Concerned that traditional methods were not succeeding, Tom Siebel, founder of Siebel Systems, set up the Montana Meth Project to combat the spread of the drug in that state. Using hard hitting ads by Venables Bell & Partners, the Montana Meth Project seeks to use consumer advertising techniques to raise awareness, and change attitudes and behavior. The latest results from a survey conducted by Millward Brown demonstrate that the campaign is working.
Methamphetamine use among young people in Montana is dramatically higher than the national average. The Montana Meth Project aims to significantly reduce the first-time meth use in the state using research-based public service messaging, public policy and community action. The publicity campaign started in late 2005 with TV, radio, and outdoor advertising designed to highlight the negative effects of meth and its immediately addictive qualities. The ads have variously been described as “shocking”, “gritty” and “graphic”. Results from a post-wave of research conducted by Millward Brown in March 2006 indicate a strong response to the campaign compared to a pre-wave conducted in August 2005:
- Teens, young adults and adults are now more aware of the specific negative effects of using meth, with 10% point increases in most measures.
- The vast majority of parents and teens report having discussed meth in the last six months and the frequency of conversations has increased.
- There is strong social disapproval of meth use among teens and young adults.
- All media were seen to be important sources of information on meth but TV recorded the highest increases from 28% to 47% among teens and 22% to 40% for young adults.
The results to date indicate that mass media can be used to influence awareness and attitudes on matters of social importance. Hopefully, the atttitude shift will prove permanent and lead to a consequent decrease in meth use and related crime and social problems.
The results may also lend some reassurance to marketers who have come to doubt the power of traditional mass media to build brands. Yes, the power of these media may have been diluted by fragmentation and the advent of the so-called “new” media, but they can still make an impact when the advertising is impactful and addresses a topic of relevance to the person exposed to it. Lack of brand differentiation and a failure to create emotional relevance in advertising remain two of the biggest challenges facing marketers today. Worrying about the impact of DVRs and what percentage of the budget should be devoted to search are trivial issues by comparison, just as brand marketing pales into insignificance in comparison to the anti-Meth campaign.
(25 votes, average: 2.88 out of 5)
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April 21st, 2006 at 6:58 am
Now that is interesting. Not that I’m suprised to find interesting things to read here Nigel!
The extent to which the campaign has succeeded in generating consumer-to-consumer conversations is really evident in the article: all but 2% of the parents interviewed saying that the number of conversations about meth had increased. Looking at the website, there’s a mechanism for sending the ads to a friend. It feels like the kind of public service message that would have been ideally suited to having a clear word of mouth and/or viral objective within the campaign brief, but I’d be fascinated to know for sure.
The article also reminded me of a recent Freakonomics post about a couple of novel ways of combatting drugs in the community. (http://www.freakonomics.com/blog/2006/04/18/wanted-low-paid-drug-dealers/)
April 21st, 2006 at 10:45 am
Trevor-
The Montana Meth Project also used public service and word of mouth. They used recovering Teen Meth addicts in schools and other means of getting the word out. They are even using wrist bands that have the ‘not even once’ message on them. Apparently, these wrist bands are in pretty high demand by the Teen population.
It has been pretty inspiring working on this project! The Montana Meth Team really wanted to use a solid approach to the project. They qualitatively tested the ads, in which they heard repeatedly that if the campaign wasn’t ’shocking’ Teens wouldn’t hear the message. They also wanted to see if the ads were doing their job in getting the message out. Based on the data to date, they are doing just that.
Nigel is right it’s all about figuring out how to reach your audience in a relevant and emotional way. Even if the emotion is ‘fear’. We know that Teens experiment, but you definitely don’t want them experimenting with Meth, once you’ve tried it, your hooked. Hence the ‘not even once’ message.
May 31st, 2006 at 6:44 am
We are currently working on anti-drug campaign here in Pakistan and were even discussing to show very graphic content with end results of heroine addicts and I just came across this campaign and i think its very communicating.
As far as achieving the maximum out of such a campaign, its always a very tough job but this direction is very promising.