WHITE HOUSE TO END DRUGS & TERROR ADS

AdAge.com ^

[Stew Padasso]

WHITE HOUSE TO END DRUGS & TERROR ADS

Also Stops Study That Found Campaign Wasn't Working

April 01, 2003

By Ira Teinowitz

WASHINGTON (AdAge.com) -- The White House anti-drug office will end its controversial drugs-and-terror advertising campaign and, in a reversal, shift more of its $150 million budget toward children's media as it fights for Congress to extend the program another five years.

The Office of National Drug Control Policy will also cease a polarizing $8 million annual study that found the ads aimed at youth were not working and that pitted the drug office against the Partnership for a Drug-Free America.

Now, the office will direct 60% of its buys toward youth-oriented media -- the same percentage it had previously directed at adults -- and will focus on halting drug use among children already using rather than aim to deter youth from starting drugs. The drugs-and-terror ads will end in May.

The drugs-and-terror campaign first broke five months after the Sept. 11 attacks, with two Super Bowl ads that cost the drug office more than $3 million to run. The spots centered on the idea that people who purchase drugs help fund terrorism. One ad showed a shopping list that includes an AK-47 rifle. "Where do terrorists get their money?" said the voice-over. "If you buy drugs, some of it might come from you." Later ads replaced "terrorism" with "terror," suggesting drug buys supported drug-cartel attacks on innocent civilians.

The ads were controversial not only because of their message, but because of the way they were produced. While almost all White House Office of National Drug Control Policy creative comes from the Partnership, the terrorism ads were produced outside the Partnership by the drug office's agency, WPP Group's Ogilvy & Mather.

The Partnership said the ads were off-strategy and refused to do any of the spots. Partnership Vice Chairman Allen Rosenshine, chairman-CEO of Omnicom Group's BBDO Worldwide, ripped the campaign in a congressional hearing.

The battle, coming to a drug office already wounded by complaints over Ogilvy's initial stewardship of the account, bolstered congressional critics who tried to cut spending dramatically. They eventually reduced it by about $25 million to about $150 million.

Legislation to continue the program is expected to soon be proposed by a bipartisan group of senators. Reps. Mark Souder, R-Ind., chairman of the Government Reform panel, and Rob Portman, R-Ohio, said last week that it would likely include language limiting the drug office's ability to go outside the Partnership for creative and also language that could require the drug office to rebid the contract won last year by Ogilvy.

[Stew Padasso]

fyi - did not see this posted

[JmyBryan]

Geez - when it was just beginning to work ...

(sarcasm)

[PrivateIdaho]

Good! Those ads were totally asinine. The one where the guy says he has a moral loophole because he "might be supporting terrorism" was particularly stupid.

[Lexington Green]

The public laughed these ads off the air.

[APBaer]

"critics who tried to cut spending dramatically. They eventually reduced it by about $25 million to about $150 million."

From $175 million to $150 million- BFD!

Congress always seems to find it easy to piss it away,
very difficult to cut.

[GraniteStateConservative]

Yep. I'm halfway supportive of the WOD, but those were dumb, dumb, dumb.

[GraniteStateConservative]

The teen pregnancy-marijuana one could have been reused as a PSA to get parents to know what their kids are up to and to talk to them about abstinence. Most people probably don't even realize it was a WOD ad.

[luckodeirish]

Dopey ads do not decrease drug use.

Active parenting does.

[vin-one]

Mrleroy, you got scooped, OMG!!!!!!!!!

yeah these ad's were real effective...

[Machfour]

Just goes to prove addicts don't respond to logic.

[cinFLA]

Dopey ads do not decrease drug use. Active parenting does.

Along with whacking the dealers.

[bigfootbob]

"Dopey ads do not decrease drug use. Active parenting does."

No truer words have been spoken.

[Diddle E. Squat]

Baloney, that's just what YOU want to believe.

Oh yeah, for some the ads hit too close to home and thus were ridiculed, and there is always a large element that is cynical and ridiculing of everything. But the ads worked because if nothing else they engendered discussion of the issue. An ad doesn't have to produce total agreement with its message to be effective.

[vin-one]

bump to the WOD_list.....

[cinFLA]

Dopey ads do not decrease drug use. Active parenting does.

Addicts and libertarians.

[tomkat]

[jmc813]

WOD Ping

[cinFLA]

But the ads worked because if nothing else they engendered discussion of the issue. An ad doesn't have to produce total agreement with its message to be effective.

You miss the point of this thread. They don't work because the druggies say they don't work. Marijuana is the most effective medicine for curing blindness, death, malnutrition because the druggies say it is. Making crack and heroin legal will make our problems go away because the druggies say so.

[cinFLA]

WOD Ping

Caught you in your hypocracy again.

[fnord]

the public is laughing at those 'white lies' ads from the anti-tobacco lobby ... why won't they go away?