I would love to carry the Hazelden Betty Ford message of effective treatment, lasting recovery, and a better life. Your immediate need is a writer who can quickly iterate based on evolving insights. So I decided to iterate headlines/subject lines over the course of an evening.

Note: I’m making all sorts of assumptions about brand guidelines, marketing objectives, preferred strategies, and audience segmentation.

Based on a You Tube video “Ermanno: Why Your Environment Matters”:

1. Treatment without stigma

2. Treatment that respects you

3. Treatment, with respect

4. Treatment without condescension

5. Treatment rooted in respect

6. A disease, not a defect.

Based on a statement in a recent press release Harnessing science, love and the wisdom of lived experience, we are a force of healing and hope ​​​​​​​for individuals, families and communities affected by substance use and mental health conditions.:

1. Treatment based on experience and science.

2. Treatment based on lived experience

3. Lived experience. Proven science.

4. Inspired by experience, fortified by science.

Based on a fact in your 2023 donor report:

1. 448 people ask us for help every day.

2. Donor development version: 448 people ask us for help every day. Now, we’re asking you.

3. Hundreds ask us for help every day.

4. Every hour, 18 people ask us for help.

5. About every three minutes, reaches out to us.  

Based on your family support programs:

1. When parents abuse alcohol, families get a hangover.

2. You don’t need to drink to be under the influence.

3. We help addicts. We heal families.

4. Addiction treatment helps people who’ve never taken a drink.

5. In 2023, we helped people who’d never taken a drink.

Experience, Strength, and Hope

I also wanted to share my most relevant experience—works which shows my ability to respond as needs arise, to generate measurable results, and to craft messages that change lives.

I worked for Cambria for two years as a virtual, on-demand writer and that meant taking every assignment that came my way. One day we emphasized wellness; the next, sustainability. See more Cambria work here.

The ADT concept at the left was the one I loved — and it met expectations — but the ADT concept at right is the one that out performed all in-house and agency executions that quarter.

The most profound takeaway from this campaign for the Minnesota Attorney General’s Office was anecdotal: a recently divorced friend of mine saw the billboard version of this, pulled over, wept, drove home, and paid his child support early.