Pubdate: Tue, 21 May 2002
Source: Washington Post (DC)
Copyright: 2002 The Washington Post Company
Contact:  http://www.washingtonpost.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/491
Author: Jim Burke
Note: The writer, chairman emeritus of Johnson & Johnson, is chairman of
the Partnership for a Drug-Free America.
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/find?195 (Partnership for a Drug Free America)
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/campaign.htm (ONDCP Media Campaign)

KIDS, DRUGS AND BUREAUCRATS

Four years ago a joint campaign was launched by the public and private 
sectors to fight drug use by young people. The original vision of the 
National Youth Anti-Drug Media Campaign -- the vision Congress signed up 
for in backing it -- was focused and promising:

- - The best and brightest minds in advertising would provide strategic 
counsel and advertising -- pro bono.

- - The federal government would provide close to $190 million per year to 
purchase high-quality media exposure, thus providing consistent delivery of 
hard-hitting ads to parents and children. In addition, $1 in free exposure 
would be required for every federal dollar spent on media buys.

It was a good idea then, and it still is. But today, as Congress considers 
reauthorization of the anti-drug campaign, its future is very much in 
doubt. The program has fallen into a bureaucratic trap, and only strong 
legislative action can get it out.

We in the Partnership for a Drug-Free America -- an organization whose work 
has been augmented by the national media campaign -- were warned. Some in 
Congress said putting large sums of money in any federal agency would 
create a bureaucracy. Leaders in business shared painful experiences of 
having private-sector practices strangled by Beltway processes, consultants 
and political pressures.

Much of this has proven prophetic. Indeed, it appears the only chance 
Congress now has to save this program is to legislatively fence out a 
bureaucracy that has been eating the campaign alive and to mandate a return 
to the campaign's original vision.

When the media campaign began in 1998, it had a remarkable impact in the 
marketplace. Anti-drug messages were everywhere, and with a combination of 
paid and free media exposure channeling hard-hitting messages over the 
airwaves, the percentage of teenagers seeing or hearing anti-drug ads every 
day jumped 41 percent in the first year. Key drug-related attitudes moved 
in the right direction and, most important, teen drug use declined.

Then the tentacles of bureaucracy began creeping in. The Office of National 
Drug Control Policy (ONDCP), which coordinates the paid media effort, spent 
nearly $1 million to develop an overarching communications strategy for the 
campaign. What resulted was an enormous, unproven theoretical construct for 
the program. While consultants were paid handsomely for their advice, 
parents and children paid dearly as the effort moved from its focused 
beginning and gradually lost its way.

Despite the counsel of seasoned marketing professionals who volunteer their 
time and talent to the partnership, campaign coordinators and consultants 
disregarded lessons from the past and altered the original vision of the 
campaign in unfathomable ways. Instead of focusing on a singular, proven 
theme in all advertising (e.g., ads about the risk of drugs), they forced 
dozens of themes into the advertising. Fulfilling the campaign's 
theoretical design required the hiring of more than two dozen vendors and 
subcontractors.

Eventually a bureaucracy with little to no experience in managing marketing 
efforts of this size and scope took over -- the thing Congress feared most. 
Early on, one business CEO described the campaign's burgeoning architecture 
as an utter nightmare. As a marketing person and former CEO, I would have 
to agree.

Last week ONDCP released new data and concluded the campaign has "flopped." 
But well-respected scientists say that conclusion isn't supported by the 
data, which actually say the media campaign appears to be having a positive 
influence on parents and that teen drug use is unchanged. As for a 
"finding" ONDCP emphasizes regarding exposure to the campaign and favorable 
attitudes toward drugs, the report states: "This unlikely finding is best 
interpreted as anomalous rather than as a basis for inferring negative 
campaign effects." ONDCP's choice to spin the findings so negatively is 
irresponsible.

We had early indications the campaign was getting off track back in 2000. 
Recommendations such as having the ads speak to older kids, focusing the 
campaign's messages and increasing spending to ensure those messages were 
seen and heard consistently were shared with ONDCP. All have been ignored.

Steadily, as the campaign's resources have been consumed, fewer and fewer 
dollars have been invested in the essence of the campaign's original 
vision: media buys to deliver messages to parents and children. The 
campaign's ad buying has been reduced from what should have been 100 
percent of its original $195 million allocation to just $65 million for ads 
aimed at parents and $65 million for children -- probably much less when 
contractor fees and related costs are deducted. This means additional 
exposure from the free media has also been drastically reduced. With fewer 
messages being delivered to the target audience -- and with multiple themes 
forced into the advertising -- is it any wonder the campaign has had a 
negligible impact in the past two years?

Media-based drug education programs can work. Independent research verifies 
this not only for anti-drug advertising but also for other focused, 
research-based efforts. The problem with the National Youth Anti-Drug Media 
Campaign is its grandiose, bureaucratized structure.

Since the media campaign began in 1998, adolescent drug use has declined, 
but that decline has stalled over the past two years. Congress should give 
this program a final chance to get its act together. We know it can work if 
it's focused and the ads are tested. There's simply no more cost-effective 
approach to educating millions of kids, generation after generation, about 
the dangers of drugs, than via media-based education.
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MAP posted-by: Alex