Effective Strategies Behind Changing Youth Health Behaviors with Jeff Jordan of Rescue Agency

How do you get young people to actually change their behaviors and make healthier choices? In this episode, we sit down with the founder of Rescue Agency, Jeff Jordan—a powerhouse in behavior change marketing—to uncover messaging strategies that are truly making an impact.

This conversation dives into evidence-based tactics and the power of storytelling to craft campaigns that actually resonate with young people and are driving real change. If you’re working in public health, education, advocacy, or just want to know how social movements take off—this is the episode for you.

Tune in to learn what works, why it works, and how you can be part of the movement.

Transcript

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Welcome to a new type of conversation with each episode, we'll meet with inspiring people sharing best practices at the forefront of creating change for our young people, we'll talk motivations that make a difference in how their lived experience can help empower us to take action and make a difference in the lives of young people where we live. My name is CJ Stermer, and this is the champions for you podcast.

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Have you ever wondered why some messages seem to stick with young people, while others just disappear into the noise and how it seems that no matter what we do, we just can't seem to move the needle. Today, we're talking with Jeff Jordan, founder, president and CEO of rescue agency, to learn what really works when it comes to inspiring young people to make healthier choices, that it's not just about making one great ad anymore or a one size fits all mindset. It's about going beyond awareness. If we want to create effective campaigns, join me as we unpack their evidence based approach to marketing through authentic storytelling and meeting youth where they are, whether you work in public health education or simply care about shaping a healthier future, we're empowering you to learn what it takes to build a movement and effectively create change. Jeff, tell us about rescue agency. What is rescue agency and what is their mission? Yeah, so rescue is a health behavior change agency, and so what that means is that we're a marketing agency like any other. We do all the things that marketing agencies do, but we only do it for positive health behavior change and pretty much work almost exclusively with government agencies, similar to the Virginia Foundation for Healthy Youth. What are some of the programs that rescue Agency helps develop. We work on programs that are focused on pretty much every age range, beginning with programs that are helping parents with their zero to five kids all the way up to teens, which is where a lot of our work started, young adults and adults of various groups in various life stages, helping them with different decisions that they might be making at that time, different risks that that they might be facing, that we can help them make a healthier decision on and really just empowering people within those different age groups and categories and different kinds of communities on how to make the healthier choice that makes sense for them. What kind of created this idea of a rescue agency? Was there a situation in life where we decided like we need to do something. We need to create a moment where we can combat an issue when, when I was a when I was in high school, I volunteered for an anti tobacco Group in Las Vegas where I grew up, and that was a youth tobacco prevention program. At the time, there were a lot of them all around the country. The master settlement agreement had just happened, and a lot of community organizations were realizing that, you know, we should engage young people in this quest to reduce teen smoking. Back then, teen smoking was 25 30% around the country. And so I joined this group when I was 16, and I loved it because it was, it was marketing, and I knew I wanted to do marketing when I grew up, but I didn't know, you know, that marketing could be used for good in this in this case, and volunteered quickly, kind of became a leader of the group with my outspokenness as a teen. And then the group needed additional things. They needed they wanted to do events. They needed web design, they needed graphic design. And I happened to have friends who did a lot of these things, and so I was already leading their events. I went from a volunteer to become a part time worker when I was in high school, there, there at the Health District, and then when they needed more items, I said, Well, how about, you know, instead of being a part time worker, how about you just hire me as an agency, you know, just contract me. And they were, they were brave, and so they did it and and we were able to start really small, you know, with just making some flyers, making some designs, and some events with my friends. And one of the things that we noticed is, as we started doing that work was, well, the health district also had a marketing agency that they worked with. We noticed was left and right. This marketing agency really didn't know how to speak to youth authentically, right? They know how to make stuff. They knew how to make commercials or make events or do all these things, but they were just not speaking to the right youth. And the first event that they hosted, which was like a big youth summit, you know, spent a ton of money, pretty much almost our entire year's budget, went to this big youth summit, and I went there as the youth leader, and I was like, hey, none of these teens are ever going to smoke like I can tell you right now. These teens are good. They are they they're well behaved. They have, you know, they're working on their college application. That's why they're here. None of them have even thought of smoking a cigarette. And so it was like, I know that 30% of teens smoke, but it's not this 30% so why are we talking to them? And to the marketing agency, was very much like, well, teens are teens. As long as we're talking to any teens, it's going to be effective. But fortunately, the woman who worked at the Health District, her name is Maria, she she was just a few years older than me, and she also was like, yeah, these, these are not the at risk teens. I'm like, I know they're not that.

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Why are we doing this? Why are we doing it this way? So they only worked with that agency one year, and it was an agency that did work around the country at that time for tobacco prevention, and she said, Let's do it differently. You know, what do you recommend? How do you want to do it? And she really took a lot of risks in bringing us on and kind of allowing me to take the lead on that. And so that really allowed me to kind of try out different things, and to start to develop this, this, these ideas about how people are different, and how some of the differences in values and culture and the groups that they identify with their peers, how that affects the decisions that they're making. And that really set the stage for us to work for the foundation. So a couple years of kind of trial and error working on different things

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helped me understand what a model really looked like, a model for reaching at risk young people in an authentic way that made them excited to talk about not smoking, excited about the idea of being non smokers, about being proud to be non smokers. And so when we came across an opportunity with the foundation here, we we were able to present that, that really freshly learned knowledge, and just kind of say, look, any marketing agency you go to, they're going to make you some splashy teen campaign, but they're going to sell it the same way they sell, you know, shoes and and soda, right? It's not going to take into account which teens actually need to hear your message, what they care about, which teams don't really need to hear from you because they're already not smoking, etc. And so I think that's what really appealed to the foundation, was that we understood teens at a different level, and could could use their their resources, which are limited, just like any other, you know Public Health Organization, all resources are limited, so how we could use those limited resources on the teams who needed to hear it from us the most? And that really began this journey together with the foundation of a lot of research, a lot of on the ground work, a lot of engagement of young people in very different ways to understand how to insert health behaviors and pride around those health behaviors, empowerment around those health behaviors within many different kinds of youth in Virginia. Have you seen that change over time, like thinking about rescues origin story, right, and understanding that we need to continue to I'll say the word evaluate, right? How have you seen rescues mission evolve and the public health space evolve since its origin. Yeah, I think when we started and we were working primarily on cigarette smoking, it felt like we had more time, more time because, of course, we don't want a teen to smoke a single cigarette, but a single cigarette wasn't gonna kill them, so we had time to even if they did that one cigarette, or those five cigarettes, or however many, we still have time to change them. We still have time to make progress. And fast forward to today, where we're dealing with things like fentanyl, that one pill could kill them, right? And so we're in a very different environment, where we may not have time to really build that trust, build that identification for them to really see us as a part of their group, a part of their their identity. So we have to find ways in that that hit faster and that cause, cause a bigger and faster aha moment. And technology has also changed a lot, right? So we've gone from, you know, mainly doing events and kind of just being having to go out there to find teens to where now we're, you know, 90% of our works on social media, because that's, that's where teens are. And so I would say the biggest changes have been, have been that the messaging and the way in has to be so much faster, so much more precise and on point. Were so much easier to ignore today, right? So you really got to resonate. You really got to talk about something that they care about in a way that they care about it. So we're looking at things like, Well, what, what are the formats of videos they look at on reels and on Tiktok and stuff like that. And how can we make messages that emulate that more, that feel more like content rather than feel like ads, right? And that's a hard transition for adults, too, because, you know, adults, right? We're making ads, ads look a certain way. Well, not anymore. Ads don't. Ads shouldn't feel like commercials anymore. Ads need to feel like they're just a part of the contents I'm consuming and the work that you all do. Do you think that's made it even more difficult to try to meet them where they are? Because, like, you can target on social media, and like, before we could show up to an event and advertise and get people promote, you know, you would any event, yeah, has that made it even more difficult to actually be able to speak to somebody organically and authentically it? I mean, it gives you more opportunities, right because now we can reach almost any single youth in the state, no matter how rural, how you know much at home they are right before it's like, well, we need them to watch certain TV shows, or we need them to go to certain events or whatever. Now it's like, they're all there. They're all on these social channels, but everyone is there. So you got to break through, you know, across millions of videos. And so what that does is it really creates a need for a lot more content, where we maybe.

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Would have made one ad. Now we need to make five to 10 videos to grab different attention. Have more chances of grabbing them and getting their attention. But the bigger opportunity too is that if you do it right, then there's a huge opportunity for sharing before no one could share a commercial, right? You see it on TV where you can't share it. If you liked it, you're just like, I liked it. Great. Done now it's like, whoa. This, this happened to my friend. I'm going to share it with my five friends, and those five friends are going to share with others, right? So it's like, it's the the reward system for us advertisers is so much more, both brutal in that no one could watch what you put out there, or also lucrative in that if you really nail it, you could get a video that you only put a little bit of money behind, but it went to so many more teens because it resonated with them, and they wanted to comment on it and share it and spread it within their community. So there's also more opportunity then to also create noise, like, if you're not focusing and really paying attention to where you are, you could just be wasting money and time, exactly. And, yeah, I mean, we saw so much money being wasted when we started just on on TV ads that people were forced to watch and but they weren't making a difference because they weren't really identifying with with teens. Now today, they won't even finish it, you know, they they won't even stay and watch it, because it's, it's not something they want to watch. They have to stop. They got too much thumbing. Yeah, you talked about research, and I think that's something that a lot of folks sometimes tend to forget, because they just want to go out there and they just want to do based on what they think they hear. What is the status quo and what the issue is? Can you talk a little bit more about the research itself and what people should be doing? And why is that so important? So I think with research, you know, we often get caught up on needing to do scientific, big, validated studies, and look, when you can afford those, those are great. That's what's going to go in a journal, that's what's going to get written up, that's what's going to spread. But a lot of us can't afford that, especially smaller programs, and so we really need to get to the basics of, well, what is research and what are we really talking about. What we're talking about is recognizing that not everyone thinks and feels the same things you think and feel, and the same things they all think and feel right across each other. And so in prevention, just because we are all very passionate about whether it's not smoking or vaping, not using drugs, you know, not not using marijuana as a team, whatever that issue is, even though we have our own reasons, we might be passionate about it, we might care about it, that doesn't mean that those reasons will resonate with your audience. So research is about taking a step outside of your values and your worldview, and understanding your audience's values and worldview, and if you can't afford to do a big study, well, you can at least afford to go and talk to some teens in an informal way. That's research, you know, preferably go beyond your own kids or nieces or nephews or grandkids or whoever they are, because they're always going to be biased because they know you, and so they might just be trying to get a rise out of you saying crazy things, you know. So if you can go to strangers, that's always that's always ideal, but just just with an open mind, ask open ended questions, create a safe space for them, and listen to what they have to say. Listen to ask about their friends. You know, what are some things that they've seen, reasons why they think people are why some of their friends are using and things like that? Don't ask them, like, what they would do, because, hey, they're not marketing experts, right? Instead, ask them about their lived experience. Ask them about what's going on in their lives, why some people are making these choices, and what you'll realize is that these behaviors are a lot more complicated, and changing them is going to be a lot more nuanced. It's not going to be about just telling people not to do something, but it's going to be about trying to connect their values with the behaviors you want them to do. And that's going to take an understanding of their values first kind of thinking about that, right? We started here over time, and now it's just the list of really things that we have to consider when developing these campaigns, these ads, these messages for the people. When we try to meet them where they are, we often hear strain on resources, strain on funding, strain on staffing, strain on just trying to get it accomplished, and trying to avoid the idea of checking a box just getting it done right. How do we empower to really kind of think locally, but be able to accomplish the same things with sometimes such limited resources. Yeah, I think that's a really important, you know, consideration, because there's so many community organizations, so many health departments, statewide organizations, all kind of, you know, worried about the same issues. And instead of all trying to do everything, we really have to look at what's each organization best suited to do, and how can we borrow and use what each other are using, right? So, like the state and the foundation are putting out, you know, this great content for these topics on social media, all that. How can a local organization use that content? How can you help spread that? You know, maybe you have a group that meets and that and that does peer to peer education and things like that. How can they take these videos and things that have been created by the state and improve, you know, the strength and quality of what they're doing on the ground, rather than maybe use half your budget to make one video that possibly no one can see because you didn't have a media budget to go with it, or you didn't have enough.

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Piece to go with it. So I think it's trying not to all step on each other's toes and do the same thing, but instead, each find our lane and then see how we can connect those lanes to all to all benefit, collaborate. Don't reinvent the wheel Exactly. Yeah. Do you have an aha moment or maybe a memory that sticks out into your mind when you think, wow, what we're really doing here is making a difference in someone's life is, you know when, when we were still working on cigarettes with teens, we had a really, really cool campaign here that in Virginia called psych that went on for, I think, close to eight to 10 years. And that campaign was specific for teens who listened to like rock, alternative music. And we worked with a lot of bands, probably two dozen, like real bands who didn't smoke, and were more than happy to tell everybody, hey, I don't smoke. And here's the reasons why I don't smoke. And what was really powerful about that campaign, and I really love was that, you know, it never felt overly polished. It was never this big, flashy campaign. There was never this kind of clever message or whatever it was just, here's a band that teens in Virginia trust saying, hey, you know what? Even though we look like someone you think would be a smoker, we're not. And we don't do it for this reason. We don't do it because of animal testing, or we don't do it because of our lungs, because we need stamina to go on tour. We don't do it because we don't like how it smells. We don't do it because of and just teens hearing from within their culture, just kind of the change that that made for them and the pride that they had. You know, we would have teens working for us at these events, rock shows that we would go to with these bands, and they were just so proud, right? Imagine a team with like, spiky, bleached hair and earrings and LA and all these crazy clothes, so proud to be against smoking, and it's like it's exact the opposite of who you would think would be out there fighting against teen smoking. But it was, it was passionate for them, because their influencers, their their role models, were all passionate about it, too. And I think that was really cool of what you can accomplish when you really hone in on an at risk group, because they were the most likely group to smoke. You know, we did studies every two years. Another study, they were the most likely to smoke, the most likely to smoke, until we brought them down to, pretty much down to average, because we got into their culture, and we created something that was authentic, just for them. Didn't try to reach everybody at the same time. Didn't oversimplify it, didn't try to be all, you know, just clever in what we were saying. We just, we were just real, yeah, and they really loved that. So you mentioned it was like an eight year campaign. Did it take that long to actually sort of feel that energy there? Or was it something that was like, hey, really quickly we started to notice this change, I think, really quickly once, once we started to get those first bands engaged, we really started to see some high engagement. The bands were, you know, clamoring to work with us at events, people were talking about it. I mean, towards the end of the campaign, we even had, like, our own festival one year, because so many bands were affiliated with the campaign that they were just like, yeah, what's like doing next? What are we doing? And imagine just a giant festival with a dozen bands, and everybody there is just talking about how horrible cigarette smoking is. You know, it's like, it's crazy that a health organization could accomplish that? Yeah, that that doesn't happen. No. What does the future look like? Not maybe just for public health, but like, what should we be really thinking about the horizon? You know, there's additional issues that are coming up, whether it be opioid fentanyl. Where should we, in your opinion, should we really be focusing our attention on, where we should be making a greater impact. I think we have to recognize that mental health is so much more

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an obvious part of everything that's going on now. Mental health has always been there, right? It's always been connected to why young people use substances. But today, young people recognize and are more connected to how they feel and how their friends feel and what's going on since COVID. There's there's more issues happening with lack of connectedness and people spending too much time online and too much time on their phone. That which that started before COVID. But so this, this the connection between mental health and pretty much every single topic that we want to talk about is so critical to understand and to not just kind of paint over and oversimplify, like there are kids who are struggling and are using substances because they are struggling, and if we ignore that, then it not only feels really inauthentic, but can increase shame. Can increase, you know, a lot of just like self,

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self loathing and things like that, because they may say like they may feel guilty that they think they need a substance, you know, and so the more like, mental health is the key to to solving so many public health challenges, but it's also the hardest, and it's and it's sensitive and it's it's difficult to talk to minors about their mental health and all of that and so but, but it's there. If we're going to be champions for youth, we have to be champions for Youth Mental Health. Yeah, you said something about just like, kind of brushing over. And I think at least in the conversations I have, I do feel like that that's the case. I feel like people are just saying, oh, yeah, mental health is important. And they're just talking about therapy. And I feel like that's not.

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Enough. And so is there like, a recommendation, or, like, how do we empower people to actually, okay, well, we want to talk about that. Yes, we're on the same page. But what does that actually mean? Like, where do we meet that where it is? Yeah, I think that the very first there's this wall around mental health. And even though people are talking about it, people are acknowledging it, and they're accepting of each other. There's a lot of you know, this whole sense of like it's okay not to be okay, but we said it. We say it about others. It's okay if you're not okay, but it's not okay if I am not okay. There's still this shame around me saying I am not okay and I need support and I need help. So even though this generation feels like the most mental health, empathetic, supported group, right? They still struggle to really pinpoint what they are personally feeling and do so in a way that is an embarrassing that doesn't feel like they're less than or That's their fault, etc. And so one of the things we're learning is that really helping them understand how mental health works just kind of biologically, chemically, that it's, you know, it's these things inside of us that are that are all automatically working right? Like you didn't think your way into depression, you didn't think your way into anxiety, right? There's chemicals, there's there's neurons, there's things happening in your body, and they're happening for a reason. And you can, you can actually work with that. You can, you can understand what those reasons are, change some of those reasons, and, in turn, change how your body is feeling and acting, that can be really empowering. Because right now, what teens are feeling is that it's their fault that they feel this way, and they want to numb it. They want to run away from it. They want to escape it, and then, and if you try and talk to them about it, there's kind of this wall, because it's like, I'm not even ready to admit I'm feeling these things. And so I'm not ready to talk to you about my substance use, because then I'd have to admit to myself that I feel like I need this substance to make myself feel better. So you almost have to kind of try and go around that and say, kind of like, Hey, did you know how it is that, like, stress works? How it is that your stress response system works, how it is how you could be like, near breaking points all the time, and this and that, and that can be really enlightening and empowering to young people, because suddenly they're like, Oh, it wasn't my fault that I'm feeling this way, and there is something I can do about it. It's like, wow, I have so much more control than I thought I did, right? Calling out all the layers to it, yeah, so many layers. We say this a lot, but I think you break up a good point of actually recognizing that there is a whole human involved, not just with different prevention or education or awareness, but in your own brain, not only Yeah, not only a whole human, but a life's worth of experiences that have shaped how that human looks the world, yeah, yes, exactly since birth. One final thought, What is the biggest piece of advice that you could offer to this room of people? I could say, take a moment and step away from your own beliefs and values and worldviews, like we know why you're doing this. We know you care. We know that you're why you're passionate about this, and that's all great. That got you here, but now you got to step aside and and and let those values sit over there. This is why I am against drug use. This is why I am against smoking, whatever it is. And now go to your audience with a blank slate, with no no preconceived notions, no judgments, no no thoughts about how they should act or whatever, and just listen to them, because it's our own judgments that often get in our own way of really understanding what can be a path forward for a specific audience, and there's going to be many different paths to get to the same behavior. They never have to fully agree with you to do this the thing you want them to do, right? You may not smoke for one reason, and I may not smoke for a whole different reason. All that matters is that we both don't smoke. That's what matters. And so so put your reasons aside and listen to where they're at, because that will, that will give you all the answers. That's the key there. Just hush and listen. Yeah. Well, thank you, Jeff, I really appreciate it. You give us a lot to think about and how rescue continues to do the great work to really try to create some some positive behavior change and meet people where they are. So I really appreciate you. Take that no problem. Thanks. CJ, I've got to say it's so refreshing to know marketing still works. We just have to get out of our own way and listen to what young people want. Thanks to the Virginia Foundation for Healthy Youth and prevention connections for the naked connections for the making this happen, and to Mauricio Reyes from teleconnect for the music. Be sure to check out other episodes or join us for one of our webinars. You can find those@vfhy.org

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and don't forget to share with others. The only way we can make real change is if we do it together. And one more thing, we're still new to the podcast world, and it would mean a lot if you took a second to give us a five star rating and tell us what you think. I appreciate you all for listening today, and no matter what you do in this world, go out there. Go do good. Thanks, everyone. We'll see you next time you.

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