As paradoxical as it may seem, in their review of social marketing effectiveness, Stead and al. have shown that “the more similarities they …[social marketing campaigns] …had with commercial marketing, the more successful they were [11]. Our results also point out that two types of improvement could be considered Belinostat ptcl for future health campaigns. The first one is related to the choice of the media in order to improve the visibility of such a campaign, and the visibility of the organizing institute. To reach young people, the choice of the media is decisive. Maybe more than newspapers, radio spots, SMS and e-mails could be privileged, like it was done in a similar campaign conducted in France [12]. The second possible improvement concerns the structure of the message, designed to reach different social backgrounds equally.

Our results have shown that the campaign was mainly seen in the highest socio-economic group, measured by educational level. This is not very surprising, knowing the fact that the message was simply a sentence, with no visual aids, like an image or a picture that could be more eye-catching and attract people who are less familiar with written messages. If well-prepared and adapted to different socio-economic origins, radio and TV spots could overcome this difficulty. The strategy followed by this campaign was a one-shot through many different media channels, resulting in a higher probability to be exposed to the campaign. But to gain long-term effectiveness and greater dissemination, the messages need to be repeated more often [13].

This strategy is supported by several marketing campaigns [14]. Assuming that individual behaviors can be changed, direct campaigns, i.e. campaigns ad-dressed directly to the public and not aiming to change the political or economic context, such as the one which is described in this paper, represent an important component in health promotion [15]. Voluntary risk-taking could be considered as one of the multiple characteristics of adolescence [16]. Therefore, strategies based on “social norms marketing” are very important but may not always be sufficient to prevent misuse in alcohol or other drugs consumption, especially in the targeted public of adolescents and young adults. In this perspective, other environmental dimensions, like peer pressure, family, culture or work related environment could also be considered in a comprehensive strategy.

Although the problem of substance use disorders in Belgium may be seen as not that impor-tant or widespread as Brefeldin_A in some other developed countries such as the United States or the Middle Americas, statistical evidence from a growing number of epidemiological and clinical studies points to the importance of substance disorders in Belgium. From epidemiological studies it becomes clear that about 8 million Belgians have ever consumed alcohol, about 800,000 cannabis, and 120,000 cocaine [1].