Too Many Cooks?

It was an awkward moment for Allen Rosenshine. At a recent congressional hearing on why the White House's anti-drug campaign is losing steam, the chairman and CEO of BBDO was cornered into publicly criticizing another agency's work."I think the terror campaign is a little like being told to eat all the food on your plate because there are starving kids in India," said Rep. Steny Hoyer, D-Md., of the drugs-and-terror ads by Ogilvy & Mather. The controversial spots tell teens that buying drugs supports terrorist activities, and actors playing drug users claim responsibility for drug-war crimes including murders and kidnappings."What do you think?" Hoyer asked Rosenshine."You said it," Rosenshine responded. "You do not attack your consumer. Using irony in advertising is very tricky."Rosenshine's words capture the debate that has surrounded the drugs-and-terror ads since they first aired during this year's Super Bowl, and illustrate the tension between the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy and the Partnership for a Drug-Free America over the campaign's creative direction. More than that, his words speak to a central problem all public-service efforts face: who controls the creative process. And when a campaign is put through an 18-step creative-approval process, as the ONDCP work is, that process can weaken the work."Government agencies are very hard on creative teams," says Ruth Wooden, former president of the Ad Council. "It is like democracy run amok where 87 people look at the advertising. There are too many hands in the soup. "Take the nonprofit world," continues Wooden, an adviser to both the American Legacy Foundation and the ONDCP. "They tend to have an activist board. Then there is the volunteer ad agency. Then there is the campaign's creative review committee. Then there is the public-service director in the media who decides whether the PSA gets on the air. Only a great idea can survive all that."The ONDCP's 4-year-old anti-drug campaign, costing taxpayers $1 billion over five years, is a particularly ambitious and complicated un dertaking. And when compared with other large national campaigns that aim to change social behavior, like the Legacy Foundation's $100 million-a-year anti-smoking effort, it comes up short based on the most recent evaluations of each program. Critics charge that the campaign is a textbook example of what happens when the client—ONDCP on behalf of American taxpayers—is too meddlesome. ONDCP supporters counter that ad agencies lack expertise when it comes to social issues, and that having many volunteer agencies working on the creative is the cause of the campaign's problems. If the ONDCP has too many agencies involved in the campaign, it may also have too many clients. Who should direct the creative process is at the core of the debate between the ONDCP and the Partnership, which coordinates pro-bono contributions from a roster of about 40 agencies. (The ONDCP's lead agency, Ogilvy, manages the media buy and also does some creative work—unlike a traditional public-service campaign, the media is not donated.) The ONDCP has to approve all creative that runs.Drug czar John Walters and the campaign's director, Alan Levitt, want Congress to give them more control over the process, including the flexibility to pay for creative and to work with just one agency. Rosenshine, the Partnership's executive creative director, argues that the pro-bono setup allows the industry's best and brightest agencies to contribute. At the congressional hearing, Rosenshine told lawmakers the campaign needs ad professionals to streamline the creative-approval proc ess and evaluate the work's effectiveness."Everybody always wants to control the creative," says Nina DiSesa, chairman and chief creative officer at McCann-Erickson, New York, and a member of the Ad Council's and the Partnership's creative review committee. "There has to be consistency toward the effort. If you change your direction every few years, it gets confusing. And no one wants to be patient here. Sometimes you have to believe in something and keep at it until you see some results."Even the best PSAs are vulnerable to a process layered with what Wooden describes as the "stakeholders"—people who are professionally or personally invested in the outcome but don't necessarily agree on an approach. Plus, a long-term commitment is not always guaranteed. That's what happened with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's "America responds to AIDS" campaign, out of Ogilvy in Atlanta, during the early to mid-1980s. The CDC wanted to involve Americans in the fight against AIDS. But after then-surgeon general C. Everett Koop left his post, the organization lost its commitment to the effort. The Ad Council's "Don't be fuelish" energy-conservation campaign, which ran during the 1970s, was another high-profile initiative that lost its key advocate, this time after Carter was voted out of office. The anti-drug campaign could meet the same fate—Walters, who took office in December, does not have the same passionate focus on advertising as former czar Barry McCaffrey.In the ONDCP and the Partnership, the anti-drug campaign has stakeholders that often clash. "I think you have two partners involved in the campaign that just don't trust each other," says Ed Mai bach, director of social marketing at Porter Novelli, the public relations group that wrote the original communications strategy for the ONDCP's campaign.The problem, as the Partnership sees it, is the "byzantine" creative-approval process mandated by the ONDCP, says its president, Stephen Pasierb. A PSA can take up to 194 days from inception to air—a paid product ad, by comparison, typically takes about 90 days. But making a consumer ad involves fewer steps with fewer bureaucratic procedures. For example, if an ad agency wants to interview nine people or more for focus-group research, the ONDCP must get permission from the Office of Management and Budget, which monitors whether the government places an undue burden on American citizens. Then there's the ONDCP's behavioral-change expert panel, a group of about 10 psychologists, sociologists and advertising experts who provide feedback on how effective the PSAs are likely to be (Wooden is among them). Their input can prompt changes in the creative. Each panel member is paid $1,000 for a daylong session, and the group meets about 10 times a year. No other federal ad campaign or public-service campaign has a similar type of formal panel.When the two sides disagreed on the development of the drugs-and-terror spots—the campaign's first work after Walters took office—the ONDCP's staff went outside the Partnership's system. The dispute centered around whether two of the spots go too far toward blaming teens for terrorism, as Rosenshine charged in the congressional hearing. In "I Helped," teens and adults say lines like, "I helped murder families in Colombia." The spot "Timmy" shows a teen saying, "I killed mothers; I killed fathers."The idea to link drugs and terrorism grew out of two polls the Partnership conducted last fall with parents and kids, who said they believed there is a connection. The Partnership recruited Grey, New York, and planned to produce an initial set of PSAs to educate parents and kids about the link using footage of President Bush, and then follow with more hard-hitting spots. The Partnership wanted the first spots to be released under its own name and the next round to carry the ONDCP label."What teens told us was, blaming kids for terrorism was seen as a typical adult overstatement and insulting to them on a human level," says Grey executive creative director Mark Schwatka. "But if kids were asked, 'If your money could help terrorists, do you want to help them?' 60 percent said it would make them think about not buying drugs." Schwatka, along with the Partnership's Pasierb and Rosenshine, felt the PSAs had to carefully set up the money connection. Says Schwatka, "Kids told us, 'I did not bomb the World Trade Center. I just smoked a joint at lunch.' "At the same time, Ogilvy was working on a similar effort at the direction of the ONDCP. Its focus group research supported a harder approach. When Ogilvy tested spots including "I Helped" with teens last fall, reactions included comments such as, "It gets your attention to make you want to learn more." In a videotape of a focus group session, another says, "It will show the people who buy drugs this is where your money is going."On Dec. 12, the Partnership presented some early concepts to Walters and ONDCP staff. A patriotic-themed spot showed President Bush saying in a speech, "It is so important for Americans to know that the traffic in drugs finances the world of terror, that terrorists use drug profits to commit acts of murder." At the end, copy reads, "Drugs support terrorism. Do you?" The goal was "to be educative first," says Pasierb. But ONDCP staff wanted to focus on the morality of marijuana use, using an "edgier" creative approach, says ONDCP representative Tom Riley. "It had to break through all the other patriotic ads," says Levitt. "The ads had to resonate with the target audiences. They had to be sensitive to the Sept. 11 issue, and they had to be factually correct."The Partnership says it never heard back from the ONDCP, while the ONDCP says the Partnership withdrew from the process. Ogilvy, already at work on terrorism-related ads at the request of undersecretary of public diplomacy Charlotte Beers, got the green light. The spots, directed by Tony Kaye, were vetted by the CIA, the FBI, the Drug Enforcement Administration, the Departments of Defense and State, and President Bush's office before they aired. Ogil vy ecd Chris Wall says the ads "raise the issue" as opposed to "casting blame." "This was not about demonizing drug use," Wall says, "it was about calling into question the morality of drug purchases. Every time you introduce a fresh topic, you always have the opportunity to influence."Whether the spots are effective is up for debate—an evaluation is not due until November. "Kids are asked to believe that when they buy some pot in the schoolyard, the implication of the ad is that money goes directly to al Qaeda and terrorism," says Richard Earle, a social marketing consultant and a former group creative director at Saatchi & Saatchi, New York. "It is basically lying to kids and they know it. The tone is dead wrong."The ONDCP, however, considers the work among the best in the anti-drug campaign, along with J. Walter Thompson's parenting-themed spots, which broke in two rounds last year (the latest series uses the tagline, "Ask: Who? What? Where? When?"). Ogilvy got the go-ahead to produce a second round of drugs-and-terror spots to break this fall, this time focusing on marijuana, which Walters wants to emphasize more overall. (Anti-marijuana spots are also in development through the pro-bono process, from Leo Burnett, Chicago, and McCann-Erickson, New York.)The most recent effectiveness study, released in May by the re search firm Westat and the University of Pennsylvania's Annenberg School for Communication, found that behavior among the campaign's core target, 11-13-year-olds, had not changed in the previous 18 months, although parents said they were talking to their kids about drugs more. Walters has told Congress that if the campaign doesn't show results in the next year, he's willing to kill it. "We are not where we want to be," he says in an interview. "We can and should expect to do better. I believe the drugs-and-terror ads should show a change. We will live or die by the results."The ONDCP says its shortcomings result from the nature of pro bono work, that because the organization pays only production costs, it doesn't get top-notch work or creative consistency. (About 62 agencies have worked on the campaign since 1999, according to Levitt.) Congress set up the campaign so that the bulk of taxpayer money is spent on the media buy—out of a $180 million budget last year, $141 million went toward placing the ads. Ogilvy's Wall, who worked with the ONDCP's staff to produce the drugs-and-terror spots, puts it this way: "The test is, look at the most effective advertising in the world and ask yourself how many [clients] get the creative free over a period of time. An awful lot of the anti-drug stuff is geared toward developing agency reels and not geared toward changing behavior."The Partnership, of course, sees it differently. "That is absolute crap," says Pasierb. "Leo Burnett doesn't need to work for the Partnership to build its reel. These are not sleepy little agencies working on this campaign. These are the BBDOs, the McCanns and the J. Walter Thompsons. Any client in the world would kill to have this caliber of agencies working on their business at any price." As an example of good work produced sans fees, Pasierb cites the 1998 "Frying Pan" anti-drug spot from Marge otes|Fertitta + Partners, New York, in which Rachel Lee Cook smashes up a kitchen ("This is your brain. This is heroin. This is what happens to your brain after snorting heroin").The Ad Council's 30-year-old campaign for the United Negro College Fund is a classic example of a pro bono effort where the stakeholders agreed on a creative direction that has remained consistent over time. Young & Rubicam, New York, created the slogan "A mind is a terrible thing to waste" and still handles the account. The campaign is credited with raising more than $1.8 billion. And the Ad Council's drunk-driving prevention campaign, started in 1983, gave the cause a higher profile with memorable taglines like "Friends don't let friends drive drunk" (from DDB, New York).The American Legacy Foundation's 2-year-old anti-smoking effort has proved one of the most effective public-service campaigns in recent years. A study published in the June American Journal of Public Health found that in the first 10 months of the campaign, the percentage of the target audience who held anti-tobacco beliefs jumped from 6 to 26 percent. There was also an association between the campaign and the willingness of nonsmoking teens to try their first cigarette. For the hearings on the ONDCP's campaign, lawmakers asked Legacy to submit written testimony about its strategy. The campaign credits its success to a simpler creative-approval proc ess and a board that, for the most part, leaves creative decisions to the advertising experts and its target audience of teenagers. But, notably, Legacy pays for the creative—and the account is structured like that of a consumer campaign—using just two lead agencies (Arnold, Bos ton, and Crispin Porter + Bogusky, Miami). Legacy declined to let its agencies be interviewed for this story.In the testimony Legacy gave to the congressional hearing, the organization says the creative strategy aims to "encourage rebellious youth to decide that not smoking is a sign of defiance and independence." In many ways, Legacy has it much easier than the ONDCP. It deals with only one substance, tobacco, as opposed to the numerous, quite different illegal drugs teens might experiment with. It has only one primary target audience (whereas the anti-drug campaign targets both teens and parents). There is an easily identifiable villain—the tobacco industry—that the advertising can rail against. And as a private foundation, Legacy can call the shots until the bulk of its money from the tobacco settlement with the attorneys general runs out in 2003. Legacy has 11 board members who understand that they are not advertising experts and not the 12-17-year-olds the campaign wants to reach. While the ONDCP's campaign does not involve teens until storyboards are tested with focus groups, Legacy has a teen adviser on the board who reviews work from the initial-concept stage and has the same voting power as other board members. "I am a nonsmoking, anti-smoking older white man," says Steven A. Schroeder, president and CEO of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and vice chairman of Legacy's board. "If I liked an ad, it did not necessarily mean it would be a good ad."Legacy puts a group of teens at the table with the agency. "We are in close, constant ongoing communication with the target population," says Lyndon Haviland, Legacy's COO. "Our secret weapon is we listen to teens."The Legacy board itself is less involved with the creative process than the ONDCP's staff, which likes to sit at the table with a Partnership agency from the beginning. Arnold and Crispin present about 16 concepts, the Board accepts about eight, and five get produced.Haviland considers the 2000 spot "Body Bags" to be Legacy's most effective ad to date, and Schroeder agrees. In the ad, more than a dozen teens unload 1,200 body bags in front of Philip Morris headquarters in New York. The point: Tobacco kills 1,200 people a day. "The brilliance of 'Body Bags' is teens don't process risk in the same way," Haviland says. "That was our way of breaking through, that 1,200 is no longer a really abstract number."But by trying to break through to teens so pointedly, that spot and another, "Lie Detector," were criticized by the networks and tobacco companies for being too morbid and harsh. The board yanked the spots after a short cable run, though later put them back out. There have been other controversies over the creative approach. Lonnie Bristow, former president of the American Medical Association and a former Legacy board member, remembers one battle he lost over the concept for a spot that was never produced. The spot was called "Tar Baby" and featured an African American teen against a mostly orange background. As Bristow recalls, the copy read, "Don't let anybody make you into a tar baby. That's what cigarette advertising is doing to you every day.""There was a fear of offending African Americans," Bristow says. "The issue was, Will we make more people mad by using it? I was prepared to take the risk." The staff and other board members disagreed, and the concept was abandoned.Bristow also disagreed with the board over the campaign's direction. While Bristow wanted to include adults in the target, the board elected to keep the focus on teens. Still, Legacy's recent work includes a print campaign from Ar nold, "Letters," directed at adult women who smoke. Photos of women dying from tobacco-related diseases are accompanied by letters to loved ones. A second round of work is due this fall.As Legacy and the ONDCP look to the future, Wooden offers this advice: "It's just an ad. It is not a peace treaty where you have to massage every word. And you don't quit when something doesn't work. You just keep trying. What's important here is to have people listen to each other and stay the course over time. You will make progress."

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Too Many Cooks?

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