CAMPAIGN SUMMARY

Com 480
Katelyn Hirsh

Our goal was to design a health campaign targeting what we thought was a prominent
health issue on the campus of Bryant University. After discussing a few different issues, Mary
and I decided that Adderall use and abuse is becoming more and more evident across all college
campuses. While there are a lot of issues on college campuses that would be easier to combat
than our Adderall focus, we felt that this issue was important and needed to be addressed no
matter how challenging we knew it would be. Students are becoming dependent on a drug that,
in most cases, is not prescribed to them. It was our job over the semester to target students who
are currently using Adderall without a prescription and try to help them realize the dangers in
their actions. We knew this would be a difficult task, and we had to overcome a lot of obstacles
in dealing with stubborn college students who are stuck in their ways, but we enjoyed trying to
create a campaign that we believed was important for students to be exposed to.
Before we could really focus in on Bryants campus and the Adderall abuse being seen
here, we needed a background on both Adderall as a drug, as well as the general abuse of
Adderall as seen throughout college campuses in the United States. Students with ADHD need
Adderall in order to make their brain waves connect in a way that makes them function on the
same level as students who are not diagnosed with an attention deficit disorder. However,
students who lack this deficit are taking Adderall because they believe it makes them stay
focused for an extended period of time. No matter the reasoning behind why a student takes
Adderall, Doctors have explained that drugs like Adderall can produce jitters, headaches,
stomach problems, or even eventually lead to psychosis, a mental disorder that includes the loss
of contact with reality (Cooper).
When cramming for finals (one of time frames that Adderall usage spikes on any college
campus), students feel they need Adderall to get their work done in a short period of time.

Alternatively, weve noticed that students are progressively starting to snort Adderall pills on the
weekends to increase their level of drunkenness. At first exposure to this information, its quite
clear that it seems dangerous, but the risks are actually a lot more important than people
originally believe. Because Adderall is a prescription drug, students who are using it illegally
dont look at it as dangerous, which is what we were trying to combat this semester while
developing our campaign. What they arent considering, is that prescription drugs can affect
every individual in different ways. Adderall is considered a Schedule II substance by the Drug
Enforcement Agency, which means it is categorized as a highly addictive substance, similar to
both meth and cocaine, (Times). These types of drugs lead to both psychological and physical
dependence.
Because our goal was to implement a campaign on Bryants campus, we needed to speak
with the student body to get a feel for their position on the topic of Adderall. Some of the more
important questions helped us shape our campaign. In an effort to speak with as many students
are possible and give us the best information, we spent a few days walking around campus and
stopping students to ask their opinions on the topic. Luckily the majority of students were happy
to answer our questions, and some even got excited to speak their opinions on Adderall. We
spent a lot of time in the student center, walking around and speaking to different individuals. To
keep the conversation open and comfortable, we didnt have any specific questions written
down; we just let conversation flow comfortably. This way, the students were able to talk freely.
Students were very honest with us, which was very helpful in deciding how to form our
campaign.
In conducting interviews, we spoke with students who illegally used Adderall to help
them study, students who disagreed with taking a drug to enhance your academic performance,

and students who actually got excited when telling us about their Adderall snorting endeavors.
Almost all of the students we spoke with showed little to no concern about the dangers that
Adderall can induce when using without prescription. All students felt that Adderall was not an
addictive drug, which we know from our research is not true. Furthermore, students said peer
pressure wasnt an issue with this type of drug. Adderall usage is so casual on campus, that the
outlook on people who use it or dont use it is generally casual as well. When we asked when
they started using Adderall as a study aid, we were told that freshman year was really the first
time they were given the opportunity. That beings said, the college environment is what initially
introduced students to taking this study aid drug. When one students proclaimed that they didnt
think taking Adderall was any worse than drinking a coffee, we knew that what we thought was
problem was, in fact, a problem.
One important thing we noticed from our interviews was that students were relying on
their own personal opinion rather than facts. This showed an overall lack of knowledge by our
student body, and we knew our job was to inform them of the important information. Once we
decided that this campaign would be about raising awareness of the dangers of taking Adderall,
we were able to start brainstorming using the number of theories we learned about as a guide. To
help us narrow down our options, we made a poster outlining how this campaign would be run
using the different theories weve learned about. Almost instantly, we knew which direction we
wanted to head.
As we learned in our interviews, students didnt try Adderall to study before they got to
college. With this knowledge, it was definitely important that we try to work this into our
campaign in an effort try to stop this behavior before it even starts. This means our initial target
would be incoming freshmen who have not yet been exposed to taking Adderall without

prescription as a study aid drug. Our hope was that if we could accurately target these students,
they would understand that they would be exposed to Adderall usage upon entering college, and
ultimately prepare them to decline any offer they receive. Still, we needed to find a way to reach
these students before they become a part of our community. We felt that freshman orientation
would be our best bet. The idea we came up with was to prepare a skit that would be acted out
during an orientation session to target Adderall abuse and explain to incoming students the
dangers of this behavior. This would give students a background and provide them with
arguments against Adderall abuse that they could use upon arriving to Bryant. We hoped for this
skit to leave an impact on students and start them off on the right side of this fight against
Adderall abuse. Furthermore, we wanted to show all students on campus that they are
susceptible to the dangers of this drug, but also provide them with enough information and
confidence in themselves that they dont need it to succeed in college.
We realized that one skit wouldnt be enough to fight this behavior and change the
perception of Adderall within the minds of students. Because of this, we chose to expand our
idea past just incoming freshman. While we realize students we interviewed were pretty set in
their ways, we wanted still to raise a general awareness in a way students would pay attention to.
Once freshman arrived on campus, they too would see the awareness campaign and be constantly
reminded of the skit they were exposed to just months before.
To target the rest of the student body, we chose to focus our campaign on accenting the
dangerous that come along with taking Adderall without an ADHD/ADD diagnosis. We
understand that students cant resist free anything, so we knew we wanted to incorporate some
incentive into our campaign to gain the attention of our community. We started designing
campaign posters with facts about Adderall that would be hung around campus. These included

facts like, Adderall has the same chemical make up of SPEED, and listed dangerous health
risks prompted by taking Adderall without a prescription. These include, but are not limited to,
heart problems, seizure, insomnia, paranoia, and hyperactivity. In total, we created 8 posters to
be spread all around campus. These posters would evoke a sense of threat within students, that
this is a real problem.
With help from our focus groups, we tweaked our posters to look appealing and worth
reading. To incorporate that incentive we wanted, we chose to make this poster campaign similar
to a scavenger hunt with gift cards as the prizes. Our campaign would encourage students to find
all 8 of our Adderall posters and snap a picture or a selfie with each one. Once all posters are
collected, students are to tweet their pictures with the hashtag #CollectTheFacts and tweet
them at @CollectTheFacts. We acknowledge that this generation loves taking pictures and loves
social media, and we expect that students would be interested in such a campaign. We think
spreading the word via our posters on campus will remind students about the dangers of
Adderall, and our twitter campaign will help spread the word outside of Bryant as well. While
we provide the dangers of using Adderall to show how severe the issue is, we also include some
posters encouraging students that they can be successful without a study aid drug. Our goal was
to show students how dangerous this behavior is, while still keeping them confident in
themselves as students.
Our poster campaign will be launched a month before finals week in an effort to make
people second guess taking an Adderall to help them study once finals roll around. Upon
returning to school, we would want to know how well this campaign worked. While theres no
way to poll all students with 100% accuracy and honesty, I think it would be important to talk
with both the library and the Academic Center for Excellence. If these locations are more

heavily populated throughout the semester (as opposed to just during finals week), it might
indicate that students are staying on top of their assignments as theyre assigned, rather than
cramming last minute to get everything done on time. As an extra measure, we could re-conduct
interviews on campus, and see if there is a shift in behavior and attitudes towards Adderall.
This campaign was a lot more difficult than I thought it would be. It required a lot of
creativity and hard work. I never knew how important comments from students would be to our
success, but looking back, without their input this campaign would have been a wreck. Its
incredibly important to target your audience specifically and make sure you really know how to
reach them. If I ever got the chance to do this again, I would change many things, first and
foremost, pick a topic where I think I could actually make a real impact. While Adderall abuse is
a very important issue, and one I still believe should be addressed, I think for this type of project
we should have focused on a behavior where people were further along in the stages of change.
It would have been easier to influence their perceptions, and maybe our campaign could have
been more effective than just an awareness campaign.

An example of one campaign poster. This poster explains the idea of the scavenger hunt.

References
Cooper, A. (2011, September 1). College students take ADHD drugs for better grades
CNN.com. Retrieved February 19, 2015.
Times, H. (2014, January 23). Adderall: america's favorite amphetamine. Retrieved
February 19, 2015.