brand as hip and trendy. This means he must get young people to associate hating tobacco with “edgy,” which can require being, well, truly edgy.

The approach can be controversial, and occasionally produces unintended consequences. Police, for instance, have raided well-attended parties organized by Rescue Social Change Group — parties that were underwritten by state public health agencies. Once, a bathroom-humor-inspired TV commercial produced by the group comparing cigarettes to fecal matter was widely condemned in Las Vegas — and thus praised by radio shock jock Howard Stern.

One thing you won’t see at a Rescue Social Change Group event is any mention of the state public health agency that is picking up the tab. That would be un-cool.

For his part, Jordan first noticed the follies of traditional tobacco-prevention programs while volunteering for one in high school.

“A lot of it was just preaching to the choir,” he told HispanicBusiness.com. “Kids who hated the tobacco industry got together and talked about how they hated the tobacco industry. … I personally felt there was a better way to go.”

Rescue Social Change Group currently has clients in about a dozen states, and also works to eradicate other societal ills, such as binge drinking, obesity and violence.

But the bulk of the business — at least 60 percent — is dedicated to preventing people ages 18-26 from lighting up.

In recent years, Jordan’s nine-year-old company has generated its share of buzz.

For one thing, it’s profitable. In 2008, Rescue Social Change Group, which employs 30 people, brought home $3 million, more than tripling its $810,000 revenues in 2005. (Jordan declined to divulge his salary.) In September, it was named the 13th fastest growing company in San Diego by San Diego Business Journal, and the 21st fastest growing company in the San Diego area by Inc Magazine.

Even more important, public health officials say, the company’s often-controversial approach to combating the tobacco industry works.

“He’s brilliant,” Maria Azzarelli, tobacco control coordinator for the Southern Nevada Health District, told HispanicBusiness.com. “I’ve done this my whole adult life, since graduating college in 1999. Meeting Jeff transformed everything.”

Azzarelli gives Jordan’s company most of the credit for a dramatic plunge in teen smoking in the Las Vegas area. From 1999 to 2007, the proportion of high schoolers in the region who smoke has plummeted from 33 percent to 13.5 percent. It’s the second-biggest drop in the nation.

To be sure, the impressive numbers come at a time when tobacco use among teens is on the decline. Nationwide, from 1999 to 2007, tobacco use among high schoolers dropped in from 35 percent to 20 percent, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

But in at least some Rescue Social Change Group locations, the results exceed the norm.

In Virginia, home to cigarette giant Phillip Morris, the state hired Rescue Social Change Group in 2003. A few years later, Virginia was among just five states in the nation to post a decline in smoking among high-schoolers from 2005 to 2007, said Danny Saggese, director of marketing for Virginia Foundation for Healthy Youth.

“They are pretty phenomenal,” he said. “They’ve done a lot to motivate us into realizing that it’s extremely important to segment your audience.”

At the root of Jordan’s method is an age-old marketing principle: If you’re trying to reach everyone, you reach no one.

“The kids who are at the center of youth subculture — the mainstream — have very low smoking rates, like 3 or 4 percent,” Saggese said. “As you go away from the center — on one side the skater, rocker, emo, goth kids, and on the other, hip hop culture — the smoking rates go up significantly.”

These are the people that Rescue Social Change Group targets.

The company often reaches them by recruiting the coolest people within each sub-culture. This unusual technique requires the aid of a kind of talent scout, who must observe people interacting and eventually approach the trendsetters.

“These are the people who for a long time have been targeted by the tobacco industry,” Jordan explains. “They are more confident, more talkative. They have larger networks. You look at them, and they are more fashionable, kind of walking around in that bar more, and always seem to have people around them.”

Rescue Social Change Group doesn’t ask them to become anti-tobacco preachers. They don’t even require them to quit smoking. The idea is to get them to buy into the value of kicking the habit. If that happens, others will usually follow.

The approach isn’t impervious to slipups. Sometimes, trying to attract an edgy crowd can produce raucous results. Saggese said the Virginia Department of Public Health became a victim of its own success a couple years ago, when a hip-hop event drew 700 kids — forcing them to turn away 200. There were a few fights, and the agency had to re-group.

To ensure buy-in from other authorities, the public health agency decided to put the program up for certification from an institutional review board. It got the stamp of approval, and re-launched the hip-hop campaign during the first weekend in December. The first party was called “2 Up 2 Down” — slang for how holding two fingers up and down forms a “VA” for “Virginia.”

At the event, DJs played music, and em cees occasionally laced their banter with anti-tobacco messages such as: “We gittin’ down smoke free and fight free.” Or: “Do you. I’ll do me smoke free.” (Translation: Smoke if you must, but none for me.)

Posters and T-shirts blasting the tobacco industry were also on site.

“It has to be said to them in a language and lingo that makes sense to them,” Saggese said. “The message has to talk to them. Not like me talking to them: an old gray-haired guy. It has to be from somebody who is essentially cooler than they are.”

Source: HispanicBusiness.com (c) 2010. All rights reserved.

A different local artist in San Diego designs each poster with guidance from the Commune team. Then, the poster is mailed to local young adults and 100 limited edition, signed prints are distributed throughout the targeted neighborhood.  Click here to visit the Commune website.

The Commune posters won a Gold Davey award this year.

In addition, the Verge campaign against LGBT young adult smoking was also a winner. Verge is currently active in Portland, ME and Albuquerque, NM and focuses on associating being smokefree with a desirable social image. Each month an ad is mailed to hundreds of young adults. Each ad is designed in female and male versions. The female version of the ads won a Silver Davey award this year in the Print Campaign category. Click here to visit the Verge website.

Thanks to the New Mexico Department of Health, Tobacco-Free Maine and the Center for Tobacco Research and Education at UCSF for supporting the Verge and Commune campaigns. Without their support for the kinds of images and messages that actually reach current and potential smokers, hard-hitting, lifestyle ads such as these would not be possible.

On Tuesday, December 1^st, restaurant patrons across the state of Virginia breathed some fresh air. Passed in the spring of 2009, the new statewide clean indoor air bill insuring customers a clean and smoke-free dining experience finally went into effect. Governor Tim Kaine marked the occasion by visiting restaurants across the state and honoring all the efforts that went into this victory for restaurant customers and employees alike. Y St., Virginia’s statewide youth tobacco prevention movement managed by Rescues SCG, was part of the action.

Y St. youth were invited by Governor Kaine’s office to attend all three of that day’s press conferences so their hard work could be officially recognized. Press releases revealed the findings of the 86 Campaign, Y St.’s effort to have Virginia restaurant owners voluntarily ban smoking in their establishments. Hundreds of Y St. youth dedicated over a thousand hours on the 86 Campaign collecting over 4,000 surveys about what Virginians thought of smoking in restaurants (see 86thesmoke.com to view the findings from across the state as tabulated by Rescue SCG).

Y St. youth also collected pledges and video testimonials from members of their local communities to support the campaign. Most importantly, Y St. youth spread the word about the dangers of second-hand smoke to restaurant customers and employees.

Not only did Y St. youth have the well-deserved opportunity to share their experiences in Y St., but they also had the chance to learn from other leaders from across the state.

Congratulations to Y St. and everyone who was involved with making the 86 Campaign a great success!  And thanks to the State of Virginia for protecting the health of restaurant workers and patrons statewide.

One recent development has been in the making since 1997, when the Canada House of Commons passed the Tobacco Act. It not only regulated access to tobacco products, but it also set new rules for product labeling and promotion.  The Act eliminated tobacco companies’ ability to sponsor events and required larger graphic warning labels on cigarette packaging like the ones shown below, which were introduced in 2000.

However, a loophole, which allows tobacco companies to advertise in magazines for which the reading population is 85% adults, brought about a recent surge in tobacco advertising in free entertainment magazines and daily newspapers.  To combat this, the Minister of Health introduced legislation in the House of Commons that would close this loophole and eliminate advertising in these venues.  The legislation, which was approved this October, also prohibits the use of fruit flavored additives in the hopes that it will prevent children and youth from being exposed to tobacco flavors that encourages them to smoke.  These amendments to the Tobacco Act put Canada at the forefront of tobacco control.

Learn more about the act here.

Canada’s swift and decisive action against tobacco is a model for us in the States. Between 2003 and 2008, all Canadian provinces banned virtually all indoor smoking. Some provinces have enacted even more progressive policies, such as banning smoking in cars occupied with children and banning tobacco “power walls” in stores.

This has all undoubtedly contributed to Canada’s smoking rates of 15% among teens and 17% among adults (2006). These are markedly lower than the US’s 20% teen smoking rate and 21% adult smoking rate (2008).

These lower rates reinforce the justification for stronger tobacco control policies in the US.

But despite stronger policies for many years, Canada shares the struggle of many US states in bringing tobacco use rates below the mid-teens. California, New York, Massachusetts, and other US states with progressive tobacco control policies have also seen their rates plateau near Canada’s current lows.

This became the focus of my keynote address in Canada. While we must push for stronger policies to reduce tobacco use, policy alone will not eliminate tobacco-related diseases. We must also motivate people, particularly youth, to reject tobacco use on their own. This is even more difficult now as we notice that programs that were able to reduce rates from, for example, 30% to 20%, such as the national truth campaign, are not having the same impact on the remaining proportion of youth who choose to smoke.

Maybe the youth who still smoke — 15% in Canada and 20% in the US — are different than those youth who were affected by previous campaigns and policies. Maybe they identify with different subcultures, have different values, or socialize with different groups of youth. Our research at Rescue SCG has provided evidence for each of these possibilities, reinforcing the need for advanced strategies for tobacco counter-advertising.

Not everyone has experienced a stalemate in tobacco reduction rates. During my keynote, I shared experiences from Nevada and Virginia, two of only five states that saw tobacco rates decrease significantly from 2005 to 2007, according to CDC YRBS data. In these states, counter-advertising efforts utilize Social Branding research and strategies to reach the specific subcultures that smoke, rather than trying to reach all teens. Working locally in partnership with local ad agencies, Rescue SCG has been able to help these states move ahead of the pack to achieve the 3^rd and 7^th lowest teen tobacco-use rates in the US, despite weak tobacco control policies.

This presents great hope.

If we combine the advanced counter advertising efforts used in these states with progressive tobacco control policies, we can once again bring teen smoking rates down, hopefully to lows we have yet to see in our lifetime.

But first we must recognize that most of the old counter-advertising strategies have stopped working. Commercial advertising and public relations agencies that spend more time on sneakers and fast food than tobacco prevention are unlikely to save us in our fight against tobacco.

I enjoyed sharing these experiences, Rescue SCG’s latest research, and our thoughts about the future with the Canadian delegates. I hope they continue to find the information helpful, and I look forward to seeing where the world’s tobacco control policy leader goes next.

Jeff Jordan
President & Founder
Rescue Social Change Group