Dossier D.C.: Drug Bust

It's that time of year again: the season of excess, soul-searching and new beginnings. What better time for the government to launch a grandiose media campaign to keep today's kids away from the demon of drug addiction. Indeed, as 1998 dawns, the federal government will begin spending nearly $1 billion over the next five years on a social-marketing ad campaign. Realized in a hundred different ways and earmarked for parents, teens and youngsters, the campaign focuses on a single goal: Just say no to drugs. The architects of this plan have their work cut out for them. When I told teens that hundreds of millions of dollars were allotted to ensure they stayed clean and sober, a handful of youths responded with an indifferent "really" and "whatever." If the U.S. Congress releases the first $175 million appropriated as planned, the Office of National Drug Control Policy will begin the first phase of its campaign, which kicks off with ads from the Partnership for a Drug-Free America in early 1998. The 12 test sites will be contrasted with 12 baseline cities where the ads will not be broadcast and where few, if any, of the partnerships' previous PSAs have run. School surveys meant to aid the ONDCP will be conducted in both test site and baseline cities. Taken at the beginning and end of the four-month cycle, the surveys are designed to see whether kids' attitudes toward drugs are changing. Bob Hanley, a founding partner of Creative Media in New York, has high hopes for the innovative, conceptual media plan his shop is creating for the billion-dollar media blitz. "We're treating this as a product introduction harvesting the strengths of different media vehicles," Hanley says. "This campaign will be prevalent not just in terms of frequency," he insists, "but it will be culturally relevant to the person that we are after. It will counteract all the stuff they get from the media and their peers." Hanley's emphasis on cultural relevance may be the key to the campaign's success. Creative Media is developing a foundation that transcends the strictly commercial realm. "We want it to be about Warner, ABC and others developing a strategy for their own networks," he explains. In fact, Congress has mandated that the $175 million the ONDCP spends on anti-drug media in 1998 must be matched with in-kind donations. Creative Media's idea is to form alliances with MTV, Fox Broadcasting Co. and ABC, among other networks, and create PSAs with the TV actors that kids relate to best. The concept is not unlike NBC's highly controversial "The More You Know" campaign, which utilized talent from ER and Friends. Creative Media, in essence, is a handmaiden to this ever-evolving network partnership. Despite its involvement, however, the agency is precluded from competing in the review to place media over the next five years. Still, Creative Media recently met with other major players, including Washington, D.C.'s Porter Novelli, the partnership and Zenith Media, New York, to cement this unprecedented initiative. Sources close to the process report that Zenith has been contracted, without a competitive bid, to place the media in the campaign's 12 test markets over the next four months. That phase will be followed by a national rollout, which is scheduled to run from May through August. By the end of phase two, the ONDCP will have selected a media buying or general-service agency to help launch the integrated communications plan over the next four years. This anti-drug effort is easily the most ambitious social-marketing campaign the government has ever embarked upon. Not surprisingly, all the participants are braced for trouble--not the least of which will be overcoming the endless government red tape. Each phase of the campaign has to be evaluated and reviewed by Congress; it is not yet clear whether Congress will want to see the partnership's ads before they air, although the partnership has made it clear it will not cede creative control of its agencies' product to federal authority. Moreover, the first year of the campaign is crammed with participants. Porter Novelli was hired to create an integrated communications plan and an RFP for the five-year rollout, while Creative Media was subcontracted to create a conceptual media plan. Each move must be evaluated by all major players, including the agency that wins the ultimate bid to place media. And Congress, to date, has been slow in awarding its appropriations, which could throw off the schedule of the much-touted plan. Thus far, broadcasters are eager to get on board, although some are confused about what is expected of them in terms of matching donations as programming time versus running a traditional PSA. A few fear the ONDCP and the partnership may try to influence the content on such programs as after-school specials and town meetings, which will function as the networks' in-kind donations. But their fears may be unwarranted: "If ABC wants to do something for us, to use on-air talent," says Hanley, "the message may not be written by the partnership. It will use the voice of the on-air personalities." Despite any potential complications, it is an ambitious, hopeful project supported by some of the stellar lights of government and business. Ads are being developed to target the West Coast, where crystal meth is all the rage, as well as the East Coast, where inhalants are the drugs of choice among teens. An added twist: New ads targeted to parents confront many of the myths of drug abuse, such as the misconception that it's an inner-city problem. "Burbs," an ad developed by Publicis/Bloom for the partnership, is a pastel-colored spot that shows a kid skateboarding in a classic suburban cul-de-sac. The voiceover states that 40 percent of drug abusers live in the city, then goes on to add, "Guess where the other 60 percent live?" Several heroin spots use gritty, graphic footage to help deglamorize drugs for kids. Who is overseeing this byzantine effort, which combines the best and worst of government action? Gen. Barry McCaffrey, the head of the ONDCP. The white-haired gentleman soldier is betting his whole career on the idea that advertising works. After all, he's seen it work its magic before. Most Vietnam-era baby boomers can remember N.W. Ayer's classic theme, "Be all that you can be ... in the Army." McCaffrey wants to see that same kind of hard-hitting, emotionally relevant advertising instituted again. Indeed, he and his staff genuinely believe that the only chance the anti-drug campaign has of reaching America's children is if it's the hippest, most relevant work around.

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Dossier D.C.: Drug Bust

Nora Fitzgerald

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Nora Fitzgerald