CASE STUDY
The Ripple Effect is a story about how the fentanyl crisis has impacted and continues to impact Sacramento County: its families, communities, schools, law enforcement, healthcare system, and policymakers. The series examines the forces behind the crisis and how Sacramento County is combating it through inter-agency collaboration and innovative policy.
Campaign Dates: April 2024 - April 2025
Our Role: Branding, campaign strategy, content creation, end-to-end video services, copywriting, social media launch, strategy, management, and reporting.
Summary
The Ripple Effect is a nine-part documentary blog series that sheds light on the harrowing reality of the fentanyl crisis in the U.S. and its impact on Sacramento County in particular. Each installment delves deep into the multifaceted aspects of this epidemic, exploring its origins, impact on families and the community, and the relentless efforts to combat the crisis.
We took a different approach to telling the fentanyl story – one rooted in storytelling, empathy, and easily digestible, short-format narrative bites that align with social media audiences’ attention spans.
Campaign success was measured by tracking website visits, blog post visits, time on page metrics, and video views.
CHALLENGES
There was and continues to be a lot of media coverage around the fentanyl crisis. Many audiences are saturated with crisis messaging (e.g., around opioids, gun violence, and climate change). Breaking through apathy and emotional burnout requires fresh angles and compelling storytelling. It’s the reason we decided to use a short-format documentary style to cut through the noise and present the story in a new way and from a different perspective.
Creatively, the content needed to emphasize the seriousness of fentanyl without becoming fear-mongering or stigmatizing. Finding a tone that was informative, urgent, yet hopeful, was an ongoing editorial challenge. Documentary content relies heavily on real stories. But featuring real people affected by fentanyl overdoses or addiction, especially minors or grieving families, required sensitive handling and thorough vetting.
There’s a fine line between storytelling and exploitation, especially when featuring trauma. Ensuring ethical standards around informed consent and mental health support for participants was critical. Some community members may have viewed the series as overly political, stigmatizing, or sensational. Proactively addressing feedback and adjusting tone or messaging accordingly was essential for long-term impact and success.
Running a campaign on the fentanyl crisis in Sacramento County – especially one delivered as a nine-part documentary blog series – presented a unique set of challenges. Strategically, the campaign had to speak to multiple stakeholders: youth, parents, educators, health professionals, policymakers – in essence, the entire community. Tailoring content that resonated with each group while keeping a coherent narrative was inherently difficult.
Insights
The Ripple Effect yielded a range of valuable insights across audience engagement, storytelling strategy, and public health communication. From an audience behavior perspective, analytics on viewership patterns illuminated which episodes held attention and where drop-off points occurred, helping to identify which types of stories – personal, emotional, or solution-oriented – were most effective. The campaign also highlighted which digital platforms were best suited for reaching different segments of the community, offering a clearer picture of where to focus future distribution efforts for maximum reach and resonance.
Narratively, the series underscored the power of authentic, human-centered storytelling in shifting perceptions. Emotional resonance – captured through community feedback, social media interactions, and shared commentary – showed that stories of lived experience drove greater empathy and action than purely data-driven messaging. These narratives not only reduced stigma around fentanyl use and addiction but also encouraged behavioral change, such as greater openness to discussing drug risks and increased interest in resources like Narcan.
From a content strategy standpoint, the series demonstrated the effectiveness of episodic storytelling when thoughtfully structured. Crafting an arc that moved from personal loss to systemic issues and community-based solutions proved successful in maintaining viewer momentum and reinforcing calls to action.
Public health messaging also saw a measurable impact. The campaign revealed that framing the crisis as a matter of "poisoning" rather than "addiction" shifted audience perceptions in a more empathetic and urgent direction. Tracking data, including click-throughs, web traffic, and time-on-page, showed that well-crafted digital content could effectively connect audiences with services, demonstrating that storytelling can be both emotionally compelling and practical.
19K+ post link clicks
41K+ fentanyl education page visits
101K+ engagements
2:06 average time-on-page
(50 seconds is considered good)
1.8M+ impressions
59K+ series page views
Results
We launched The Ripple Effect as a documentary blog series. We promoted it across social media, via email marketing, as newsletter content, and within health departments to help spread the word. We integrate the promotion and marketing of the blog into some of our fentanyl awareness campaigns, which helped drive people to the series and then back to our other fentanyl awareness and education content.
