Sonoma County had a problem—teen drinking rates were higher than the national average. Although the risks of underage drinking are commonly understood, many parents were under the mistaken assumption that providing alcohol to underage teens in their homes was a “safer” option. Parents did not make the connection between the dangers of underage drinking and the basic fact that most minors obtain alcohol from private homes—“social hosting.”

Despite laws prohibiting social hosting in most Sonoma County cities, the facts simply weren’t registering. Confounding the problem, there was a prevailing assumption among some parents that teen drinking is a “right of passage,” that “kids will be kids,” or that youth drinking is not a problem in their own homes. 

To help shift those perceptions and to raise parental awareness about the dangers of social hosting, we developed a social marketing campaign. Research into messaging and attitudes among area families and teens resulted in a dedicated identity for the campaign (“Know the Power of No”), a series of videos for Facebook and Instagram, and an online quiz that users take to help counter misconceptions about social hosting. The campaign ran for three months, and results were extremely successful, with close to 200,000 video views, thousands of quiz completions and a high level of user engagement on social media.