Creativity for a cause: How Erica Short ’07 uses her talents to inspire change

Posted December 09, 2024

Erica Short

Can you save a life through a video ad on social media that lasts only a few seconds?

Erica Short ’07 and her teammates at Kansas City-based creative agency Overflow believe that yes, you can.

Short, who serves as a creative director, recently worked on a Gen Z fentanyl awareness campaign called “You Never Know.” Fentanyl is a synthetic opioid that can be manufactured illegally and cheaply, and then disguised as legitimate medications, such as Xanax. It is 50 times more potent than heroin, and it takes just a few grains to kill someone.

According to the campaign, Kansas is currently No. 1 in the nation for the highest rate of drug-induced deaths for 15-19 year olds. And 86% of those deaths were directly related to synthetic opioids like fentanyl.

The “You Never Know” campaign seeks to save lives by raising awareness of the dangers of fake pills and how just one pill can tragically end a life.

It truly just takes the one time of thinking, ‘It's probably fine to take this pill my friend gave me,’” says Short. “But it's not harmless. You never know where it came from. You can't trust it unless it was prescribed to you by a doctor, filled at a licensed pharmacy, and taken as directed.”

While Short takes pride in the fact Overflow was nominated for a 2024 Mid-America EMMY Award for the “You Never Know” campaign, what matters most to her is how the campaign is already reaching young people.

If one kid in Kansas is spared from losing their life, and one family is spared from the grief, the whole effort feels so worth it.”

Cause-oriented communication

As a freshman at K-State, Short’s dream was to become a journalism teacher. Although that dream eventually shifted to a desire to work in the public relations and mass communication industry, she maintained a heart for serving others, especially youth.

I was seeking a career path where I could do cause-oriented work in some way,” she said. “I switched to PR, and it was such a good fit, because I felt like it let me dabble in all of the modalities. You have writing and design, and you have fundraising and planning and all the things that are included in PR.”

She worked as a copywriter, started a photography business, and learned videography, before she and her husband joined Overflow in 2015, shortly after the agency started.

We do a lot of cause-oriented work,” Short said. “We specialize in storytelling through multi-disciplinary creative production and experience design through live events. This includes everything from campaigns about mental health, substance use prevention or other public health topics, to spreading innovative education models, kindness campaigns, or attracting more young people to the skilled trades — a lot of topics that make a difference in people's lives.”

One of Short’s favorite parts about her job is collaborating with her teammates and combining their unique strengths to tell a powerful story.

We’ve definitely found a specialty and a niche in helping our clients get ideas adopted that require a population of people to change their mind about something, be educated, or think about it in a little different way and change the stigma. It’s a lot of complex messaging that we have the amazing opportunity to think, ‘How can we make this as simple as possible?’ so that we actually change behaviors or ideas, and then we see people's lives improve. It's my dream job, truly.”

Reaching the audience who needs it most

Short says that the “You Never Know” fentanyl awareness campaign consisted almost entirely of paid digital ads.

One of the first — and most important — steps in the campaign was setting aside the knowledge the creative team members thought they might have about Gen Z and starting from the ground up. They conducted surveys and small focus groups to find out what Gen Z thought about different media platforms and brand styles. Based on that knowledge, they decided to focus the ad campaign on TikTok, Instagram, YouTube and streaming services like Hulu.

We knew you couldn't post those messages from the county mental health center channel and expect that young people would see it. They won't. It required a different strategic thinking, and then made sure it's something that looks appropriate on their TikTok feed, and that they're not going to immediately scroll past. What's going to make them want to click through to the website and actually learn more?”

Another misconception people might have is that fentanyl use is about addiction. Instead, it could be a teenager or college student who experiences a barrier that stops them from reaching out for professional mental health care, and then tries a pill from an unreliable source.

You could take one pill and it can have a deadly amount of fentanyl in it,” Short said. “Five out of 10 fake pills have deadly amounts of fentanyl in them, not just a trace. It's unlike anything we've ever seen before. Because truly, one time can be deadly.”

The campaign also seeks to promote positive social norms and helps to correct the false perception that “everybody’s doing it, so it must be OK, right? When, in reality, everybody is not doing it and it isn’t safe.”

Signs of change

Since March 2024, the campaign has racked up more than 6.8 million impressions on social media channels, nearly 550,000 completed video views and more than 18,000 visits to the website.

The results have been so encouraging,” Short said. “To think about the number of teenagers or young people who have stopped their entertainment scroll cycle to click through and learn more about fentanyl on a website, is mind boggling. Since ads are limited to a specific age and location-based audience, we have a high level of confidence that those are young people in Kansas who are choosing to educate themselves.”

Short said that the hope is, of course, to eventually see the rates of death or harm by fentanyl decrease drastically.

There are so many factors at play. And it's not one social media campaign that's going to make the full difference, right? Something like this requires a detailed community response with all the players at the table, but we hope that it is another outlet that young people might learn about such an important topic.”

Other projects Short is proud to have worked on throughout her career include the “Zero Reasons Why” teen mental health campaign, and a soon-to-launch campaign called “Experience.Work” centered around profession-based learning, which is an educational model where secondary students are given real-life, on-the-job experiences based on their interests.

She said that one of the things that K-Staters can do to help the “You Never Know” campaign, as well as similar efforts in their area, is to keep the message going.

I think spreading the word, educating yourself about what the drug landscape looks like right now and how fentanyl is being used to make pills that look like real medications,” she said. “We really can't trust anything that isn’t prescribed to us by a medical professional and filled at a licensed pharmacy. Sharing that message with young people is incredibly important.”

You might also want to consider keeping a dose of Naloxone on hand. This life-saving medication can reverse the effects of opioid overdose or poisoning (Narcan is a common brand name). It is safe for all ages and can be purchased without a prescription at most pharmacies. There are even ways to get free Naloxone in Kansas — learn more. Or if someone you know is struggling, they can call the free, confidential 988 Lifeline, which provides access to resources 24/7.

More about the campaign

 
You Never Know

Funding for the “You Never Know” campaign was made possible through the Johnson County Mental Health Center and The Cooper Davis Memorial Foundation (Keepin’ Clean for Coop), a family-run foundation that exists to educate young people, parents and the community and raise awareness about the dangers of illicit fentanyl and fake pills.